Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

July 6, 2017

Birmingham, England

Was this reality a dream? 

I hear your voice. You’re in my thoughts every day.   

I chase you, forever, but I can only feel your corpse in my arms. My life has ruptured, the river has run red. I have no idea how to survive without your presence.  

I miss you, your very energy enveloping me in your embrace as I don’t hear you by my side.  

It was around that time of the year again. The death anniversary. 

Izaya's death. 

Chester didn’t understand how his friend and idol, Chris Cornell had died two months earlier. His throat closed at the memory of weeping after hearing the news that his friend had died of suicide.

The vocalist flinched whenever someone - reporters or people who had no fucking idea what it was like - mentioned that Chris had commited suicide. 

Commited. Like commit a crime. 

Mental health still had stigma attached to it, like a chain that rusted and had chunks of metal missing, but always there.

Why was Chris' death and so many others who suffered in silence, more criminal than the actual person who murdered...

No, Chester told himself. He felt tears build in his sensitive brown eyes. He wished he wore sunglasses, but Mike had convinced him to not wear them tonight. 

Chester had been too mentally exhausted to fight the pleading in his lover's gaze.

Why did life had to have so much suffering?

Why did Izaya have to suffer, through the hell he would never wish on anyone, before that day two summers ago?

Izaya didn’t even have a grave. 

Why did death have to be painful? 

But Izaya wasn’t in the crowd among the people who were able to afford the concert tickets for the night.  

The arena for the early summer concert in England was packed. The majority of their shows were sold out, tiny people or blurred faces one of the only things visible.  

It was amazing.  

How did he make it out alive? 2015 had been one of the worst years imaginable, not even counting the companions in his mind – the depression and anxiety that allowed the man to understand and feel so much – Mike had said he cared too much.  

Chester didn’t squint at the blurred images. He had been a frontman for almost twenty years now, and it made him laugh inside remembering how his bandmates had looked at him as if he had lost his mind when he told them that he couldn’t even see the faces of the audience.  

He was basically blind without his glasses. It made sense why he tripped over his own feet and hurt himself as often as he cursed.

There were many accidents that happened. It was practically in his DNA that Chester Bennington had some kind of danger magnet attached to him. Chester wanted to close his eyes for a moment, but his mind was oddly quiet.  

For reasons unknown to him, suicidal ideation and half-formed plans of future (or imagined) attempts continued surfacing in his mind despite the desperation clawing at his throat. 

But that is how his mind worked. It didn’t matter how much medication he was on, or what kind of therapies he went through and learned from. Ever since the wide-eyed brown-haired child he had been had experienced horrors and torture from HIM, Chester’s mind had been a dangerous place to walk alone. 

It was interesting; so many fans seemed to be insulted if one of their artists admitted to liking pop or outside their genre or style of music. And yet the environment surrounding the criticism and outright hate to their seventh studio album was only the beginning of the silent anguish that the man was feeling at this point. 

He was wearing a shirt, that would more than likely be taken off as the material of clothes would stick to his skin and make the sensation damp and unbearable to deal with. And yet, despite the heat of the English summer, Chester decided to wear long sleeves. That was why it surprised him still how comfortable he was in his own skin despite his tendency to strip down to his pants and even less during performances.  

There was something about performing that magnified his demons. He put everything he had into performing the sounds that Linkin Park, who he was very proud and grateful to be a member of, meeting fans, and spreading the message of not being alone.  

Despite people stating to him that his voice or Linkin Park saved their lives, Chester always believed that the people listening to their music, who were hurting, were the ones who saved their lives. He wasn’t a hero.  

Mike protected him so much. But could he protect his lover from himself? The lover who was very close to saying goodbye to the world and letting go? 

Why did everything hurt, so much that it felt as if he was screaming and no one could hear him?

That no one would care if he would just disappear one day?

What the fuck is wrong with me?!

Why did he feel out of control?  

That he didn’t know what to do? 

Why did people put so much trust and love into him when he didn’t believe in it himself? Even if there were five hundred people who told him he deserved to be loved, there was a part of Chester, deep inside of him, that would not believe that.   

There was one fan in particular that Chester remembered now. He didn’t know much about mental health besides of what he knew back then all the way back in 2003, but the tattooed man recalled how the young teen had looked at him as if he was seeing the sunrise for the first time.  

That time was the first and only time Chester had come close to seeing someone very young to die by suicide. A knife had been placed on the same boy’s neck, and Chester remembered afterward, after the boy had been taken home safely, how his mind would not let the knife go. There were many times that the mental agony and numbness of his emotions and regrets made him want to put a knife to his own throat.  

Or stab himself, over and over, before his blood would leak over his skin.  

(You should have killed yourself when you were eleven. You had a plan. Then no one would have to deal with you. You are better off not to exist.)  

But then there were times when he wanted to peel off his skin. Leave the bloody, mess of the largest organ to dry and suffer. He was very familiar with the thoughts floating through his mind. Although Chester was excited about the future and was stable at the present, his mind could turn from a still pond to a hurricane in an instant. 

It was a hot day, yet the magnetic frontman of Linkin Park didn’t feel the heat. Even the sound was distant to his body. His soulful dark brown eyes – capable of showing so much emotion that many people said he was too much – were sad, gazing out into the crowd as if it was the abyss; the dark abyss that was his mind.  

Chester Bennington didn’t think he would be dealing with depression for half of his life. The days numbed into an endless sea of helplessness even as he had moments of joy, and he didn’t understand.  

He just wanted to rest. 

Despite the pain and agony he had felt for years brought on because of his mistakes that were soaked in shame and doubt, the crawling feeling in his skin somehow not fading away… 

…Why? 

He was happy. – Or as happy as his mind was accepting right now.  

Chester was grateful that the majority of people and strangers he met didn’t experience his memories. Hadn’t had the horror and self-destruction, abuse, and trauma. Forbidden tears almost flowed down his cheeks at the sudden memory.  

Why was it that he felt so much? Why were strangers’ or friends’ words enough to get under his skin and make him feel even worse about himself? He should be proud and love himself – see himself the way his friends and the people somehow still sticking around.  

Even if he was a part of a small piece of a sound of a generation, Chester felt like shit.  

Why did Mike even tolerate him? Every day Chester was falling in love with Mike Shinoda as he watched the man sleep in the very early mornings,  

He was in love with Mike for far longer than he would like to admit.  

Chester liked to tell stories over and over again. 

And it took a mere child, jet-lagged, abandoned, and running on adrenaline from meeting the six members many years ago, to make a comment that would push Chester to confess his truth all the way back in 2003. 

It was as if Chester kept forgetting that one of the oldest fans of Linkin Park, who had come to more than the 100 shows and owned every album before his death –  

Chester had cried when he had heard the news about one of the Argentinian fans named Sandor passing away. From the audience’s cheers and encouragement, the band played, and Chester sang the departed young man’s favorite song. It had been the first for the band and for the vocalist to sing a song based on a request.  

That moment had been beautiful. It reminded Chester of how fleeting, ephemeral life was for all beings that currently had breath.  

Anyhow (he was always sharing unnecessary and too-detailed information to strangers. Mike always worried that he shared too much with people and Chester was always aware how annoying he was. 

How he was annoying and needed to stop talking so much no matter how Mike –  

How he overwhelmed people with his enthusiasm and his brand of exuberance, bordering on being threatened to be chucked out of a plane by an exhausted Joe when they had another 15 hour flight with Chester’s energy crammed into a tiny seat). 

He always gave too much away.  

…Like of how he had openly wept during one of the shows in Japan two summers ago, not long after a single human life named Izaya had died. 

Only that time, no one had said a word. The audience stared, as if unable to comprehend the request.  

A joke was on his lips about the young man’s name, but tears flowed from his eyes instead. 

The lively crowd in Japan that night had quieted after Chester mentioned that single name.  

But there was nothing.  

No one said anything.  

Just like me. I’m nothing.   

There’s nothing left inside of me, despite this trembling heart bleeding, screaming, searching…  

He loved life, wanted to live, and to experience more. He wanted to continue to produce music, sing, paint, dance, cook, create, and love the people who he knew intimately from twenty years working with them and strangers who he connected with, or people going through the same shit as severe depression, and live, live with his lover, the one and only Mike Shinoda. 

He wanted forever, with his other half. His soulmate. Mike held every bit of his soul in those hands Chester loved with all his being.  

Mike was as beautiful and amazing as the day the genius music writer, producer, and the glue of the band that wouldn’t exist without him, met the fucked-up and wasted kid he was. 

He was still hurting.  

Every hour – no, even more excruciating. Every moment felt like it was the end. 

His mind was quiet. There was a stillness to it that the tattooed man had no interest exploring.  

He tried to think of a happy memory. STP, all the music he loved, his children, and the hobbies he had before he lost interest. His best friend who had become his lover. 

Mike didn’t realize how bad his depression was.  

No one knew. Except maybe Rob. But no one saw. 

Chester didn’t want Mike to know. There was too much at stake. If he took a break now, it would ruin another tour. All of their hard work and love that was poured into the music they produced to the world would be at a pause. 

His mind was in shambles, again , he was freaking out over nothing again , and he was such a sorry state of misery. Chester did this damage to himself.  

He was so grateful to have all the people he loved and the life he was able to have. Chester felt the familiar wave of irritation squeeze his insides as his mind began to criticize him – so many faults and yet…he was adored. Idolized, even though he begged fans and strangers alike to not idolize him.  

Why did his family love him? Out of all the years, it had been Chester’s stupid decisions and addictions, his shameful behavior and selfishness that almost destroyed the only place he eventually realized he belonged after undergoing brutal rehab and intensive outpatient care.  

A faint memory floated in his mind. It was a ghost of a touch, like a kiss that he had shared with Mike the first time they had kissed so many years ago. 

What are you doing here? He saw the beloved face he hadn’t seen in so long, despite the passage of time. 

The memories flooded him with renewed sorrow and grief like blood. The grief was uncharacteristically still, like an inhaled breath that was exhaled too soon. 

I miss you.   

He said it to himself every day, even as his demons became a part of his life, shredding his very being with so much anguish Chester didn’t know if he would make it out alive. Human hearts were like spider webs, so deceptively weak but able to endure.  

But there are times when the anguish of life’s experiences are too much for one person to handle. Even if there are people around, what if they don’t understand? 

What if, despite the services and pleadings to stay alive, the same darkness comes back to haunt you again and again, as if your torture will never cease until you are so tired and empty from the agony that you don’t know what to do. 

What is the reason to miss people? It isn’t you who will be missed, but the memory of you and how people want to see you as.  

An idolized, mistake-less individual who remains wearing a mask for all to see, glued to their nerves and capillaries as Chester Charles Bennington was remembered, but not as…simply Chester.  

Just like how some lives, bright and daring and so beautiful that they were like a comet among the stars, were forgotten or written off as “low lives” or forgettable. 

Chester had been business partners with Sean, who was a former band member during their time in Grey Daze. And yet despite Chester’s friendship with the man since they were very young, there were parts of the businessman that he was disappointed with. Hearing Sean say he was sorry about his loss just before commenting about how the individual – the human life – hadn’t been able to be saved by Chester because of his stupidity, was like getting beaten with a baseball bat to the head.  

Sean had tried to call two years later, and Chester still felt simmering rage at the audacity of someone Iz – 

What was one life worth? Was it simply a collection of experiences and memories, attached to individuals like strings on a viola that would make music whenever you crossed paths? 

What did his life equal to? He wanted to live, he wanted to experience more of the full life Chester understood that he should feel, that there was a beyond ahead of the abyss clawing and dragging his mind through the slippery mud. 

But some people refuse to listen. 

What life? Perhaps there is no afterlife after death. Chester had been close enough to death to know that it would come. He wasn’t afraid of it. 

But that…taking that route…would devastate the people he loved. The one thing Chester was unable to undo was times he damaged or hurt people in some way.   

I miss you so much…   

How can I survive…without you here?  

The lights were too bright. That isn’t to say that the light shows, and noise weren’t usually intense – but today, in the vocalist of Linkin Park’s mind, the sound, the crowd seemed reminiscent of a fire.  

What happens when a fire breaks out? The warning signs ignored, the symptoms dismissed until they cannot be dismissed as fantasy. 

People don’t believe in things until they are able to sense it.  

The majority of living things have defense mechanisms to fire in order to survive. The images of fire can bring terror or relief to many depending on the circumstances. 

 The flames from the fire can bring horror and death to living things. The heat so damaging that it burns or melts flesh, draws out the viscera of your organs, and destroys entire structures of the human body.  

Fire can leave behind devastation. The heat and flames so hot the air is oppressive and choking, and the most instinctual part of the human brain has the desire to survive.  

Despite the feeling that the internal pain is too much to bear, and a soundless scream tears from your throat –  

At the thought of another day of breathing into a life that doesn’t feel real. 

I hate the thought of getting up in the morning. If you would describe the main character of this saga, there isn’t much to describe. What do individuals know of pain?   

How much of what we say in our life is hidden because of shame and lies? Is honesty truly the best policy? Do people truly want to know how we as individuals feel, because in the end of all living things, we live our final breaths without knowing what will become of our souls?   

What is the point of our relationships with our loved ones? What is the point of living if you feel as if you are drowning in an ocean, or being burned alive by a fire that only you can feel? No one else can witness the ocean as you drown. You cry and scream, burn bridges down until you can’t hold your breath anymore.   

You are nothing.   

You deserve this pain.   

People are better off without you here. Without you, they can be happy.   

There is hope. There has to be, otherwise Chester wouldn’t have made it to his fortieth decade. He said to many people that it gets better.  

Then, what was this? 

Why did his life, his dream, every waking moment, turn into a nightmare?  

This type of agony with depression had been a war he had been fighting for longer than he cared to remember.  

The actions of trying to live despite your mind or your soul being dead to the world was an experience Chester never wished on anyone. 

So then, why did this degree of depression feel so much worse? 

The dawn shines onto your exhausted state of mind as the trusted people in your life tell you that it is going to be okay, or the other bullshit that “Your 30s will change your life!” 

Life was going to get better. The days continue on and all you can do is breathe and ignore the pain of living. 

Oh yes, it does get better. But yet there are times when the anguish is unrelenting, and someone goes through moments that are enough to destroy the human mind. I can’t imagine what it is like to live through experiences that millions have gone through.  

I can’t answer how to live. Or how to go day by day as if your life is being sucked out of you. I’ve dealt with depression and an anxious, high-intensity mind all my life.  

If you expecting answers and with a smooth and easy ending, this saga does not have that. We have to be grateful for what we have. Even if it is simple as being able to breathe, despite having no desire to take a breath for the present moment.  

The struggle to find anything to hold onto. To see something to make it worthwhile to live on more second and one more day. 

Even if you don’t want to eat and then feel guilty for not wanting to eat, because so many people in the horrible and twisted world live farther uglier lives that is impossible to imagine.  

I have so much, and yet I cannot feel the sun. I feel nothing, and yet why…my mind…why is it like this?! 

War. Famine. Genocide. Discrimination. Terror. Abuse.  

I have experienced none of those, and yet my mind is not a safe place.  

When it comes to me, if I had to choose death or life, I would choose life. It’s not as if people who have minds similar to my own ask for this pain. It infuriates me to no end when people who have no idea what it is like to survive and not live, to cry and smile and endure, just to live another day, comment on someone’s choice, on a day that the demons were too loud. 

Sleeping alone, being alone, fearing death.  

Was this what you were afraid of?  

Was death this terrifying to you? I wonder if it has to do with anxiety now, because when my mind was on clonidine I drove myself almost insane with everything. I couldn’t think because my thoughts and worries wouldn’t slow down.  

I felt terrified of dying alone. Of being left alone.  

Which is ridiculous.  

I am terrified of being alone and yet I don’t want people to see me like this.  

Mike didn’t understand.  

Hell, I don’t understand.  

But you understood. I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to help you. But then, I can’t help myself.  

I can’t handle myself. I think of what I have to live for. And yet the sun doesn’t bring the hope that it used to bring.  

The sunset brings an end to an anguished and writhing existence. There are times you have good days, days that you don’t worry about your mind or feel that you are going to lose the dance competition with your demons. 

You can live without fear or knowing that you are lying through your teeth, desperate to live and laugh again.  

And yet there is panic over the peace. 

The fear. The fear, and conviction, overwhelming… 

Why does fear control so many of us? There are so many things that are wrong, but I cannot bring myself…I’m terrified.  

What happens when you cannot physically put out a fire? 

Temporal things burn until they collapse into ash. 

The living, trembling, awake, individuals die.  

People die. 

And death follows as Mother Nature and the cyclical life cycle continues. As it absorbs life back into its destruction, people fear fire. People say dying by fire or getting burned to death is the worst possible way to die. It is a slow, excruciating, painful end to your life.  

And so, people are very aware of the dangers of fire, particularly in public buildings.  

What happens when the fire goes out? What happens if you are the only one that sees the fire, and everyone else tells you that you are insane? 

Is running from a burning building cowardly? That the fire isn’t real, or that it's all in your head? 

The truth that you speak isn’t accepted, and people go on and live their own lives, ignorant and still. 

What do you do? What do you do when the act of breathing becomes so unbearably painful that it feels as if fire is burning on your heels, and you can't stop thinking about the urge to jump? 

What do you do when your life, your every waking moment becomes inhaling smoke and despite all the people in your life trying to save you, you can only choose to inhale and chase the smoke away from your breathing corpse? 

This is the mind of millions of people, but some cannot hear them.  

Including people who have it all. Having material things, and people around you…there is a difference between choosing to be alone and being lonely. 

Being alone may not be a choice – it can be, but for some, being alone is a safe haven at times. However, there are times when any person can feel loneliness even among a group of people.  

Especially among people they love.  

Intrusive thoughts can echo and ruminate, collecting underneath the cracking smile and laughter.  

There is a difference between sadness and disappointment,  and the slow feeling that this human body and mind that the world defines as yourself – feels too much for the convenience of others. It is one of the reasons that people with neurodivergence or anyone with marked difference can be an outcast.  

What is it that makes the mind impossible to understand? Why do some minds run as if they are running, overwhelmed with feelings and sensations? Why is the pain is living an excruciating reality at times, the mockery of happiness as life passes by, so slowly it feels as if your mind will not rest? 

However, the state of the mind is fragile, misunderstood, and disregarded. The horrible truth is that mental illness and any divergence from the neurotypical mind are often scorned, laughed at, pushed aside, and not as significant as physical ailments. 

Why is this type of pain unacknowledged? 

The pain of depression, anxiety, paranoia, dissociation…memory loss…can feel overwhelming as if every thought is too much to bear.  

What happens if your mind is on fire, and no one cares about the flames? The flames that are taking away the attributes that make you as a unique and beloved person. 

Ashes fall, ashes fall….before they blow away, forever wishing for peace. 

Searching, desperately for your mind to slow down, and then when it does and then the process starts again.  

As if you never learned anything.  

Just like the horrifying and tragic fires not only taking place in California, but around the world. 

Humans were cruel, greedy, and self-centered – but that was only a part of the parts that made people and individual minds human. 

Sometimes being human was too much – feeling too much, wanting too much, or feeling the similar sensations of apathy and flatness that took apart his life and made the light shrouded in darkness – stumbling, screaming, calling for someone.  

And yet, finding comfort in it. This state was what he knew. There was danger and numbness in that part of his mind, but there was also a chance that his mind, when the depression and anxiety became part of a memory, would turn into a story – he loved telling stories, complete with voices and reactions – with suicidal ideation or what-the-hell ever these thoughts floating in his mind were a calamity of a devastation that someone had described to. 

The intrusive thoughts were a part of his world 

Too many times, it felt as if he was running away from the fire burning his mind apart. 

Was it ironic that one of the most iconic tattoos he had was of flames? He had no idea how a whim of his mind would become so recognizable. 

It took him back to a memory. The memories were not painful. It felt as if he was looking into a memory, far away from kindness or anguish.  

He saw the familiar shape of a presence he missed.  

The first time the boy had looked at him with complete trust was after seeing a movie. It was a Disney movie; there had to be a cross-cultural exchange, Chester had thought as the teen was looking as if he had created the universe, and the adult hadn’t understood the look in the teen’s dark eyes. It didn't surprise him that the teen hadn't ever seen any Disney films. It also didn't surprise them when the boy completely denied how his gaze continued to wander toward the stuffed animals or toys made for school children.  

The human named Orihara Izaya hadn’t had much of a childhood. He was practically forced to raise himself and his twin sisters. But yet the resilience Internet facility of the teen only came to be the focus when he started to watch Disney films with a singer from a rock group smiling as he won a lottery. Chester always cried whenever he saw the movies. No matter how many times he had seen them. His bandmates liked to tease him (in their good-natured way) of how open and big his heart was.  

Chester had wondered how the teen had reacted to the film, because he hadn’t even heard the teen speak to him before he went to the grocery store. Chester loved Japanese cooking. It didn’t bother him that the kitchens were tiny and the majority of the ingredients he was used to having were unavailable in the archipelago. He loved teaching Izaya how to cook. He enjoyed it the most when his lover came to join him in Tokyo and began to teach Izaya his love of baking, particularly cinnamon rolls and some fancy European dish he had no idea how to pronounce. 

The singer inside of himself was impressed and stood still when he heard the most distant high schooler he had met singing as he cooked – spaghetti Bolognese taught by Chester himself a couple of weeks ago – in his version of high volume.  

Izaya had thought the adult had been distracted by learning Japanese with two little girls, laughing and playing with them. But he didn’t know at the time how Chester half-understood at the time, and he also listened when he heard Izaya’s voice, slowly starting repeating the lyrics before finally singing in the tenor Chester had heard only once. 

 The emotion was omnipresent. Of course it was, knowing both of them. But taking in what he knew now, the man wanted to scream at himself. How did he not know how bad the isolation and loneliness were for the teen?  

Although the teen liked the rock/nu metal genre, his greatest weakness was knowing the lyrics from musicals, and…films Chester used to watch with his children when they were little. It had been such a treat to introduce Izaya to those films, particularly when Chester heard him sing to himself when the teen believed, like so many adults, didn’t care.  

That his existence was nothing more than a speck of dust. 

The young man he had considered… 

Chester hadn’t been able to watch any Disney or Ghibli film since Izaya’s death. 

He saw Izaya’s face in his mind, and the man tried to calm the tsunami threatening to overtake him. 

What did it matter if he felt emptiness to the point of wanting to die? 

The man standing in front of thousands of hundreds of people felt restless, but yet also dead inside. His tattoos, like so many singers or frontmen in rock bands were in the fluorescent light. Despite his lack of glasses, the movements of the crowd were enough to make him smile. However, that smile did not reach his heart.  

How can you describe depression to someone who had never experienced it before? Particularly someone who had experienced chronic depression, eventually turning into several other chronic, always-there-extremes of the mind not able to regulate itself.  

What the fuck is wrong with me?  

Some people liked to call people like that suffering artist. Perhaps there was some truth to that.  

But does the diagnosis matter when it feels like every second is surviving by…by…? 

Chester’s mind – his soul – was burning alive. 

And yet the sadness in his eyes was not seen as genuine, even among the fans who made it possible for him to have the life he had. 

The venue was full. This was one of the last stops before the band would conclude their European tour before the eight week break. Chester’s bandmates were looking forward to the rest, despite the heavy criticism that their album had made. 

There was so much war and violence – injustice, racism, and horrible acts of hidden evils of the human nature that threatened to snap the humanity out of the lead singer. He had his own trauma and experience with mental health to make his therapist make millions. Well, he did pay her well.  

Why was his mind so much similar to the violence and hatred that humans, their fur babies  - all sentient beings, felt in their realities? 

He was privileged – he knew that from the moment he was able to be a part of the band that would become his greatest pride and family – that he didn’t deserve but was beyond amazed that he had so many people in his life that loved and cared about him. 

The listless and dead feeling inside hadn’t gone away. The man had no idea what stratification of his deep depression was causing this degree of emptiness.  

Chester was tired. No, he thought belatedly as he stood on stage with Mike – dedicated, loving, and such an amazing human being – he didn’t deserve his lover – You’re a failure – You can’t even sing anymore, you piece of shit – The critics and fans were right.  

Tears wouldn’t come to his eyes when he thought about the latest media backlash. Fans – “Fucking assholes,” Rob had called them with a surprising amount of venom after the drummer read the hate messages Chester and Mike were receiving – were right. I should take a gun and –  

“I love every single part of you, Chester. You are my everything. My moon, my sun, my stars, my entire life. If you don’t love yourself, I will love you to infinity.”  

“You’ve become such a sap, Mike. But even though I can hear what you are saying…it’s like the Other Me in there is telling me things are not true.”  

“I’ll kick That Other Chester’s ass, then. He’s been living in your head for far too long. Especially since –” 

“20 years is a long time to live rent-free in my head,” Chester joked as he interrupted Mike from what he was about to say. The older man paused when he saw his lover and bandmate, who was known to hold his feelings inside, looked as if he was seconds away from pulling Chester into a hug. 

“I know I don’t say this enough, Ches. I guess, it’s my family’s culture, mine and Iz – his culture, that makes it hard for me to express myself.” 

Chester could feel tears sting his eyes when he heard the mention of the beloved  name. How can it be possible that he’s just gone? That one life, one bright light among all the others, would disappear one day?  

I still have no idea of what to do without you here.  

It was only because of the support they all gave each other in the grieving process as they mourned that the singer was still able to breathe and continue on despite his body and mind screaming “Stop!” 

“You will never know how much I love you.” 

You don’t deserve him. You don’t deserve this.   

Why can’t you kill yourself, successfully, for once in your miserable life?!  

Do you think all the fans, all that people you selfishly can’t live without, unable to be alone like a fucking toddler, who get so close to, will actually love you if they knew what kind of fucked up shit goes in your mind?  

I feel so far away – so broken –  

Why do I whine all the time? This grief…depression…it isn’t anything new, for me or anyone.  

Constant attention whore! You deserve to die! No one cares about you, they’re sick of your needy fucked self!  

Why does it feel like I can’t breathe without you?   

The lights and effects of the venue in England were too bright for Chester’s mind today. He remembered how he had woken up in Mike’s arms, the sleepiness from his chaotic mind vanishing from the images splintering his mind.  

Blood.  

A smile, before the loved one who had died in his arms. The whisper of his name could cause tears, some form of comfort, or the half-alive feeling that wasn’t quite numb.  

Grief was different from depression.  

The two states of mind were similar, but at the same time, they were completely different creatures. Grief could become depression in Chester’s experience, but there were times when grief felt as suffocating and heavy like depression. 

Grief and depression took away what joy and dreams you had in life and destroyed the fractures of your mind. Still, there were times that the all-consuming emptiness and the wounds that would always be there, taunting you, mocking your lack of self without that specific light… 

Chester didn’t know how his mental health hell turned from fighting for his life to wanting to die. 

It was different from the time he had fought to live in 2006 despite his demons, depression, addictions, and selfishness that almost took his life multiple times. 

He was simply fine with lying in an empty room and not moving at all. 

Suicidal ideation was a common companion. He had tried to find ways to stop the record of all the things he had fucked-up and hurt people, before voices inside his head would damage his self-esteem beyond repair. 

And the one person who was linked to him from that bond from the agonizing hell of his own mind was no longer there. 

His mind was frightening him; but no one truly understood what it was like to live with each day wishing you had died the night before or finding a way to continue to live even as your mind was overwhelmed with nothing and everything. 

Chester didn’t know what to do. Sometimes he found himself hearing Izaya’s voice in his head. Despite the critics and harsh reviews of the most recent album, there was a common question: what prompted the band’s more recent foray into using Japanese language into one of their covers and one of their songs? 

I.O.U. What did those initials even mean?  

The band’s fans and anime fans alike had tweeted and liked the cover of Tokyo Ghoul opening the band released two summers ago. They also were amazed by the cover last December about the emotional cover from another song.  

One the comments that made Chester burst into laughter was “There was no way Shinoda can deny he’s an anime fan now.”  

He had showed the comment to his lover and was able to smile when the younger man started losing himself in laughter and memories. The band eventually watched some old, animated music videos featuring their music. It made the vocalist laugh until he couldn’t breathe at the memory of Izaya’s reaction to some of those videos.  

The young man absolutely loved Tokyo Ghoul and the horror genre.  

Some fans were still discovering them or new bands and musicians by watching anime music videos, just as they did in the 2000s. 

Memories and the act of living were bittersweet and as agonizing as getting a stab wound from your stomach to your genitals.  

“You have such a strange sense of humor.”   

Why was it that the words were in Japanese, and he could understand every word? 

Why was it that his mind focused on the negative memories and moments in his life in comparison, replaying them for years and years? The guilt and raw  nerves of every heightened tension inside of the singer that he held inside himself, that he told Izaya more than anyone in his daily life had: the young man understood what it was like to be afraid of your own mind.  

Not in the way that hate groups such as Autism Speaks were afraid of autism or neurodivergence, but just from how sensitive and aware certain minds were. 

Izaya had a hard time connecting with people in general. He was always terrified and yet pushed himself to be alone. Chester could understand that sentiment, which was perhaps why, out of all individuals, the young man had trusted his entire being with the adult.  

Why was it that his mind focused on the negative memories and moments in his life in comparison, playing them for years and years? The guilt and raw  tension of every heightened feeling would often cause him to go into a dark place, without meaning to. Music, making music, reading, baking, playing video games, cat videos, cooking, making his loved ones laugh, and his particular brand of exuberance would allow his mind to simply just be and rest: no reason to fear or dread his mind when he was alone.  

To be alone in your own mind. To feel safe and know you wouldn’t freak out from every single problem that wasn’t a problem; but you turned it into a problem because your mind is too fast and appears to hyperfocus before the depression comes, killing your soul until nothing is left.  

So slow…until nothing remains.  

There were many times that his mind wasn’t like that. His mind was calm, like a still lake or pond in the spring or summer. There were many months and even years that he was safe and the symptoms of the other part of himself were controlled. 

But when the mind was too active or spiraling into an abyss of darkness and raw feelings, it was like a hornet’s nest was only kicked; it was broken apart, with all of the debris breaking apart.  

Why did he need to be with people? It wasn’t that his mind wasn’t unstable; it was as if his very self were clawing desperately onto the people in his life and if he was alone, panic and high anxiety would overwhelm his mind until he thought he was going to die. 

Would his mind always be this way? 

How did his mind get so weak? He remembered being happy, but the moments of joy were stretched between darkness and his familiar companions: anxiety and depression. 

His family and band mates knew what his demons looked like, after twenty  years together. But yet… 

The man didn’t give back to people: he just took and took with nothing in return. No wonder his bandmates were tired of dealing with his breakdowns and messed-up life. He expected to be replaced or discarded, as should have happened so long ago. 

I am nothing. I am nothing.  

A hysterical laughter wanted to bubble in his throat.  

I have main character syndrome now.   

Someone. The tired man pleaded even as his eyes saw rows and rows of fans with their mobiles out, Someone, help kill me…  

I wish you were here. Chester managed to cry inside his heart and not outside. 

Izaya, more than anyone in their combined daily lives, had been with him in this nightmare: had understood, because he breathed it and lived through this state of mind. Izaya had a ridiculously challenging time connecting with his supposed best friend who was quite frankly, a stalker, and his ex-enemy (who also murdered the man…) who had a very complicated relationship with until his death almost two years ago. 

People always said it would get better. Life would turn normal. There were times that the white man thought that perhaps the memories would turn from brambles to soft flowers, but grief was never simple. If grief was linear, then his team of psychiatrists and therapists would not have as many clients.  

The memories of meeting the young man who had been just a fan was now just a memory.  

Everything moves so slowly and  fast simultaneously.  

I can’t take a breath.   

I don’t want to take a breath.   

Why?  

So dead inside. 

Why did he still want to live, even as his mind tricks him into thinking that his loved ones wish that he would go away? 

Why? Why?  

…Why do I feel such emptiness, such raw, incomprehensible pain, suffocating – so dark and cold –  

I’m not safe. I’m afraid. I don’t want this.   

I don’t –   

I don’t want –  

Die.   

The thoughts would not fade away.  

Just as he described to the radio host. He had laughed about it afterward, but inside Chester felt the same frustration and pity. 

No one understands. Not even Mike understands, and he’s seen what I am like, what depression and anxiety does to me for twenty years.   

No one understands unless they have experienced this soul-crushing – what did so many of you put it? – negative pathways and chemical imbalances –   

Die.  

You need to die.  

Chester shook his head inwardly and told the voice to go away. 

No, I want to live. I want to experience life’s –   

You need to die.   

You should die. You should die.   

Die.  

I want to die.  

 I need to die.  

“Ches? Chester?” 

The thoughts disappeared as soon as he heard his bandmate and lover’s voice. 

I love you, even if you hate me. I love you more than I can say .  

 “Do you hear me?” 

Chester bit his lip as soon as he realized Mike had been calling his name. 

He was too busy in his own mind to pay attention.  

Stupid. I'm so fucking stupid. I should just - fuck - I - 

“I’m sorry about spacing out, Mike.” A smile that didn’t reach his features grew across the tattooed man’s face. 

Mike didn’t tell his lover he hadn’t responded to his name. He was more than worried. He wanted an actual gentle smile from his vocalist. Mike thought Chester was doing great – and proving all the critics to shame – that his vocal range and how he used his voice, was the height of his career right now. 

And that didn’t matter, even if Chester wanted to go solo like many other vocalists in the past. Despite of how the label or his...producer self, felt. 

The way he sang was how Chester expressed part of his deepest feelings. It was an honor to have Chester truly show of what he was feeling inside. Although Mike didn’t understand why Chester was upset over the interview that he had. 

Weren't depression and mental disease the same? Chester could be dramatic sometimes. 

Or most of the time. It was hard to ride the waves of his lover's moods.  

Depression and mental disease were synonymous with each other. He wasn't wrong.

As they wrote lyrics together, Chester had one time looked at him across from the room and said that he was fine with being wrong, but the singer's worry was over his emcee.

Chester had soaked up his love, just like his cat. His love had no bounds. There was so much love that Mike didn't know how this amazing man existed.

And yet that was true for negative emotions as well. Chester had gotten better at emotional regulation, but it was still a shock to see the extremes his lover would become as the sun in Mike's life, lived in that mysterious mind. 

Sometimes Mike didn’t understand how his lover would become one of the happiest and most energetic people in the room; to becoming angry enough to erupt a volcano, before the “high” turned into deep sadness and depression.  

Chester was okay, though. He was at the healthiest shape of his life right now. Mike had never thought he would be proud of his best friend, his bandmate, and most significantly, his other half. 

Ever since they met, the entangled weaves of their bond and inherent chemistry, this wholeness that Mike hadn’t experienced with anyone else, not even with his ex-wife, hadn’t lessened its grip on the men.

They were one person, combined even as they were now.

Their bond that “defied biology,” according to Izaya. Watching Chester struggle every day and hearing his screams and his rage at everything in the world, after…after…made Mike wish he had Izaya’s way with words.  

There were words of betrayal that Mike hadn’t forgotten. When the band had done an intervention after Chester started to drink again, the betrayal and tears – the heart-breaking shame and despair that the man tried to talk about – tried, but Mike and the others hadn’t truly understood the scope of the nightmare Chester was facing every day and every night. 

“Do you ever think I want this, Mikey? That I want to lie in bed and wake up wishing I fell asleep forever? How…I don’t understand, I don’t get my fucked-up mind!"

"You helped me so much the first time when I went to rehab. I love you and our family so…m-much. I hate myself…for breathing, Mikey. It’s so hard." 

“It’s so hard, and I don’t even know how to help myself.” 

Chapter Text

Mike POV

Izaya had been gone for over a year. As the anniversary approached, Mike was cautious. He was usually calculated and measured every decision carefully. That was what made their band as successful as it was.  

“Are you okay? Really okay?” 

Mike’s heart broke at the emptiness and far away echo in Chester’s beautiful eyes.  

“I will be okay, Mike.” He was now looking at Mike with such love and gratitude Mike was astounded by how much emotion was in this man.  

He’ll be okay, Mike told himself as he double-checked they were ready to perform the last part of the setlist. 

The European tour of their new album had gone very well. There had been no incidents, and their fans, as always, were the best.  

But Chester was struggling. But Mike thought that a long break with just the two of them would ease the older man’s struggles. 

He would be back to normal. Mike was sure of it. 

“You know the setlist?” 

“Mmm-hmm.” 

Chester murmured, sounding distracted. 

I wouldn’t change you for anything.   

Except…

Chester POV

Chester was surprised to feel Mike embrace him as if he was someone precious instead of someone who weighed him down. 

I’m such a mess. Why does anyone deal with me?  

Even when I am wide awake my mind still plays tricks on me. Tells me I’m not wanted or needed.  

Living hell like this isn’t living.  

It’s surviving. By the skin of my teeth.   

It’s the Abyss, isn’t…Izaya? 

Why is everything the same?

I miss you so fucking much.

Chester was crying. He felt numb inside, but he felt either nothing or everything all at once.  

Then, like a whimper.

“I wish I could cure you.”  

Agony.  

Torment.  

Like a bullet to the stomach.  

Even though Mike was holding him and speaking in such a loving and patient voice, the words eviscerated Chester’s heart and soul – and each jagged edge was being torn apart by Mike’s own words.  

Chester stared at the man who was embracing him so gently in shock, horror curdling in his stomach. Mike knew how he felt about having conversations about the worsening state of his mental health and that one word.  

Cure.  

He wanted to be sick. 

“I wish I could take away your pain. Stop it, so you’re not tortured anymore. I know you don’t like the word, but it hurts to see you like this without being able to do anything. One of the things your therapist needs to work on is stop the rumination. If we can stop that – ” 

Mike knew how he felt about that word.  

Why would he use it? 

The lights were too bright for Chester to summon the energy to even open his eyes.  

I’m tired.  

“I can’t be cured, Mike.” I have been listening to music. I feel that I understand the lyrics even more clearly than before…even  –   

“This thing you want to cure,” Chester tore himself away from Mike’s safe and warm embrace.  

Chester’s lone pale finger dug into the material of his t-shirt, pointing wildly at himself.  

“This depression and all else that lives in my head has been there for a long time, Mike! Since I was eleven years old!

"I was already prone to a depressive state of mind even when I was little.”  

Mike looked almost dazed at his lover of twelve years as if he hadn’t known about Chester’s severe depression and anxiety. 

“How can you,” Chester inwardly winced at the crack in his charred remains, forcing Mike to see the ugliness beating inside of him, 

“Cure that?” 

He cried out. But no one understood. Not one person can understand a person's mind even if they loved them.  

Chester was not okay. He was never okay. Ever since that day, that horrific day, Chester and the bandmates that made up the band had been alone in their own world, slipping between inconsolable grief to severe rage and sorrow.  

He didn’t know why he was so angry. Small disagreements turned into screaming matches, blame, and an aura of insanity enveloped in his life. His relationships had fallen apart, like a fire spreading and becoming a forest fire.  

Chester was ashamed of his actions and behavior. 

He hated hurting people. That is all you do, the other Chester whispered to him, clawing to his lack of self-esteem as the man’s mind struggled to  function every day. He fucked-up. Was it really a surprise?   

His family and his found family were suffering. 

“No wonder your parents don’t like you!” 22 year old Brad screamed at him. 

He was nothing. 

Mike was the most affected by the summer of 2015 besides Chester.  

Both were unable to go outside the first couple of weeks. Their hearts jumped at the sight of a black coat in the crowd, and without fail, found what they were searching, chased after the boy with a smile  – but it was never him .  

Mike had cried more than he had than the most difficult parts of their friendship. Before they had admitted their feelings for each other. Chester remembered soothing Mike in his sleep, those haunted and torn emotions apart by their slipping grip on reality.  

All of them had nightmares.  

The grief therapist suggested writing letters. Chester hadn’t been able to stop crying for weeks. It was only by sheer will that they were able to continue to tour for their album despite a death in their family weeks ago. The vocalist didn’t remember much about the concerts or venues the weeks following Izaya’s death. 

It was still very hard to say his name. 

Light had faded from their eyes, but Rob was able to mention his name now without crying a river.  

Chester’s grief from the loss, like the man himself, was unrelentless like a tsunami. 

The worst had been when Mike had found him after a four-day drinking binge on what would have been the young man’s twenty-sixth birthday. Chester still remembered how Mike, a calm and understanding expression, kicked away the empty bottles of alcohol where his beloved second half drinking this heavy feeling.  

Mike held Chester in his arms, his hands never leaving the smaller man’s face. His Mike had seen the worth he had twenty years ago, back when they were starting out, before they became whole and realized how much their existence in this world  meant to each other.  

“I was hoping it would kill me.”  

Why does my brain have to be this way?  

That was the moment when Mike broke down and sobbed. 

How can this world be spinning…without you in it?  

Chester lost so many people these past two years.  

His stepdad. 

Friends.  

The wound of Chris’ death was still bleeding. It was so painful… 

And then, there was… 

The demons, the monsters, they had battled their entire lives had taken him. They were too strong that day. That is what people don’t understand.  

Go to therapy. Do the actual work.  

Everyone goes through difficult periods in their lives.  

Everyone feels this type of loneliness and depression.  

You just have to pick yourself up. 

The power of positive thinking. Why can’t  you turn those thoughts off? 

Have you tried meditation? The shamisen? 

You’re just going through a difficult phase. Rome wasn’t built in a day.  

You’re so selfish! Why don’t you think of your wife or children? 

There’s nothing you can’t endure.   

Why don’t you do yourself a favor and shoot yourselves with a gun? You’re not musicians anymore! 

Chester felt far away, the sounds silent as his glass world. It reflected his insane soul, which was empty. There was nothing inside. The writhing, eternal agony that was you. Every second was like torture, like a slow death with relief, a clean and awake mind which with every second, every moment, was a ceaseless misery of your own making. 

Chester sang even if his body felt like an empty husk. People said he was past his prime and couldn’t scream anymore.  

That was not true. He could. But he was tired, drained of his energy.  

Every moment felt like swallowing glass and vomiting it up in the morning.  

From a full life with all of its realities to a dying wild animal, dragging its half-dead, blood-soaked entrails spilling from an open wound, collapsing on the poisoned ground, existing until its struggle to survive failed. 

Becoming a corpse.  

He allowed the noise of the audience to flow through his body.  

But then –  

A clear, haunting scream, beautiful in its twisted way. He had not heard an audience member with the ability to scream the lyrics at the end, as singing was an art.  

He recognized that voice.  

Chester would recognize that scream – that voice, to his broken soul.  

Because many years ago, one teenage boy began to gain more interest in how Chester was able to sing. It was a question Chester had been asked thousands of times, and he had shaken his head fondly at the teenager who had been visiting during the summer. 

Even though Izaya didn’t say a word, I could tell he admired me. The same way that he hated Celty with such a blistering conviction that I had no way of convincing the two of them to even talk to each other without judgement.  

Chester still had the sympathy card that that come all the way from Ikebukuro, shortly after the singer had been released from the hospital.  

The world had been slowly turning, the violent and consuming emotions causing him to collapse in a heap of despair and anguish as Chester tried and failed reading before crumpling up the card in his shaking hands as Mike embraced his body that suddenly had too many emotions for his body to handle. 

The hollowness inside could be seen by only those who knew the men very closely. 

The Warner Group didn’t have a soul, putting their hearts through the shredder as the reminder that the original Hunting Party Tour was cancelled due to Chester’s injury.  

That memory of hearing the detached, cold voice still made Chester want to throw up and Mike to go into a protective rage that he hadn’t seen in years, not since the emcee saw his vocalist bound to his hospital bed and handled roughly by the staff after Chester’s suicide attempt.  

“The fucked-up American healthcare system doesn’t care about people! Fuck, you can’t treat people like that, dude!”   

It didn’t matter that Chester had broken one of his arms and the six family members were grieving from an “unexpected death.”  

It didn’t seem real that they were about to go on tour again days after the events that still caused Chester nightmares. 

The label group had scheduled the venues for concerts years in advance. Brad would have a tour planned to the last detail, and Mike, like the curly-haired man with a fondness for tea, also was producing the albums more. Mike had pushed through the suffocating grief and mourning the six men were barely able to afford, telling them that they had a duty to perform for their fans.  

The next stop on the Hunting Party Tour in 2015 was China, in mid-July. 

The moment when Mike had said Izaya’s name, Chester’s memory blanked out.  

It was such an odd relationship this one human being had with Chester and the rest of the bandmembers. 

It had not yet been two years since that day, but the shaken man flashbacked to the feel of the blood on his hands. 

Hearing that voice in his mind repeatedly, like a tape that would not stop the numbing needles piercing his broken heart. 

The fact was, Chester was supposed to stay on the stage and continue with the setlist until the end of the show. 

Chester did none of those actions.  

The man jumped from the stage, not noticing or even caring that he had landed in front of a group of fans. He could feel his heartbeat race as if he had been dead inside, his chest rapidly inhaling. It looked like he didn’t even exist in this world, his eyes dilatated searching, looking for something. He said excuse me and apologized to many people as his brown eyes feverishly looked for a certain someone.  

But his frantic search could not find…find…! 

“Anyone,” Chester called out to the audience of very confused and alarmed fans at the erratic behavior of the vocalist.  

“Someone, can you help me find that voice that managed to sing that note and scream out the lyrics? Please.” 

His voice shattered with raw, vulnerable grief. “It is very important to me.” 

It was like that time with Mike’s necklace.  

But nothing as significant as this. Looking for that voice, that memory choking him.  

The crowd parted, ringing in Chester’s ears as he heard shouting, calling on that individual to sing again. Chester ran, dodging people, even at one time, ducking in the nick of time from a pair of young teens snapping pictures, as the same song that had been sung minutes before began to start again.  

This can’t be real. Chester told himself. He had dreamed of this moment.  

Even prayed for it.  

Chester ran faster, his boots screeching against the ground.  

There… 

There in the middle of it all… 

The same voice.  

Chester didn’t want to look. It was his imagination. It had to be.  

The same voice and face Chester ached to see and hear again.  

Is that you?  

“Iz…za…Izaya?”  

He looked very different from the bleeding body Chester had held in his arms.  

The Japanese young man had died in his arms. 

The first thing Chester noticed was the wheelchair. It was made out of sleek material with the backpack slung across from the handles. 
His hair with slightly longer reaching his shoulders. Black midnight strands brushed against Chester's hands as he crouched down, staring at the man's face. There was no. External damage to the younger's face from the fight, Chester and the others thought, had taken his life. His mouth was open and shocked and Recognition?....  

But what took Chester's breath away was his eyes.  

They were red.  

Where is the setting sun?   

Is it hiding from your embrace?   

The clouds below obscure the emptiness of our life  

The poetry Izaya wrote was very well-done, Chester had thought after reading through the small journal Izaya had kept throughout the years. 

Izaya’s heart was like a sunlight on a cold winter day. 

Or the dawn that the boy secretly loved but never told anyone. The only reason why Chester knew anything about what the boy liked because a long time ago, he had caught Izaya alone.  

On a hill.  

Watching the sunrise, the first of the new year.  

Chester couldn't sleep because of insomnia. And nightmares, But the teen had been his company and quiet companion.  

On the first day of 2006. 

That was 11 years ago now. 

“That is what I am called, yes.” 

Chester almost wanted to laugh from the very familiar way of speech. However, his laughter caught in his throat when he noticed two small faces hiding behind his wheelchair. But his focus was on the young man before his two disbelieving eyes. A slight frown of confusion echoed across his face and Chester’s breath hitched. 

Why doesn't he recognize me? Did the fight –  

Suddenly, the same voice that had haunted Chester's dreams broke his thoughts.  

“Why are you still wearing a shirt?” 

The frown of confusion deepened. 

Chester couldn't help it. Tears, thick and salty, like a waterfall fell as a very large smile started across his face to the point of hurt. 

He laughed. 

“I don't know why, but I feel a sense of closeness with you.” Confusion and half joy, half sorrow filled the young man's – No, Izaya’s face. “I feel safe with your single presence.”  

Chester and the band members of Linkin Park had seen many times how intense Izaya could be with his focus.  

“I have a slight leaning to an obsessive nature. But that is why I am valued. I love information, and I give that love of mine who ask for my services.” Izaya had tried to explain his job to a man who knew nothing about the dark underworld.  

Joe had given him the nickname Bambi because of his dark eyes. Chester grumbled about the numerous nicknames, but his frown stopped when he saw mirth appear across the college student’s face. It was partly from his upbringing that Izaya’s emotions were either subdued or almost over-the-top, similar to how mood swings worked.  

The band members were always happy when they were able to see Izaya without his mask. 

Made him laugh.  

Made him live, instead of surviving in this cruel world.  

“I’ve always…loved you…”  

Chester found it very difficult to filter out his thoughts. The memories were unrelenting, drowning through his trial of living without someone he never thought would make him powerless in the face of grief.   

The man Izaya had admitted at the very end, that he considered as close to a parent as he was able to. 

“He truly was obsessed with you and…your people.”   

The secretary had stared at the six subdued and grieving men after failing to find Izaya’s body. She had offered no help or sympathy when Chester and Mike had started asking questions if she knew anything about the missing young man.  

Chester couldn’t remember her name now, as the man was alive and right in front of him.  

Alive! Was he truly seeing things?  

Did he finally snap and suffer an emotional  breakdown? 

 “I don't know my own name, but I know yours. Your name is. Chester. Charles Bennington.” 

A smile at long last echoed across his face.  

“You must be a very special human.” 

It really was him. 

Chester swallowed.  

“You are supposed to be dead.”  

Chester couldn't see.  

He was stunned. He so stupefied he couldn’t even speak. His voice failed him. The damn shattered when Izaya said,  

“My past must have entwined with yours, because when I see your face, I feel human, as if I am actually alive.” 

Izaya said nothing – could not say anything – as Chester leaned down slightly and asked if it was okay if he touched him.  

The man’s red eyes widened but nodded shakily.  

Chester had his ear pressed against a chest he never thought he would feel again.  

The last time, there had been suffocating silence in the place of a heartbeat.  

There was a sound from Izaya’s heart. 

It was beating.  

An ugly and broken cry tore from the man’s throat. He wanted to sob his heart out, but there was an audience. No matter how he wished, they were alone. 

This miracle did not only belong to him after all. 

Mike. He had to tell him. 

The hands who he had held two years ago in death were light around his back.  

The young man was strangely comforting Chester as the vocalist soaked his tears through his expensive shirt. Before Chester had thought he had seen his son die, it took quite the amount of effort on Izaya’s part to allow his heart to open and comfort someone. 

Izaya only felt comfortable showing his weakness to Chester. The one of the few who he could talk to about what was on his mind.  

He was astounded at how deeply six people cared and loved him.  

Izaya never told them about his ex-enemy/ex-boyfriend, who they had gotten into a very public break-up that quickly turned out to be a violent and fatal encounter.  

 The last couple of weeks of July and the first weeks of August were very excruciating weeks for the band for the past two years.  

The silence without Izaya was too agonizing for words.  

It had been during those weeks that the much younger men had met this crazy kid from Japan who didn’t even think about the logistics of going across an ocean to see an American rock band. 

He had even walked from the Dallas airport to the venue with just a backpack. In their lives, they didn’t think that the Japanese child with an odd name would become such a large part of their lives.  

And now, the dream he had for years was actually real.  

Chester started to laugh, but it quickly moved to a fresh set of tears. The man was surprised to feel the cool hands touching his skull, his ears, until a finger lingered.  

On Chester's smooth cheek. 

Both men gazed at each other, the reflection of when they first officially met running through their minds. The man had been a year young of that yet-unnamed boy’s age when he had seen the band play in his home country for the first time. Of course, Chester had remembered seeing this kid, but finding him in a venue in Texas out of all places? 

 It had been the day that changed their lives.  

 If they hadn’t met, maybe Chester and Mike wouldn’t have fallen in love. Chester wouldn’t experience the beauty of living in Japan for one year with Mike, his heart open to love three more people who he realized for too late, would turn his world dull and gray without them. 

He wouldn’t have experienced this wild journey he had been fortunate enough to experience. 

That day changed all their lives. 

At least Chester believed that it changed his life for the better. 

Chester's eyes continued to stream with tears when he saw a lone tear escape.  

“I don't understand. You must have been important before  - Before I lost my memory, of who I used to be – ” 

Chester lovingly embraced him and pressed a gentle kiss on the top of his hair. 

“You don’t have to say a word.” Chester felt stunned at the thought of Izaya losing his memories. The tattooed man was simply beyond grateful that the man was alive. His eyes never left the face that had haunted their memories before he glanced back at the stage, where fans were…still filming and taking selfies. 

A morose smile filtered his face as he thought about the inside joke he and Izaya had about selfies. That was one of the first times he had made the man laugh when he had barely been a teenager. Even if Izaya didn’t remember, Chester and the band would remember him.   

“I wasn’t supposed to go running off like that,” Chester said with a nervous laugh. He absently chewed on his lip as the reality of the situation dawned on him. I was supposed to not lose it…to keep calm, and now I’ve caused the setlist to be pushed back. Guilt filtered his insides as his mind continued to pour negative thoughts even as Izaya continued to stare at him in wonder. 

“I've kept the fans waiting long enough,” Chester said with a smile, masking his growing apprehension and putting on his frontman persona. He truly didn't want to leave, but Mike and everyone else were probably freaking out about his erratic behavior. For sure, he had been caught in very compromising positions before, but that was just Chester. 

“Your shirt.”  

There was a slight protest. 

Chester's grin was like the sun. “My shirt seems very interesting to you. You never cared – ” 

“Let me fix that.” 

Before Chester could even blink, there was a flicker. Of a knife slash against the thread of his shirt that he had been wearing. Until two clean cuts made the material separate into two pieces. 

“Much better,” Izaya said with his familiar flourish. 

Chester wiped away his continuing tears and released the first happy laughter since the day he thought he lost his son forever. 

“Don't go anywhere,” He whispered to the young man before running to his fans, to the stage, to his family. 

Returning home to Mike.  

This really is, Chester thought as overwhelming joy encased his entire being, the best tour we have done

Chapter Text

2015 

"Did you have fun?”  

Shinra had been attacked. The idea of Japan as a country of peace was a myth. In comparison to LA or New York City, crime in general was not as common in the gigantic city of Tokyo. 

In Japan, the greater Tokyo area had 128 million people. In a country that was about the mass of the most populous state in the United States (which was a place he had visited once or twice), Chester had always been amazed at the level of space the Japanese people had collected into. It was very different from the singer’s home in the Southwest and even in LA, which had also stunned Izaya himself when he visited America for the first time when he was thirteen. 

He hadn’t gone to LA or NY, but to Texas. What a day it was.  

That was the day he had met the band, before all the pieces came crashing down into this mess known as Izaya’s life. 

He remembered the day when the lead singer of one of the popular rock bands had met the Yakuza in Shinjuku, not surprised at all by the singer’s exuberance and excitement from meeting the dangerous gangsters.  

The special ward Shinjuku, one of 23 wards in Tokyo, in  particular was considered not dangerous, but had many areas and business considered illegal under the current government. The capacity for humans to hurt and wound each other was fascinating to the young man, but the connections he had made using the Yakuza and other black jobs (jobs considered illegal or dangerous) fulfilled his desires to see the reaction of human beings regarding events in their daily lives.  

You should die.   

Thoughts were running in his mind. 

It had always been that way.  

Izaya didn’t know why his mind collected and repeated information in his head. The information that he knew about the gangs in Tokyo to the sales of milk in Hokkaido echoed in his mind, on a repeat record that didn’t stop. 

If he was in his mind too long, the information would turn into an abyss of darkness that was very hard to crawl out of. 

It was similar to a war in his mind. Heh. A small smirk appeared on the Japanese man’s face. Like the wars going in throughout the Middle East and conflicts going on without a name because humans are afraid of naming violence.   

Fear of the name. Fear of fear in general.  

And the last…fear of the unknown.  

That was why he had control. That was why he wanted to know everything, to research, to know from the beginning to the end.  

There was a reason no one except his younger sisters knew how much he followed the American band.  

Those thoughts in my head…telling me to die and that I am trash, or taunting me constantly with questions about my ability…  

Even when I am breathing right now, the other voices in my head tell me to kill myself. I weigh myself every day, don’t eat enough and think constantly over nutrition labels because my mind won’t leave me alone.  

Why does a part of me want to die and another is terrified at the thought of not existing anymore?  

Ikebukuro might have been more peaceful than many cities with the hidden underground of crime and inhumanity that governments were unwilling to admit. Chester knew more than ordinary people about how cruel and merciless humans could be to each other.   

Greed. Power.  

In many ways the world remained the same. Izaya remembered his grandmother telling him about fleeing to Hokkaido and then to mainland Japan during the Second Sino Japanese War. The destruction and the repeated actions of the worst inhumanity in history continued to this day, despite Japan being believed as a nation of peace.   

Izaya didn’t think peace was attainable in the future. Yes, in many areas of the world, fighting between nations and heads of state had stopped. And yet the Japanese man could think of two associates from high school when he had studied abroad in the United States seven years ago. He had not heard from either of them since.  

Izaya knew that in Japan, working for the Yakuza was almost like a red mark on your name. Any association with the Yakuza was the antithesis of the ideal working man in Japan: yes, the underground criminal organizations had legal business to fund their illegal activities, including sales of drugs and alcohol.  

No one expected him to get involved despite his reputation as having thirty plans in case one plan of his ideas failed. It was interesting to see how human beings reacted to positive and negative events around them. It wasn’t like Izaya had any intention of causing disorder.  

And yet people desired peace.  

The actual name for what they wanted was quiet.  

The antithesis of war is quiet. The wars and violence people see every day do not belong to us, collectively as human beings, but to the individual.  

The masquerading peace that governments and citizens claim that they have is simply untrue.  

The quiet people craved for was a lie. Anything that governments or individuals react to can cause one main event to explode into an actual set of events known as a tragedy.  

Izaya had no idea that his mind would be like a battlefield today. If people's mental health was treated as important as their physical health, perhaps taboos and illnesses would be considered not as cries for attention or weakness, but as legitimate concerns.  

His psychiatrist once asked him what he, the patient, thought he had. Izaya remembered the dismay he felt during that session with that psychiatrist at age fifteen. He was given no hope. No outlet for his demons and the poison in his mind besides music. 

The cultural significance of shame was well known in Japan. However, despite the pressures and daily struggles of life, there were people who were invisible and crying out with no one to hear them. As chemical imbalances, medications, or whatever combination thereof continued to eviscerate their lives, ordinary people slept on, not knowing what it was like to be afraid of their own minds.  

When he had told his friend about the difficulties and thoughts running in his head, the memories playing like a record that would never end, he was only told everyone goes through this.  

Yakuza bosses have bad days or years. 

The bad days felt like drowning. The guilt, shame, and sadness were as if the memory was yesterday instead of years ago.  

 The Yakuza and the black market had been two of the few places Izaya could go to acquire medications marked as illegal in Japan.  

The existence of the Yakuza was the opposite of peace. The Yakuza controlled portions of this area, and yet the very young and simple people – humans whose worlds were so minuscule and narrow their way of their world was trapped inside their mind…had no idea of how deep violence, depravity, and sick notions of what people desired and craved existed.  

Humans were not rational; moved by emotions to the extent of paranoia, war, extreme violence, and inhumanity.  

Why did Izaya continue to proclaim his love for the human race? 

How did he not know that his best friend’s love for this creature pretending to be human would cause the underground doctor to almost lose his life? 

Izaya and Chester had met Celty. The kind, and too gentle man had asked Celty if she had ever gone outside without her mask before. Izaya had been a high schooler at the time the dark-haired man had visited him despite dangers of the press recognizing his face, which was well known at that time. 

He remembered how she had shaken her head “no” at the adult, Izaya following her every move as Chester smiled at her.  

They had a conversation Izaya had no interest in because he wasn’t jealous of how much attention Shinra’s supposed girlfriend was given by the frontman of one of the most popular rock bands. 

It wasn’t as if he cared about Shinra. Why would he care if his best friend was obsessed with and adored the woman who didn’t age, and who didn’t reveal her face? Celty had lived twenty-five years in Japan. Izaya had no idea why Shinra was constantly talking and loving this masked woman who he had met twelve years ago by chance. 

Why was everyone fascinated by her? Even Chester and Mike asked how she was. Izaya had been so shocked and stunned with incomprehensible rage that after the phone call with the two men, he had almost cut himself.  

Slitting his neck open.  

Drowning in his own blood.  

Knives.  

Despite not wanting to die, those thoughts are always in my mind.  

Shinra was tortured when he refused to provide information on Celty. 

Izaya suspected that knowing the underground black market and trafficking, they were hoping to sell her as a modern-day slave.  

But…it was interesting. The young man didn’t care about Celty. His only concern had been on his friend who barely acknowledged his existence. 

Izaya had only read on message boards on the Net that Shinra had been rushed to the hospital with grievous injuries.  

How much was a human life worth? 

How much manipulation and false information did his eyes see every day as the almost-twenty-five year old man continued his job?  

Izaya hated the fact that he only knew second-hand information about his best friend, but his concern about the underground doctor had the young man swallow his pride and arrive at the luxurious apartment, where Shinra lived with his supposed girlfriend, Celty. 

やだ。 

The bloodstains had been cleaned out of the kitchen where Izaya had sometimes waited for Shinra for “doctor appointments,” as Shinra was his unofficial doctor.  

Why would he trust regular doctors when he had Shinra? 

It was only through Shinra’s occupation as an unregistered doctor that he could afford such a place.  

Celty, who wore a mask to cover her face, was silent. There were degrees of sensations that Izaya could feel from her, besides her usual irritation or calm at the underground doctor. 

Celty had a favorable relationship with Yasuo, but the extension of a friendly exterior was not extended to Izaya. But there had been a time that she was shocked by his relationship to the “phoenix man” when Chester had visited Izaya when he and Shinra were in high school. 

Chester had not liked that part of his association with Shinra or Celty (he was not friends with the monster that took Shinra away from him!), but the interaction between the tattooed man and the immortal fairy was one of a kind. Chester wanted to know a lot about Celty, and the vocalist gave her his complete attention.  

They had met after Chester had insisted on meeting his friends after school, and Izaya hadn’t been able to say no. Once the vocalist was convinced of something or had an idea, it was very difficult, even with Izaya’s communication skills, to detract from doing that action. Izaya had been shocked when the vocalist had visited him after classes after Shinra had done nothing but talk excitedly all day about his girlfriend coming to pick him up from school.  

Not only was she older, but that time she promised Shinra that he could ride her motorcycle. Yasuo was also in a bad mood, but the monster who would become known as the Monster of Ikebukuro was usually in a state of anger. Usually his anger would be aimed at Izaya, but since Izaya was quiet that day, the dyed-haired teen hadn’t come of the rails yet.  

Chester explained a lot of American sayings to him. Izaya still didn’t know the history behind them, but the sound of Chester’s voice was like a song that he never knew he needed. 

Whenever he felt…off, music was playing inside of his head.   

Ever since he had met the man years ago, it was as if the logic and calculative mind Izaya prided himself on disappeared whenever Chester entered the picture.  

Eventually, the vulnerability extended to Mike, Brad, Rob, Joe, and Dave.  

He remembered of how Chester and Dave argued who was the better “phoenix” since Celty seemed to confuse all of them. It didn’t even stop confusing Rob and Brad like fans had in the early Hybrid Theory days. Celty confused Joe and Mike. Izaya didn’t know exactly why, but Chester said it was probably because being headless made it hard for Celty to see. Izaya hadn’t told him that she could see, but the kind man had too much heart for Izaya to be lectured. 

How can I be kind…when the person in front of you isn’t who you think it is? 

They had all yet to meet Izaya’s friend who was interested in monsters and the beast that masqueraded as human. Izaya felt…calm and present whenever he saw the “Linkin Park family” playfully argue or goof around.) 

Shinra’s limbs stiffened, and a concerned look appeared in his eyes when he saw the American singer pour over his girlfriend’s communication device.  

Both teens were stunned when he saw Celty’s shoulders shake when Chester made her laugh.  

Shinra looked at Izaya, who seemed to have closed off his heart when he saw the vocalist talk to the monster – mythical being – so casually, as he did with everyone else. Shinra had glanced over at their mutual classmate, Yasuo, who was glaring at Izaya. 

Izaya for some reason felt the thoughts in his head increase. Watching Chester interact with Celty caused something inside of him to break. He didn’t understand why he had compulsions to take the flick knife out of his pocket and start cutting his skin. 

Sometimes he felt – very lonely – no, Izaya didn’t have feelings like that.  So then why did the ache in his heart ease when he heard Shinra jump up and run to Celty?  

It was comical to remember the scene when a smaller than American-sized Japanese teen pushed Chester aside, causing the accident-prone man to trip and land face-first on a tree. 

Izaya’s attention had immediately zeroed in on Chester, whose head had collided with the tree very roughly from Shinra’s enthusiasm, the heart inside his chest starting to move quicker as Izaya began to walk quickly to the front man before –  

Of course, Yasuo had to interfere. Izaya had no idea if the vocalist was even aware of what happened after that moment. The dyed-haired teen, who had watched the entirety of Shinra’s drama in disinterest, until he saw Izaya walking to the man who was now rubbing the front of his forehead.  

It was oddly Chester who convinced Yasuo to calm down from the fight as the man’s dark brown eyes widened at Yasuo picking up a bicycle rack and aiming the structure in Izaya’s direction. Shinra had rudely pushed Chester aside as the vocalist was starting to show the mask-wearing woman updated communication devices, but yet the vocalist had said of how happy he was to meet Izaya’s people? 

The pressure on Izaya’s chest eased considerably when Chester and Izaya had left the school.

That was just before Summer Sonic 2006, when Chester was going to leave Japan to go back to LA.  

It had been almost ten years since the lead singer had met Celty, Yasuo, and Shinra, and yet the man continued asking how they were.  

Brad had joked that both Izaya and Mike were very easily jealous of people who monopolized their “Chester Time,” something both men denied vehemently as the guitarist looked at them in a very unimpressed manner.  

In Izaya’s case, why did he feel threatened or that the band – Chester – was going to abandon him? 

He didn’t deserve him.  

He didn’t deserve him.  

He didn’t – 

“When I look into your eyes   

There’s nothing there to see   

Nothing but my own mistakes staring back at me  

Asking why  

 The sacrifice of hiding in a lie…”  

Was it impossible to love someone so much that you wanted to become them? Consume them, until they would never, ever think of leaving you?

Izaya didn't understand why Chester had been talking to him more about how the young man's fixation with him that had started from the moment he had heard the singer's voice.

Why were Chester, Brad, and Joe encouraging him to find more people to care for? Chester especially sometimes spent hours talking to him about how he was doing. Asking him questions the Japanese younger man was unable to answer. 

Shinra was unusual, but he had stayed by Izaya's side for more than a decade. His best friend was a positive relationship in his life. 

But Chester was almost like...something even more than a friend. Izaya didn't know what this feeling was. Chester was much more loving, and human.

Izaya should love humanity equally, but he had failed. 

Izaya inhaled and took a breath. You save me and you don’t even know how much I care.

I miss you.   

I miss you.   

I want to see you. …But why do you care?  

You shouldn’t care. About me.   

Chester had once asked what he knew about Celty, but Izaya had stated that he didn’t know more about the mythical creature than Shinra. Chester called the monster that shouldn’t even exist, by her name.  

I don’t know why my mind is the way it is. Why do I feel so much, on the edge of desperation and insanity that is my life, my fucked-up life.  

Izaya had been amused at the extreme jealousy Shinra had when Chester treated Celty very kindly, even giving her his phone number. (That didn’t matter. Chester was always so kind and Izaya did not feel as if he was being replaced. And his mind wasn’t full of reasons why he should push Chester away) 

No one had seen what she truly looked like, not even Shinra, who had attempted to uncover her mask even when she was asleep. Many broken ribs had resulted from such schemes, along with his best friend from junior high school begging him to calm the woman down. 

For reasons unknown to him, the mask-wearing woman hated him.  

Was it because despite his information and weeding out lies from the truth on disinformation websites, Izaya could not understand the vast majority of the human race? There was a reason Izaya had proclaimed at the age of thirteen that he loved humans as they were and was content to observe and understand how each human interacted with each other.  

Yasuo had ranted at his “worst enemy” that Izaya was a creep and a parasite that needed to be squashed like a bug. Shinra always enjoyed watching the young men argue and threaten to kill each other. Despite some close calls, Yasuo hadn’t been able to wound Izaya with his bare hands.  

Izaya could imagine Yasuo now, even if thoughts were spinning in his head. The man was tall compared to the average height of a Japanese man and had a thin face and dark brown hair. Unlike Izaya’s eyes, which were the color of  red, Yasuo’s were the regular black of the majority of humans in Japan. He remembered how Yasuo looked when he laughed, showing his teeth from the joke Izaya had managed to tell.  

Izaya would – should – say that he thought Yasuo’s smile was the most beautiful thing he had witnessed, but that wouldn’t be true. 

The smile that made him feel whole and alive, and the voice who understood him…. 

Yasuo now hated him as much as Celty did.  

It didn’t used to be that way. Yasuo and Izaya had been close at one point, but one night everything had changed. 

One snowy, desperate night with rain clouds choking with despair and heartbreak instead of snow.  

Ah, I wish I could have more time to read, Izaya mused as if he hadn’t been accused of being behind his best friend’s torture. Snow Falling on Cedars is such a magnificent read. I haven’t read it in over a decade, but I still remember the plot.   

Memories were echoing in his head almost like a typewriter or a movie. His mind had been like that ever since he could remember. Humans were astounded when the young man had been able to recall various dates and moments in history. He was a born storyteller, so his words and explanations often left people speechless.  

The only praise he received was for his memory and ability not to forget. However, this ability was also one of his weaknesses.  

What did Chester call it? 

Chester…  

Izaya admitted to himself that he missed the man. A man he admired and had once only listened to halfway across the world as a child. Many so-called fans who were now critical of the singer of the band only saw the man in a persona on stage.  

Why do they even care about me? I’m not…a good person. Chester and the other members of are actual human beings.  

There were many times that Izaya wondered if he was human. Sometimes living in this world was similar to learning a new language. A language that he had a limited desire to learn but had to in order to put on a mask for this parody of the life he had. 

Although this man was recognized and loved by many, including Mike the co-vocalist, the idea of caring about a screwed-up autistic Japanese man bewildered Izaya. He understood that not one of the men he had somehow gotten to know since he had gone to one of their concerts were capable of lying. 

Why were they invested in his life? 

Particularly the frontman, a human named Chester. 

It wasn’t as if Chester was a poser. No, the man and his bandmates revealed only a small portion of who they were on stage when they performed. Izaya was one of the few who were able to see and know them as they were without the mask of being a member of a rock band. 

Izaya wore masks. He didn’t understand the conception of the phrase until he found a YouTube video describing the concept of masking. His masks changed depending on who he interacted with, and the state of his mind. 

You should kill yourself.  

Die.   

You deserve this pain.   

The thoughts in his head usually didn’t stop. The thoughts in his mind played for years, too many times for Izaya to remember. The mask he wore as a neurotypical Japanese man disappeared whenever the thoughts and his own self-hatred would become his only reality.  

And yet people didn’t know him.  

The humans he interacted with on a daily basis had no desire to know him more than superficial greetings and goodbyes.  

Celty did not like him at all. Although she didn’t say anything, Izaya wondered if Celty thought the man was dangerous to Shinra.  

The masks he wore were manifestations of his human, disgusting, and pathetic desire to not disappoint people and to be loved.  

He didn’t deserve love. Even so, the masks were embedded in his personality.  

To survive in a world not made for people like him.  

Or Chester.  

For anyone who felt too much and whose emotions were as intense as natural disasters.  

They always come back and destroy. Those demons or the actual monsters in the mind, destroying the sense of self until all that remained was ash.  

But yet he had.  

Despite his autistic brain and mind collapsing with the depression and anxiety, Izaya had rebuilt his mind after every depressive episode. Just to watch it get destroyed.  

Rebuild and destroy. 

Of course, Izaya had been collected and poised when he had arrived at the apartment to pay Shinra’s girlfriend for her job as a courier. Izaya hadn't said a word about his friend, shocked that the woman was even standing in front of him given the severity of Shinra's condition. He had been tortured, almost to death.  

Why does everything go back to you?   

Shinra and the entirety of Ikebukuro was fascinated by this monster, this creature from Irish mythology that was alive and looking for her head. She masqueraded as a human, and from the time they were 13 years old, Shinra had been obsessed with Celty, declaring he loved her. 

A sensation was moving inside his stomach that he didn't understand. The sense pulled on his muscles, and the twenty-four year old man knew why exactly his physical body was reacting to Shinra being tortured to the point of needing to be transported to the Nebula Corporation.  

Izaya understood that given Nebula's research and ethical concerns, Shinra would not die or be in danger of losing his life.  

Unlike -  

Izaya closed his eyes as flashes of a face attempted to surface in his mind.  

"Do it for yourself, kid. You have only one life." 

Orihara Izaya understood his role in the game ordinary human beings called life. He manipulated, his cunning caused chaos, and many described him as evil or a psychopath for his information broker career. 

What would his reactions be to this truth? 

Of Chester’s reaction to this? 

And Yasuo’s? 

That Orihara Izaya had been behind the torture of an underground doctor in Ikebukuro? 

Izaya almost wanted to laugh when he thought about the most recent addition to the online forum. He wasn't even trying to conceal himself. Of course, no one knew that Ryuuo (Dragon King) and Kasumi (Izaya's female pseudonym online in the forum) knew each other in real life.  

That was how it should be. If Nunnally was Lelouch's blind spot, then Ryuuo was... 

He supposed someone simple as Shizu-chan would not understand their connection. The two came from completely different worlds. In all honestly, Izaya should not have met this human at all.  

It actually irritated him that his humans declared him as Ryuuo's lover. What was in people's mind to come up with...this shit?!  

He remembered his own father discussing with his mother that the twin girls were too "clingy" to their Iza-nii and discussed the disturbing possibility of the twins wanting to marry him.  

There was no incest. Izaya had said nothing when the girls "came out" to him after catching them with anime porn obviously from the black market. But it didn't bother him that Kururi had confessed they had actually called Ryuuo despite the time difference and the small dent in his bank account. Izaya had already screwed them over. 

Ryuuo had an idea of course, of how Izaya's humans thought he was the younger man's lover. He was not a dinosaur who refused to use the Internet or was information illiterate. Izaya remembered with a strange warm sensation inside his heart at the reactions Ryuuo had to a fan asking if "they" had heard of Bennoda. 

The sensations happened quite commonly when he was thinking of Ryuuo in particular. 

But the world became too quiet. His eyes glowed from the artificial light of the device. He read the Japanese, the question not coming as a surprise, from Celty. 

But yet...  

Shinra would never give up information that would threaten his relationship with Celty. The underground doctor had joked to Izaya that if the information broker ever fell in love, he would turn into a psychopath. "But you already are obsessive, Orihara-kun. Yasuo-kun has been your obsession for so long, but clearly, the one I am talking about is – ”  

Was he obsessed?  

Memory:  

"I can talk too much at times. People often say I have a bad habit of oversharing, and poor Mike has to deal with my annoying self for years now."  

“O -"  

"I know people have tried to shut me up before, but fuck that. Fuck society and their norms. So what if I can talk for hours about one subject and am too hyperactive by society's standards, and you," and here, the gentle smile and kind gaze that showed the darkness of those eyes. That expression. The lips curled into a grin with pure joy and energy known by millions, but with a shade of gentleness that Izaya could not understand.  

"Your intensity makes you a kick-ass information broker! One of the few in the world who could catch the identity of my fan that had to put away in jail because she was a bit too interested. Those calls were fucking scary man! And you're, like, the one behind the scenes of the gang wars in Japan, which isn't great but it's better than being an alcoholic or the clumsy fuck that causes the cancellation of -"   

Mike sharply interrupted his lover's descent into self-deprecation by kissing him soundly on the lips. Izaya and the others knew by now as the two men who were now so close their noses touched, that it was best to exit the room before anything became very R-rated.  

Brad, who had curly hair styled short, simply glanced at Izaya, mouthing the words, "Okay?"   

Okay?  

Why wouldn't he be okay?  

Why were these humans asking him if he was...that his mind was...  

Izaya's heart almost burst out of his chest when he felt the familiar tattooed arms of the singer wrap around his abdomen as he was pulled into a hug. Oddly, the man was still fully clothed.  

"Never forget who you are is always changing. And know that despite all the pain you've been through, we see who you are and  - ”  

Memory End  

No. That couldn't be true.  

Izaya was isolated. His best friend was in the hospital and for the second time in their lives, Izaya would be forbidden from seeing Shinra.  

That was obvious.  

First by Kishitani Shingen.  

Then by Celty  

Izaya's mind was quiet. Or was that an illusion?  

"You're very good at lying to yourself, Izaya. But I've lied too many times, hurt too many people, to understand that you are in pain. No one sees it, because they only see what they want to see. We've all got to know you throughout the years, and I want to let you know that I -"  

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.   

But this  

Izaya was being accused of being the mastermind behind Shinra's torture. The words echoed in his mind,  almost like a brand, a flesh-melting brand that itched and bled until infection spread in.  

It was almost like he was falling.   

Falling into the abyss.   

Falling into the abyss of darkness and hell that Chester had talked and sang about for years, even to him.   

"Did you have fun?"  

Fun? 

Fun… 

Izaya believed he didn't have a reaction to Celty’s statement. The words registered in his mind, but the comprehension of the meaning didn't register until a couple seconds later. 
Izaya didn't smile at Celty. He didn't say a word.  

This individual was angry.  

Afraid for Shinra's life. 
Izaya didn't know if he wanted to laugh or allow the ground to swallow him whole. He was aware he was breathing but the function was only knowledge in his head. 
Izaya almost opened his mouth to speak. But nothing would come to his mind. 
Was Shinra alive? 
Yes, Celty's accusation was quite clear that Shinra was alive 
The information that he always sought to see and observe, to taunt, and to find from the humanity Izaya had loved - had decided to love since he was 13 when Shinra had gotten stabbed in junior high school. 
Izaya had disassociated before. The stress and pressure of taking care of infant to toddler twin girls who had so many needs and wants from him - 
He who was nothing. 
He who screwed up their life by not being able to raise them as they should have been. 
He who was alone, so deeply alone that even at 25 years old, his closest friend was obsessed with a monster, a thing that shouldn't have taken Shinra away from him 
A monster from Ikebukuro who he hated - obsessed - love 

Love 

Love 

Why was the face of a man known by many echoing in his mind? 

Why 

Why 

WHHY? 

With intent to kill each other. 
A sushi chef who called him a coward but who served him his favorite fish whenever Izaya was craving conversation in Russian or the restaurant’s particular combinations of cuisine. 

Two twin sisters who ignored his existence despite all the stress and chaos of keeping them alive despite him being a fucking – ! 

No. He couldn’t go there. He breathed, trying to find anything to focus on. Chester had been talking to him about meditation. They had tried it together before Izaya had gone back to Japan just before April 1.  

Everything was too bright for fucking spring. Why did he feel as if he was being stretched thin, taken apart before walking into a line that would only lead to death? 

Sakura were very sad. It was similar to the Japanese sense of impermanence, and appreciating the time that nature would change and turn into beauty before fading.  

Sakura, and fireflies, both died soon. Spring was supposed to be the season for new beginnings, the light that appeared after the cold and dark gasp of winter, the wind now warm with hope and renewal. 

Chester was born on Spring Equinox.  

The man didn’t like celebrating his birthday, but the significance of the day never left Izaya.  

The single human life that kept him…in his contacts was like a sunset on a spring day, just like…the first sunrise they saw together when the singer visited him in Japan many years ago.  

Izaya hadn’t been in Japan during the spring equinox.  

Yasu… 

How else hated him?  

I never knew what it was felt like…Chester… 

His parents, who had visited him alone this year. His mother was busy on her presentations and worksheets as his father, the small shell of a human being, doted on her as he regarded his adult son with trepidation, as if they hadn't had the idea to have sex and procreate for his existence or his sisters. 
Why don't you know me? What is it about me that makes these...monsters attractive to these humans? Rage defines that protozoan, and yet people want to connect with him, bond with him...never me. 

I’m always alone.  

The feel of how it felt to be pulled into an embrace. 

Warm fingers and that familiar voice annoying him, but Izaya never pulled away. 

It came to Izaya that the relationships he listed were the extent of the connections he had in Japan. 
Thoughts filtered through his mind so fast that Izaya felt his thoughts become jumbled and pain filtered through his eyes. 
Memories. 
He almost felt sane. 
The thoughts stopped. 
Izaya looked down. He didn’t remembering coming here.  

Why was he on a skyscraper to begin with? 

Why was he having holes in his memory? …Like Chester. 

The twinkling lights of the skyline of Shinjuku almost looked like stars. The wind blew around his body, his dark hair brushing his face as the summer-like wind filtered through the atmosphere. 
His throat suddenly felt tight, as if – 
Izaya didn't cry. 
The information broker from Shinjuku didn't cry. 
The information broker who, according to rumors, forced teenage girls to die by suicide and was accused of raping a former classmate. 
The rumors and lies allowed his information network to grow, to have people come to him to find something, to bring someone misery, to find if your husband was an adulterer, and so many horrific, awful acts that humanity was capable of. 
Izaya had seen and had even encountered violent criminals, having intense and reality-bending encounters with serial killers, twice, in his career, and men who killed their wives and abused or also killed their children 
The cult Izaya had, a collection of young human beings who had experienced such trauma and agony from child abuse, physical or sexual abuse, runaways, even some addicted to substances to bury the agony of life...according to Shingen Kishitani, for nefarious purposes. 
Izaya didn't comprehend why Saki-chan forgave and continued to love her parents. 
Why another girl who had parents who restricted her and controlled her life without empathy and severe emotional abuse was able to let go of her past and smile brightly. 
How a young boy from Arizona had been a street kid of Phoenix with no one knowing of the horrible abuse created his agony and hell into poetry and sang, became the songs known throughout the world now. 
How even as an adult, the demons shadowed him wherever he went, consuming, controlling, becoming a part of his life. That was the very amusing part.  

Until Chester Bennington came into their lives, Izaya knew the majority of the band who would be Linkin Park had not experienced the act of existing, of surviving because your life was in complete chaos. Every day,  people like Chester and Izaya didn't know if they would live to the next sunrise. This specific torture-hell-abyss couldn't be understood or endured ...crawled through by just anyone. 
This was what real life was. The cruel, lonely, impossible world that no one wanted to understand, but had the desire to connect.  

To break apart the house of glass to save a specific someone, but nothing more than that. 

His life had been hell. The house of glass had been his home, like how such loneliness had been his oxygen until he met Chester. 
He was...Izaya didn't know how to describe his relation to the vocalist of Linkin Park. Izaya had felt fury, rage clenching in his actual functioning heart as disgust roiled in his stomach after hearing the shouting coming from his parents.  

His biological mother and father judged the man. Perhaps, they both were disgusted by him. They were very shocked and almost insulted when the two adults had come home to find their three children eating dinner with an American man with tattoos and short hair, black nail polish, and not wearing a shirt a couple days before Christmas. 

Chester had ordered so much KFC that Izaya had told him that there was no way they would be able to finish it.  

His little sisters completely ignored the chicken and devoured the cinnamon rolls Chester had gotten up at 3 in the morning to make by hand, as Mike watched in amusement as his lover insisted on doing the recipe himself. 

Izaya had no idea what to do when he found the men tickling each other on the floor with icing on their faces. 

Mike had been out shopping for mochi when the parents arrived. 

Shinra had only laughed when Izaya had told the underground doctor that his parents had almost caused a neighborhood incident from the sounds of yelling in English and Japanese. 
“I still say, I am surprised this American is even here. Of course, Celty has already my father as her beautiful, lovely, self was living with us – ” 
Izaya had observed as his relation to the man named Chester Bennington began, he had noticed that the kind to the point of incomprehensible human always asked how he was. 
Izaya didn't remember being asked how he was for a long time. 

Even before Mairu and Kururi were born, he had been scolded harshly for interrupting his mother's work with even wanting to cuddle up with her as a very young child; so young he must have still believed his parents were his world. Izaya didn't know if he had cried when either his mother or father left Japan and their son alone after their annual visit.  

Their relationship was similar to business partners, Izaya had observed years later as a teen. 
Was that why he had decided to love humanity when he realized far too late that no matter how good a student who was top of his class and won calligraphy contests, and was even scouted for a track and field team even before junior high…was unnoticeable? No one approached him or even attempted to make conversation with the class president who was such a good student and polite to every one of his classmates. 
"Your personality turned a completely 360 in junior high school. Those years were difficult for me too, 'Zaya. It’s going to be okay.” 
They had both experienced such strife and agony. Izaya knew now that his mind and his way of thinking were different from how normal humans processed information and memories. He wasn't insane. There wasn't anything wrong with his mind, to the point of Chester's depression or alcoholism but Izaya had distanced himself from humans because ... 
Because ... 

 
He remembered the feeling of the furisode.  

It was common in Japan for young women to wear the special garment during the Coming of Age ceremony, which in his country, was age twenty.  

He and Chester – and Brad – had all debated the merits of turning an adult at age eighteen in the United States compared to coming of age at twenty years old in Japan. Chester had later confessed he felt immense guilt for not going to his high school graduation even though Izaya hadn’t said a word about his feelings about the matter at all.  

Brad, of course, had been close to winning the debate, as judged by Joe, who was very interested in the topic of watching the exchange of opinions and uncovering the culture of everyday life in Japan that Izaya, his siblings, and Chester had led ten years ago. 

Izaya didn’t expect such a feeling of the smooth and warm undercoat on the third Monday of January. It was warmer in Tokyo than in his grandparents’ hometown in Fukushima, a prefecture of Northern Japan, but the colder temperatures were cool on his skin.  

His grandmother, a Russian accent whispering through her otherwise fluent Japanese, had told him that Chester was truly a good man who –  

No. Chester was a rockstar who was all the things Shinra said he was: an alcoholic, drug user, and “mentally diseased.” That word made Izaya want to vomit.  

He wondered, thinking about the emptiness inside his mind from Shinra’s statements with all the other shades he threw in the absent vocalists’ direction, was what Chester experienced when the singer had such severe abdominal pain and discomfort he couldn’t keep food or vomit down.  

“Why does he slave himself away at the industry?” Shinra had asked him when they had met just before Izaya had heard from the web that Shinra had been left for dead in his apartment.  

It had felt expensive. Knowing how much the kimono cost, Izaya wasn’t surprised.  

The brilliant red - brings out the color of your eyes, Chester had said with a fond smile the son of Arizona ignoring the pointed fingers and stares he was getting from the newly enshrined adults and their friends. 
The furisode was heavy. Izaya didn't know how girls were able to move in such a luxury fabric. Chester was attempting to smooth over the appalling mistake that had been made 
Izaya didn't care for the ceremonies for the traditional-patriarchal society of Japan. Perhaps going to the United States had changed something inside of him. 

Perhaps in another universe he would have never worn a furisode to his Coming of Age Ceremony, Chester as always apologizing and almost shaking in a mixture of mortification and laughter as the hilarity of the situation occurred to him. For sure, wearing the furisode was a gross mistake on multiple occasions but Izaya would never forget how light...how weightless he felt while running with Yasuo, who had unfortunately been invited to the ceremony by their common friend Shinra. 

Chester had attempted to hide his distaste for Shinra over the years, but no matter how talented a musician, a vocalist with a voice that changed millions of lives and whose voice Izaya would hear bright with mirth and life as opposed to his own calm in his mind, the man was horrible at hiding his emotions. 

Izaya had been shocked  at the poise and gracefulness the man showed to every human being, including creating a headache for security whenever Chester would always touch and hug the fans, talk with them for too long at certain points, or just was...too hyperactive for the exhausted four band mates to handle. Izaya always found those interactions intriguing to his psychology mindset. 
“You're more of a philosophy person with of how you just...take it apart and speak. Hell, you make me want to join this so-called religion ‘cause I am fucking inspired!” 
He remembered Chester teaching him how to cook. It wasn't as if he hadn't known how to cook, but to be a chef?  

Even though he was literally a thousand miles from the United States as Linkin Park was on break, the newly divorced man had spontaneously booked a flight to Japan when Mairu and Kururi had overreacted to his case of sickness when he was unable to rise from his fever. Izaya had thought it was a dream to find the human he...was liking more than he was willing to admit, wiping his forehead off his sweat-soaked forehead with such gentleness and care the teen thought the dream was too painful to be real. 

Rob was an avid reader. He and Izaya could spend hours debating books, politics, plot points and favorite novels to read. Chester and the other band members were relieved when their quiet and introverted Bourdie was able to find a close friend in Izaya despite the age difference. Rob had mentioned several novels he should read by the next time they met. 
Mike had been a crucial factor in his life as well. If Chester was like a phoenix from the ashes, Mike was like a river, always moving forward and the one that made sure that the Derailing Chester Express of Ideas" (Joe Hahn, who never left Izaya a moment's peace. Izaya was certain that the Korean American with his nicknames and slips of the mouth had also turned the girls into monsters. Seriously. Izaya was not surprised when Chester and Joe had been the ones to howl with laughter when the news of how Kururi and Mairu reacted to their bullies was revealed by the proud girls in question.  

Mike was the one who managed to understand the cultural differences that his lover had fought against (gay marriage, illegal). 
Izaya hadn't known how to react when Chester had outwardly asked him if wanted Chester or Mike "or any responsible adult to be an actual parent in your life." 
I wasn't...no, my childhood was normal. 
I was cared for. 
Lies. 
Izaya was not lonely. 
He wondered how Chester was doing. Was the man still in the holiday spirit "I love that you have KFC for Christmas in Shinjuku! I find that hilarious!" despite the fact it was January? The album hadn't done as well as the former studio albums, but Izaya blatantly ignored the critics who always seemed to get under the vocalist skin even more than Brad. 
Izaya had respect and care towards Brad. 

The guitarist was always thinking of how to protect the band's image but also protecting each other. Joe, Phoenix, Brad, and all the members would write on message boards to dissuade fans from rumors. Izaya had felt a strange sensation after Brad had actually watched him work as an information broker during the years the appalled but curious men had seen how Izaya lived by information. 
“It's the only use I have.” 
Brad had told him not only was his work ethic and dedication was at par with any professional, but if he had headed down the path of being a lawyer, he would want Izaya on his team. 

“Paralegals make more money without the possibility of danger and injury that you appear to be attached to. I swear, you and Chester have some kind of injury magnet attached to you.” 
“The sun goes down 
“The light betrayed me… 

It's like he has multiple voices when he’s singing. What a miracle, I cannot believe I was able to meet you in this insignificant existence of mine. 
“Like a whirlwind inside of my head,” Izaya whispered.  

“I have shown you mine. You woke the devil that you thought you left behind. I watched you fall apart, the crimson falling through...fear is how I fall. Confusing what is real! 

“Quiet. Everyone's sleeping through life. They'll put you away!” 

“Millions of souls. ..walking in circles...do not disturb ...scream in silence ...! 

“These voices in my head/They're not mine but I'm not sure 

 Sometimes I lie/Sometimes I crawl 

Sometimes I feel like I wanna DIEEE!! 

“Take back my life on my own because I can see/The very worst part of you is me. 

“I don't know who to trust. No surprise. 

“I'm swimming in the smoke of bridges I have burned I won't apologize for bridges I have burned 

“What I don't deserve/Sitting in an empty room trying to forget the past/It's hard to let you go…the finale masquerade... 

Memories consume/Picking me apart again 
You all assume I'm safe in my room 
Unless I try to start again 
I don't want to be the one…” 

 
 
His voice closed. 
He had gone down a path once. 
But Izaya would not take it. 

 
The haunting memory of Chester Bennington floating in the river with his lifeless body drenched in the icy grave he had chosen to fallen into. 
It's you. It's you.　 

俺のせいでのせいで 
“I'm fucked up. I know I am. I messed up big time with the psychiatrist. I want you to know that I never intend to hurt you. It kills me inside to see you in the same headspace that's still within me right now. I tried to kill myself more times than I want to remember, all before I met Mike, before I decided to go to the audition in LA, before I met you.  

“You're still such a badass. No one else would even think to hop on a plane to the other side of the world with just a backpack. You are awesome. Just, so much more than someone as broken as me. I tried to kill myself because of all the pain I have.” 
Dave had taught Izaya how to fight. It had stunned him when the ginger man had told him that if he planned on chasing death by a kid who could throw vending machines at him, someone this skinny should know defense. 
That, in part, was the reason why Izaya wasn't in a world of agony. 

He had experienced this sensation before, but not to this extent. 

He didn’t feel as if he was connected to his body. He watched in disinterest as his dull red eyes observed as his body turned to face some low-ranking Yakuza members who assumed that the information broker would run away like the coward he was during his fights with Yasu. 

He watched in vague fascination as the eyes of the stupid, ignorant and arrogant men appeared terrified. Before they could even blink, Izaya saw his hands and arms not spread out in euphoria or searching for information, but colliding against flesh. The five men had been stunned and injured pretty badly after Izaya watched himself walk away with not even a scratch. 
The Bennington family had accepted him as one if their own. Izaya was aware of how he was unable to connect to people, but somehow all the ex-partners of Chester (sans Samantha Bennington) welcomed him as...as someone belonging. 
Izaya still remembered how Mairu and Kururi cherished the faded photograph of their Shichi-go-San holiday ceremony, Chester pulling Izaya by the arm with a wide grin wearing a yukata of all things even in the middle of November. 
The memory of the euphoria of performing. Chester had asked and Joe and Mike had blackmailed him into performing during the 2011 Red Square Tour when promoting that movie Izaya was forced to watch by the men of Linkin Park, who turned into complete fanboys whenever someone mentioned the fighting metal robots ("They're sentient beings with thoughts and emotions Izaya! There's no Gundam here!" "Hanh, shut up. It doesn't - "How can you be a part of Linkin Park which has three songs dedicated -") 
Memories. 
The past. 
Izaya had been spellbound watching the band perform. He was usually in the audience. But this...fans screaming, knowing the lyrics to all the songs, calling the rockstars’ name, this was as close to godhood as he had ever felt. A warm sensation that almost caused him to pause and check for heat stroke as he watched Chester rocked forward as the song Breaking the Habit faded into the background. It was common knowledge of how emotionally draining Breaking the Habit was for Chester to perform. The band members were always concerned about their vocalist when he sang his soul and his silent, rippling agony for the entire world to see. 

It was that way even then in 2011 when Chester had been clean and sober for years still took a toll. Izaya was about to move forward, his humanity lifting in his body as he watched Chester slowly look up and hear every fan chanting his name. The man whose face could split into laughter and jokes as easily as a waterfall of tears or depression was vulnerable with shock as he stood when he was able to get on his feet, his face saying, 

"They're chanting my name? Mine? Why?" 
Izaya felt the warmth, elusive and screaming for years take a hold of him as he watched the man who had changed and saved human lives, take out the In-Ears to protect the singer's hearing, and started the a cappella.  

Izaya thought Chester was at his best during the a cappella during Breaking the Habit.  

Showing his human, breathtaking heart that Mike had fallen in love with. And Izaya was connected to it. That was why his identity had to remain a secret.  
Izaya didn't know why his body moved. He felt Chester's hand. His warm, living hand sweating as it clenched the microphone, his chocolate eyes widening as he met Izaya's as the young man willingly held Chester's hand as Chester began the Izaya following a second later. 
He remembered the terror. Screaming inside as he heard Chester say his intended last words to him before he jumped even as the "rescue team" were minutes away from saving this beloved, single, human life. 

 
"DAD!!" 

 
"...tonight." 
I just realized, Izaya thought as the wind blew through his hair. 
Ikebukuro... 
Why did he feel anything? 
Of all things, there were times Izaya wished he was the psychopath strangers and Yasu declared him as. 
The majority of my positive memories and sensations 
...this warmth that Mike tells me is love.. 
Love? 
What is love? 
 
These feelings are from a thousand miles away. 

“I just wish you could surround yourself with people who truly care for you. Who love you, not this toxic, balancing act of assholes who don't give a flying fuck about your existence!” 
“What Chester is trying to say – ” 
“Chester, you're already turning him into you with all the accidents you two have but we can't have him cursing like this in Japan. What would his brainless parents and locals think?” Brad softly smiled at the vocalist pretended to be insulted, watching as Izaya observed the six band members who had become part of his life 

"You crash landed into our lives like a hurricane, kid. There's no way we're letting you go." 

 
“Aishiteru, Izaya.” 
 
Izaya didn't know he was crying. 
Chester was... 
If Chester was the soul of the sun, he would worship his sun. He was bright, just like the millions of suns that he shined upon the universe. 

On his human existence. 

What had he said to Masaomi? What did he say often? 

Humans were so irrational. The past defined so much of human existence. 

And yet this one person, these people who shouldn’t even exist in the same universe, belonged in his own. 

It shouldn’t be. 

Izaya should be alone. 

The sacrifice is why   

He blamed himself for turning Shinra into who he was. If he hadn’t met the underground doctor – 

I stay  

If he hadn’t raised his sisters  - 

Nothing but my own mistakes  

Staring back at me  

If he had never met and went to a concert after the event that changed his entire life – 

I realize testing me/is pushing me away 

This is the last smile 
His body moved, his legs turning, unconsciously imitating Chester's own way of singing that he had watched a thousand times. His hands reached out, trembling in the force of the day releasing into a song and dance. 

I’ll fake for the sake 

Of Being with you 

 
The rage inside pulled a scream from his throat. 
It was different from twelve years ago. Twelve years of his own experiences, blurring together as the pain became unmistakable as Izaya knew - understood how his heart screamed and bled, his only friend from junior high school...(his first foolish love)  

Not even Chester didn't know his favorite song. Breaking the Habit had been close on his list until he had heard the song for the first time. 
It had been one of the first times he had cried from the sound of this voice, life...who was everything to him. 

You’re still blind to me 

The sacrifice of hiding in a lie 

The sacrifice is knowing why I stay  

When you push away  

 
Home. 

Where was home? 

 
Chester Bennington was not only as close to a father he didn't deserve, but home. 
“Quiet.” 
Chester had loved his mistake in the lyrics so much he had attempted to change the words, but he later hugged whispering that it would be their secret. 
“We'll make you a lyricist out of you, Mr. Orihara.” 
Respect. 
Even with his highest ranking clients, the foreign feeling of needing one human being's approval had almost broken Izaya's mind. 
He loved all humans. He wasn't able to love one single light over the billions of souls 
“I'm going INSANE! 
Alone in the world with billions of souls 
Walking in circles 
Trapped in their dreams 
Alone in the world with million of souls 
Do not disturb 
Scream in SILENCE 
Everyone's...” 

 
A tortured whine tore from his betrayed throat as Izaya's dry throat burned. He lifted his head to sky, using every part of his body to pour his shattered, self rotting in the ground. 
He wished he had never met Chester Bennington. 

 
“Everyone's sleeping.” 

Izaya sang out in a clean tenor he had hidden for years 
Izaya took out the SIM card of his phone. His employment prevented him from snapping the entire price of technology in half. 
Mairu and Kururi were also on his contact list. 
Celty and Yasuo would get their wish. 

  
…Izaya would not go back to Ikebukuro. 

They wouldn't have to tolerate his existence in their city anymore.  

He wouldn't upset any of his beloved humans. 

"Always remember that you always have a place with us. If you ever, we mean ever, want to visit us, you have a home here."  

Chester had looked at him as if he was human. Izaya had been called many nicknames throughout his life. The young man hadn't thought deeply about how those nicknames were called until he realized   

How his life - his whole being including the jagged edges that had humans accuse him of being a monster who toyed with people as if they were Ollies pieces (which wasn't too far from the truth) and a sociopath  - was cared, cared too much for by people he did not deserve.  

I...  

I hate...  

I hate being Orihara Izaya.  

  The self-hatred has always been there. Izaya had been a master at lying, but it took Chester, who also had extreme self-image issues that drove his lover Mike up the wall, for the information broker to even think about the idea of how he thought of himself. 

Yasuo hated himself as well. It was obvious. Perhaps it was the understanding of loneliness and self-loathing that had drawn them to each other.  

Izaya was still unable to look Joe in the eye when the DJ had asked him how the hate sex was. Chester and Mike looked like they wanted to die as the DJ began to describe the tidbits of information he found from the chatty Shinra who made Chester look like a quiet person. How Joe, out of all the six of them, had found out, was mortifying. 

Mr. Hahn had yet to recover from what Izaya had prepared for him shortly after leaving LA.   

The young man was about to gather himself away from the moment that he had faced himself years ago, when the mobile he used in Ikebukuro rang and lifted the darkness echoing in his mind. 

Izaya listened with trepidation at the slight nervousness and fear in Mike's voice when the man told him that they had to cancel the Hunting Party Tour because Chester had broken his ankle. The only detail the emcee would spare was that Chester had to be taken to the hospital for surgery.  

There was an unspoken question. 

No one would admit that despite the age difference and experiences, Izaya was one of the few members in Chester's life who knew the hell and emptiness of the chronic condition without a name. The thought of having someone as hyper as the said man only able to rest with his mind and guilt the only company his tortured mind would hear and see was enough for Mike Shinoda to call someone like Izaya, who enjoyed playing with human's lives. 
Izaya would not tell them the truth. He had used Chester's injury as an excuse, but in reality the young man had no idea Mike had seen through his bullshit immediately. 
Yes. 
A small, almost invisible smile echoed across his face as if reliving a precious memory. 
He was going home. 
Kaeru. 

帰る。 

Chapter Text

August 3, 2003

Dallas, Texas, United States

In an unnamed hotel room.

After the successful performance of the first out of two shows in Summer Sanotoruim 2003, the emcee and glue to the band Linkin Park was undergoing a metamorphosis.

It wasn't surprising. Some fans had already suspected there was something going on between the two frontmen since the two were best friends and very intimate with each other. 

Every year that passed made the chemistry and energy between them hard to deny.

Chester Bennington, his dynamic and electric co-vocalist, had kissed him moments during the post-show adrenaline.

Mike would remember the moment for the rest of his life.  

His entire heart almost exploded from the intensity of feeling Chester’s lips gently caress his own. It had been Chester, who after a stunning performance in Texas, had revealed to him the singer’s hidden and forbidden love for the emcee. 

Mike’s hands had shaken too much to even touch Chester’s face, his mind still spellbound as if he was in a dream.  

Chester’s beautiful features hadn’t been this close in years. A whisp of a memory, heated exchanges and the heat of a shower against smooth white skin hadn’t faded from Mike’s mind, as much as he had tried and guilted himself for the kiss that had almost destroyed what they hadn’t even had yet.  

The band. The fame.  

The countless hours fighting and fighting to be who they were. 

Everything but this.  

The hidden bond that somehow tied the two very different human beings together.  

Mike always wanted to know if Chester’s hair was as soft as it looked. He had fantasied how the smaller one would feel in his arms, not hugging him as a friend, but as someone much closer. 

Chester’s dark chocolate eyes had captivated him since the beginning. His face, smooth and so priceless with such a range of emotions that seemed over the top until Mike realized that this was who Chester was, was close enough now that Mike could feel his breath on his face. 

Their lips were inches apart.  

“Chester...” Mike whispered, feeling his heart pound relentless against his ribcage.  

He had meant to say more, ask if this was truly what he wanted, after the past he had, but Chester’s barely brushed against his own.  

It was a Pandora Box.  

Everything was spinning so fast, and Mike, for the first time, wasn’t thinking at all when he started kissing Chester back.  

Their lips caressed each other’s slowly, Mike pulling Chester closer to him. He wanted more. He felt a thrill surge inside his soul, a release, immediately taking away the rational part that made the band the success it was. 

Soon Mike couldn’t get enough. His hands combed through Chester’s hair, sweaty from the 110 degree weather they had performed out today, resting his hand against his nape, kissing the man he desired for so long as if Chester was giving him oxygen.  

Chester’s touches were even bolder than his. His hands pressed against Mike’s shirt, teasing his own neck as the wild feeling of feeling each other’s lips and hands against each other caused passion to rise.  

It didn’t matter that practically making out with your co-vocalist/male best friend/married man was against every moral code and committing infidelity was one of the worst betrayals in a relationship. 

They rested their foreheads against each other's, Mike taking in how Chester seemed to glow. His eyes had been hidden by sunglasses during the performance today, but now his eyes were pools of ardor and love.  

His lips were red and swollen from the intensity they had kissed each other, and Mike could see the true emotions of Chester Bennington, vulnerable and so loving it gave him physical pain.  

I love you.  

The thought should have scared him, but the only thing he felt was joy, enough joy and bliss that Mike could only nuzzle his nose against Chester's as he saw a side of the man he had...loved silently, deliriously, consumed to the point that the emcee thought he would lose all control of his logic by just staring at his vocalist 

He poured his passion and love, with every caress and kisses exchanged between them. They began as gentle, barely-there touches again, before both young men found their blood and bodies turning hot as if they were engulfed by passion held too long inside. 

Mike couldn't speak. The smile Chester was sending him, happy and an alive smile, was almost enough to make him cry. 

Their loving touches turned more brazen, Mike feverishly pawing at Chester's white t-shirt, the lust in his mind overtaking him as the vocalist began to moan and pant from their needy and wet kisses. 

He touched the skin covered in a later of sweat from the dedication and amazing loyalty to his craft - singing was an art form Mike would never come close to, but Chester was the reason their band had gotten to the fame they had reached.  

It was all about luck and hard work, but the piece of the puzzle was missing until Chester had arrived, shocking them all with how fast the demo tape had been sent to them.  

Chester had kissed him softly, not like the very first kiss they shared years ago when they barely knew each other.  

Mike had been overwhelmed and confused by his emotions and his connection with Chester that he still wasn't able to explain. It was as if the moment Mike had seen the smaller (than they all thought) man with clothes that swallowed him, his dark eyes changing from oolong tea to cocoa mesmerizing him, even before Mike heard and witnessed one of the most invigorating auditions he had experienced. 

It shocked Mike that his heart stopped and it was as if he heard this older man's agony and darkness. But yet there was this innocence, this light, that the college student felt in his soul. Chester told him that when he met Mike, it was as if he knew there was something special about the leader of the band. 

Even Chester didn't call their relationship friendship. He had been deeply hurt when he heard how isolating the vocalist felt from the band. Mike truly had no idea how devastating and awful Chester's mind was, because somehow, this amazing man with such a free spirit, almost like a child, didn't know how to endure another day without...drugs, the drinking, all of it. 

But there was never a way for Mike to stay away from the older man. Despite the marriage and Mike's own girlfriend, the same morning he met the vocalist Mike's first thought after the meeting was when he could see him again 

It was like that even after knowing each other. Mike didn't know it was possible to want and crave someone so much. 

Mike found he had an obsession with Chester's lips. Kissing him became a very new and consuming addiction as Mike and Chester's feverishly pressed together as both their hands continued exploring each other's backs. 

Mike moaned when Chester cheekily bypassed Mike's lips and started pressing wet kisses, hot and making the emcee almost whimper from the rising tension between them. 

What hold do you have over me? Mike thought as he kept his swirling and confusing emotions away in his heart. He didn't feel scared as his lips continued to plunder the singer's mouth. Chester had tried to challenge Mike's tongue with his own, but soon the hot and wet sounds of making out could be heard as Mike feverishly pawed at his best friend's skin. 

You're so gorgeous, Mike thought as he layered gentle kisses across Chester's neck and naked chest. Pure beauty...why haven't I sketched you before?  

He had no idea how Chester had removed his shirt.  

Taking off...no. Mike’s arousal grew as he imagined Chester sexualizing even breathing.   

The vivid fantasy of Chester's cute ass with the man panting as the younger man worshiped his back, the tattoos he had always been fascinated by, longing to touch. 

He deserved to be loved. No matter what anyone said. 

“Mike, what the fuck? I was enjoying - ! Oh. Ohhh...” 

The younger and less experienced man had no idea what he was doing. Everything about this - this stream of fire burning through him as he and Chester's legs were entwined, with Mike's mouth one of his nipples as one of his fingers slowly caressed one of the most private places in his friend's body. 

Chester eyes were open, pleasure and a lost look in his dark eyes as Mike’s hesitant kisses and mouthing turned to sucking the right nipple.  

“Ahh..!” 

Mike groaned at the slight grind of Chester’s hips against his own.  

“Yess...! Keep going! Don't stop! 

Mike's confidence increases from Chester's impassioned cries, looking at his angel. 

The younger man worshiped this human being. He was capable of so much love, kindness, and all range of emotions that were like whirlwinds or tornados in his waking life. That was how Chester described his mind. 

A twisted, deranged - 

"We can't have him drag our hard work, blood, and tears for his addictions and you know it!” 

Fuck off, Mike thought with irritation as the memory of Brad’s jealousy of the beautiful man he was about take into his hotel room, his nails slightly scratching Chester’s back as the vocalist gasped.

Chester's POV 

The gasp that tore from Chester’s throat as Mike began to lead him to the hotel room, their kisses never stopping even as both slightly tripped over each other, desperation to release the tension in their bodies overriding their good sense. 

They had a guest staying overnight in the hotel room across from them, paid by Chester himself.  

The guest, who they did not know, would change the fate of one man. 

How did this story even begin?  

It had surprised the vocalist, who had been having a nice conversation with Mike, who was almost beaming at him, to see Brad Delson, their guitarist, stomping over to him with a look Chester was very familiar to seeing.

The backstage was currently full of staff and the hardworking and kick-ass crew. Except Brad was taking him to the locker room, bypassing them completely. 

Brad practically dragged Chester away from Mike, his expression thunderous. The emcee was immediately on edge, knowing how Brad could hold his emotions inside until it exploded in his face and caused regretful words - or someone unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity. Mike had barely turned the corner to the locker room before he saw Brad punch Chester in the face. 

He truly didn't expected to get dragged to the shared locker room where the six had previously been relaxing and joking with each other.

It didn't make sense as of why Chester had banged up Brad's guitar after the final song of the set. Well, it wouldn't have, if Brad hadn't thrown the guitar on the stage. It wasn't like his friend Corey's experience with blood on set during their concerts.  

At least Chester now had a story to tell now to make his friend laugh. 

Brad doesn't punch as heavy as he hoped he had. The vocalist wasn't able to reply to why the guitarist was handling him somewhat roughly as the smaller man was almost dragged to the locker room that they had been relaxing in for hours, before a punch landed around his cheek. The impact was enough for the lithe and exhausted man to fall onto the bench as Brad's eyes narrowed and aimed a kick near Chester's kidney. 

“You broke my fucking guitar!”  

Yep. He’s pissed.  

“You were the one that fucking threw it!” Chester protested even as his body started to squirm in pain. He felt an odd numb feeling.  

Brad punched me.  

Brad. Punched. Me.  

“It was busted anyway,” the vocalist barked as blood suddenly filled his mouth. His dark eyes followed the irritation and growing overwhelming frustration in Brad's expression. 

Despite the words he said, guilt flooded his stomach as he remembered how stupid he had been when he had started bashing Brad's red guitar after finishing the setlist for such an amazing concert. I always ruin things. Is this going to be the end of me? Did I –  

“Hey, Chester, I'm not finished.” 

Chester coughed and held his lips together when he felt Brad poked the bruise already starting to darken against his cheek.  

“Can't you pay attention for one second ? I swear – “ 

There was a flash of something dark at the corner of his vision. Chester's eyesight was poor, so he didn't see very well what it was that had...climbed on top of the lockers and stayed there. 

The sound of heavy boots and excited voices peaked the vocalist's interest and he was glad when Brad let go of his green t-shirt. Texas is sweltering in the summer! The dark-haired man thought blearily as he reached down to grab his glasses. 

Wherever the fuck they were. 

Chester never knew where his glasses were when he woke up in the morning. If he was lucky, they were either on the floor, under a pillow, or knocked over by his cat. 

His face fell at the thought of his cat. She was his friend, his therapist, and she never got mad at him. He was too poor to have his cat travel with them to Texas. His friend Ryan was cat-sitting. 

It greatly surprised him when Brad handed him his sunglasses where they had clattered onto the ground after Brad had actually punched and kicked him. Chester winced from a sharp zing of pain that came to his lower back.  

I hope that is just from gastric reflux. I knew I should have listened to my doctors but stupid me decided not to.  

God, I am such a failure.  

The day to nausea and vomiting had gotten severe to the point that Chester could barely eat. It was hard to feel constant sickness and swallowing your saliva as your body continuously fucks you over. Chester used to get severe motion sickness whenever the nausea became bad enough that he just wanted to sleep so he didn't vomit something that he just ate. 

Regurgitation was fucking gross. The taste of bile and acid and half-digested food (ugh!) were his constant companion, but today, he was lucky and didn't feel nausea or blinding pain from his head or stomach today. 

His bandmates hadn't been getting along with him. It was just his luck Braddles snapped and started screaming at him for, well, making a problem after the performance. Chester just saw the guitar, as he was almost too amped up from the performance and getting out of the darkness  of his mind. His mind was telling him how much of an asshole he was and no wonder his bandmates hated him. 

He was nothing. Why did he hurt so much today? The pain was like lightning, racing along his spine. Why did his mind continue to torture him with his mistakes? 

I should have killed myself before I even knew anyone. Do they think I don't notice when they don't touch me? It's agony, but I deserve it. 

It was either self-destructive patterns or breaking the guitar. 

Chester still felt like screaming. 

Brad was right about him breaking the guitar. What would happen to him now? What would happen to the band? What if he screwed up for real this time and his band mates would fire him? He was a no-good vocalist, the dirt beneath the shoe, and worth nothing. 

Whenever he was not high or shit-faced, he always remembered how agonizing living was. Mike wasn't his friend. He was a band mate who sometimes looked at him in such disappointment Chester never forgave himself for his mistakes, drug addiction or no. 

Why were his emotions so hard to control? Why did he feel so intensely at times, almost feeling high with happiness or laughter that was too loud. Was it his fault? Was he that screwed up? Brad deserved better. The shame for drinking until he couldn't speak or remember, or using stimulants while on tour...they were scars, deep and bleeding, burrowing inside his heart until he could barely tolerate himself. 

But Mike... 

Somehow, Chester knew what falling in love was. As screwed up as he was, he was able to fall in love many times. Not even Mike knew that his first love. Of course I knew that he was bisexual he came out to them the very first meeting and it was a huge relief to find out that among the people that he could have chosen to be with, Mike and the others didn't treat him any differently. 

Mike hadn't even said a word at first when the vocalist told him about the abuse. The younger man had waited patiently as Chester slowly told him what the lyrics meant to him. He treated me as a human being, as a whole person despite my drama and fuck-ups, and still cares about me. 

His older sister Tobi was one of the few who he was in contact with. It didn't surprise him that she tolerated his existence but these amazing men that made of this band they all worked so hard on didn't like him. 

Chester couldn't say a word because a fist collided in his stomach, purging all the negative train thought cycle in his head. 

The pain in his kidney was getting worse as Brad's angry face, the guitarist almost looking at him like he was an animal abuser, leaned closer to Chester's face. 

A choked gasp tore from his throat as Brad kicked him in the kidney again before there was another punch in the stomach. 

“Brad, what the fuck?” 

“Stop! Stop it!” 

Was he so desperate for attention that he was fantasizing about Mike saving his useless ass? But it was true.  

He heard a couple of voices shouting as he felt Mike's calloused hands smooth over his face as the vocalist lied half collapsed on the bench. 

“Ches? Ches! Oh my god, Chester, are you okay?” 

“'m fine,” Chester rasped. He swallowed something metallic and shuddered at the taste. He hoped Mike didn't notice, but the emcee's dark brown eyes never left him. 

He was frustrated with himself before, with his addictions, with his depression and freak outs. 

They didn't know about how close he was to ending it. 

“There he is!” 

The adults stopped arguing and turned to the young and obnoxious voices.

Three tall adult men were panting rather heavily as they were glancing around the area. Chester didn't know how they were able to get past security and backstage.

“Excuse me,” the vocalist with the blue and red tattoos stated in a calm but very confused tone, you do know that there's a certain - 

“We have to get the little shit!” 

 A frown began to grow on Chester's face when he saw the familiar look across the men's expression. He knew that look. Taller teens and other "popular kids" used to beat him up like a rag doll and sneered at his appearance because he looked different and didn't hang out with one particular group. It had been less than a decade since either adult men graduated from high school, but both looked up where another set of eyes slightly gleamed in the ultraviolet light. 

I could have sworn I saw red, the man thought as he ran his fingers through his hair.

Red eyes?  

He looked back to find Brad and Mike blocking their way to the lockers. 

“What is going on?” 

“Oh my god, you're Mike Shinoda!” 

 The look of awe twisted the insides of vocalist, if the shadow across Mike's face was of any indication. Chester felt a stab of jealousy at the look the three fans were now gazing at the reason how their band got off the ground in the first place. 

“I'm like, your biggest fan!” 

“Why don't you tell us who you are chasing and why?” 

Chester didn't like how these men glanced at Rob. They stared at him as if he was a fly, or at worst, one of the men stared at him as if he had no idea who he was. This pisses me off, Chester thought as his mind echoed how reporters and photoshoots only wanted him, or the vocalist's of their band, not anyone else. Our voices are only part of the sound that people listen to. I understand what being a frontman means and is the image or message of the music itself, but how our band is thought of as only two people...bothers me.  

His wife used to say that he should be proud of what he had accomplished in the band and he was one of the main reasons why the band was as successful as it was.  

She never told me why, or even looks at me when I explained where my thoughts go and why I use drugs and alcohol to numb this agony, all these secrets inside...  

But with Mike, I never feel that he judges me. Even when I...told him about the abuse. He looked at me the same as he did before. There was only understanding, besides tears that I still cannot understand. So much unconditional love that I can't contain my feelings that I've had for such a long time.  

“Get out.” 

Chester almost swallowed his tongue at the finality of Mike's tone when he had that voice. His voice is so beautiful and sexy, the vocalist thought with a glance at the emcee, his thoughts threatening to override his caution he had kept locked away with all "his shit" as his ex loved to put it, turning instead to the red lockers.

The vocalist had no idea if those guys were ranting about a pet that got away or a fan who had actually managed to fit on top of the locker.

Suddenly, the men yelped and jumped. A knife had appeared from the locker, flying in the direction of the men who had chased Red Eyes, just missing their shirts by an inch.

Chester was not stunned to silence. He had seen some crazy shit over the years, both on tour and in real life, but finding a human being hiding on top of a well-known rock band's locker was very unusual. 

Chester saw Joe, Brad, and Phoenix walk with the three men as they were led away from where half of the band mates were standing. 

“Hey.” 

Chester was the only parent of the present group, so he looked up at the red eyes that appeared to come from someone young. He made sure to sound non-threatening and even sat down on the cool bench, taking off his shades that Brad had also given back to him.  

“It's alright. Those assholes are gone now. You can come down now. I know you can fight, if that knife is of any indication, but we won't hurt you.” 

There was no response. The vocalist waited, but when there wasn't a response, dark brown eyes met - how cool was that?! - red. 

“You've got cool eyes.” 

Chester didn't expect to hear any noise for a couple of moments. But he did, but before the man could even inhale, there was a thump sound coming from his side. 

Chester could tell the fan was young. He was shocked by how young the kid was. Is he even out of elementary? Chester thought as he saw how small the kid was. 

He had dark hair and red eyes. He was wearing a t-shirt with their logo on it, and black pants despite the weather. 

It became very clear that when the first thing the kid did after jumping from his hiding place was bow in Chester's direction, he wasn’t from the United States. 

He was Japanese. 

The vocalist wished he could remember Japanese from the last tour. It was amazing, going to Japan. The fans were so cool and very sweet. They had such open smiles. 

“Hello.” Chester smiled at the kid, but the young boy didn’t answer him.  

Is he just shy? The tattooed man thought with a smile still on his face as he observed the teen more closely.  

There was a thin layer of sweat across the teen’s brow, and his eyes didn’t waver from Chester’s. The man immediately thought how hot it had been outside, and worried over the silence over the teenager who had run away from those assholes.  

“Hey Brad, do you think you can get the water for him?” Chester yelled. He hoped he looked in Brad's direction. The singer would hate to be yelling something normal at someone who the words weren't meant to be said to.

He had removed his sunglasses and was squinting to look at what he presumed was Brad’s face.   

“Fine.”  

Chester rolled his eyes. Braddles sounds so excited for his adventure. His thoughts turned to the stowaway they had as the singer heard the members of their band exit the locker/cooling room. 

But the main question is...  

How the fuck did he even get here anyway?!!  

His parents must be fucking losing their minds with worry!!

Chapter Text

After Live in Texas

August 2, 2003

Chester's POV

Chester Bennington didn’t know why he felt as calm as he was now.  

It was odd.  

There were times when the dark-haired man had enough energy to run around the venue. He always enjoyed meeting and greeting the fans. 

This situation, with the boy who apparently came from Japan, was still happening. Why did Chester feel as if his heart was about to collapse?

The boy was not even smiling at Chester. Okaay... Chester thought, nerves pricking against his skin. 

He cared very much that he was struggling with addiction and going through withdrawals – hence why he almost tripped and fell on the stage. He saw Mike almost run over to him when he saw Chester trip, but the vocalist had been through worse. He didn’t have a broken foot, like Phoenix. 

He’s such a badass. So is Rob. I can’t imagine going to a wedding after all that noise. Chester’s smile fell.  

What was he contributing to the band? Yes, he could sing, but so what? They could have gotten a singer who wasn’t always knee-deep in chemical dependency and shit-faced because he couldn’t deal with his past. 

Mike was the only one who knew the details about the abuse. The others didn’t know it was that abuse, and he had suffered for six years before HE left.  

Abandoned. Again.  

No. No. No.

Chester squeezed his eyes to fight off the memories that were one step closer to breaking him apart again.  

He focused on the sounds around him. The hum of the air conditioning was loud, slightly covering the sound of the audience still cheering from a phenomenal and kick-ass concert. Mike’s hand rubbing his hair. His fingers touching Chester’s sweat-soaked shirt, grinning his Shinoda smile as the human disaster he was fell in love with his best friend all over again. 

Mike was one of the few who connected with him now. The others were good people, clean, and distant to him. Honestly, Chester didn’t want anyone to know how he and his wife fought. The fights were brutal, both of them shouting at each other and saying words that Chester always groveled at his wife's feet and pleaded with her to forgive him.

They had been very happy at one point in their lives, but Chester felt those days had passed.

Chester had felt hot shame and tears almost came to his eyes when Mike had gotten to hear the end of the argument, the person who was supposed to love him for all he was, poking holes into his imaginary and true faults. 

The man was in a relationship he didn't even know how to survive. The last three years had been hell, and he missed Sam dearly despite their rocky relationship history.

The majority of the conversations would sometimes leave him so hurt and pissed off, especially when Mike was mentioned.

Chester didn't know why Sam had such hatred of Mike Shinoda. She accused him of being in love with him, which he denied with heavy palpations in his chest. He thought that since they had married young and knew each other very well that she would have been able to see through his lie that was threatening to erupt from his ribcage. 

He would keep this secret with him until he died.

He didn’t want to let them know how he struggled to function, doing day to day activities as the dark-haired man saw the smiling faces and kind words that he didn’t deserve.  

I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this fame. I just cannot believe Mike when he told me he cares about me.   

Why?  

I'm such a piece of shit. Sam’s said something nasty to me before we left on tour, and there’s been so many of those instances, I don’t want to remember. Immediately his mind went to one of his favorites. The only way to survive this world was to be fucked up. Drugged or drunk, or anything in between, so he didn’t drive himself crazy with the thoughts and memories in his head.   

He felt so much fucking shame whenever he failed at not relapsing. Ever since he had made that promise to himself to change from that small 115-pound kid who got a scare from the Mexican mafia who wanted money from his friend – Chester knew he needed to change.   

Why? Why does this happen repeatedly? I try and try, but I watch it fall apart. I truly wish we didn’t shelve that demo, Fighting Myself...that’s how I feel, every fucking day!  

Who would love me?! Fuck, I wouldn’t love me!! I would just take one look and - !!  

Don’t. The voice belonged to Mike. Chester felt his insides calm, so slightly but away from visions of blood and self-harm. Don’t go there, Ches.   

"Ches..."

He thought about the nickname Mike had called him for years now. He liked it, but it was because it was Mike, that Chester treasured it more.   

Just thinking about the emcee made his body less tense. He thought about the laughter they shared, memories swirling in his head as a small peal of laughter poured from his mouth. Then as suddenly as his mind turned to Mike, Chester’s mind returned to the darker thoughts. 

I don’t deserve the giant crib that Sam and I found together. I’m so happy to be making music, but I’m alone. As I should be, I’m such an asshole.   

I’m a mess. I’m almost...almost ready to just fuck off and die.   

I’m a disgusting man, a man who jerks off to fantasies of his best friend and wants his best friend to...to be more than that.  

Fuck, how I wish I could kiss him. Just to see what he tastes like.    

I’m nothing.  

Brad was always watching him. Chester felt pain ripple inside his heart whenever his band mates didn’t touch him, as if he was a – a cancer that was festering inside. Guilt and shame consumed him whenever he came back with alcohol or drinking himself into a black-out drunk asshole, unable to even remember anything. Mike always forgave him. He didn’t deserve forgiveness.  

Cardinally not love, which he craved like a blood-sucking, life-robbing flea that always screwed up. Mike’s touch warmed him, and was the only one to interact with him, wrapping his too-gentle arms around Chester’s skinny frame. He fought all the time to pull Mike close to hm and release the tension that had been building deep inside of him, kiss him, hold him so close he could finally grind against this lust almost so consuming him. 

Chester preferred being addicted to this feeling and love for Mike Shinoda to alcohol and every drug in the universe. But he was attached, and Mike also had a wife. There was no Mike had any romantic relationship with him, out of all people. 

Mike needed someone stable in his life. 

Not a life partner that would take his life away from him.

The dreams he had of them being something more than best friends was beautiful because it wasn't real. 

It was almost like when he was Chester Bennington of Linkin Park, all of the lows in his mind would be channeled onto the stage.  

The show was amazing. Playing in front of thousands was like a high Chester felt every time, joy and adrenaline coming from his own body. He loved Linkin Park. He had their name tattooed across his back. Even with all his screw-ups, his bandmates loved him. 

Chester lived in extremes. He had impulse control issues, which was not the best thing when you were in a band. But he had to escape somehow.  

From the face inside.  

He had always been that way. His mind was a shitshow of everchanging emotions. 

The media had taken an interest in the band, and it mystified the singer why the media had been convinced they had been a planted rock band and were fakes.

The memory was enough to make his thoughts turn inward, craving for a cigarette or distraction from going down certain roads. 

Fuck them. People complained about his tattoos and lip ring, his clothes, his habits… 

Oh yes, his habits…the drugs. Chester hadn’t had a drop of alcohol or fruity mix this morning. He had no idea yet if Brad decided to take his…resentment to the vocalist by yelling at him again.  

Even with his own issues, Chester felt bad being the weakest link and dragging people down with him. 

Mike especially.  

Mike… 

Chester was sweaty and disgusting. The Texas heat reminded him of Arizona, but it was different being in a dry heat environment rather than jumping and dancing on a stage with 30,000 people in attendance. Even so, Chester had the time of his life. Whenever he sang, whether by himself, but especially with Linkin Park, he felt sane.  

There weren’t voices in his head. The darkness that Chester had battled with seemed to disappear whenever he performed. It didn’t change from when he had been a dreadlocked teen to now a young married man in his twenties.  

He was a dad.  

Chester grinned. He resisted the urge to call Sam and drive to their home in LA. Draven was such an adorable and well-behaved baby. He turned thirteen months recently, and one of the hardest things about touring was not spending time with his family.  

That reminds me. I need to check on Jaime and Isaiah.  

Chester did his best not to be mad at Elka, his ex from high school. He had been hurt – stunned that he couldn’t speak when Elka had called him suddenly a year ago, telling him he had a son, and the boy wanted to meet his father.  

The first thing Chester thought about was the boy. Did the boy really want to meet him? Hell, he didn’t know he existed until now! The boy undoubtfully hated him. After all, he would hate him.  

Leaving his ex-girlfriend pregnant and alone, not knowing anything. Raising this child alone.  

Alone.  

He was such a horrible father. Chester had told himself that he would be a better parent than his, who were difficult, to be kind. Chester wrinkled his nose, wiping sweat off his brow as he entered where the Linkin Park lockers were.  

Mike somehow hates my dad’s guts. It’s kind of funny. I thought for sure I would hate Pops at this age, but I get it now what my angry 11 year old self didn’t. Pops was under a lot of pressure, seeing the worst of humanity everyday without support. No wonder he started screaming at me whenever he came home.   

Chester quickly banished the thoughts of his difficult childhood; to not linger on the past. If he did, memories would come back, reliving the worst period of his life, feeling his skin crawl and his body feeling so wrong.  

Mike had helped him sort out his feelings. Or self-destructive actions. Chester clearly remembered how Mike had looked at him as if he was an alien when he started telling him what the lyrics meant to him.  

Mike was extra protective today, the tattooed man thought as he was unaware of his surroundings as he went further into his mind. 

That was part of the problem. He overthought. He was too emotional. 

He kept on getting stuck in his head.  Chester continued to see the boy, who was still staring at him. Chester attempted to move forward, but his clumsy self caught his stupid feet before tripping.

Goddamn it! First being stuck in the hospital from a weird as fuck virus, and now tripping over my own feet, again!  

At least he didn’t roll his ankle this time.  

His bandmates liked to joke that he needed to be placed in bubble wrap because of how accident-prone he was. Brad started talking about spatial awareness just before the show, given that Mike was more worried about him today due to his current withdrawals, but Chester zoned out and his attention was focused on what Mike was wearing.  

The emcee looked great and ready to rock, as always. Chester bit his lip as he stared at Mike’s arms, which were crossed as he was apparently nodding with Brad who was talking about something. It was an important something but was just annoying…because the dark-haired man kept resisting the urge to at least nibble at Mike’s skin. 

It was very hard to not act on his attraction to the man. 

Or even touch him.  

Were his lips as soft as Chester’s fantasies shown him? He saw how Mike was almost ecstatic when they performed. The older man remembered how sensual the song High Volage was.  

It was as if their bodies were doing the talking about the rising tension and intimacy between the co-vocalists. It was as if Mike was the missing piece inside of him that Chester thought had been filled by Sam.  Chester had never wanted someone so badly in his life. 

He dreamed of the day he could fill his fantasies that would never go away no matter how much he hid his true feelings. The vocalist was aware of tactile he was – always the first one to comfort someone in distress. In a way, Chester was kind of like a flower – wanting to sun and all its warmth for itself.  

"Hey." Chester smiled. He hoped he didn't seem scary or too much for the fan. "How are you even here? You're far from home."

Chapter Text

The Japanese boy with midnight black hair didn’t smile. The laughter and joy seen on fans face didn’t even cross the young one’s features. 

“How did you get back here?” 

There was a word to describe quiet, but this wasn’t it. The stillness and lack of conversation – the aura around this area – was silent.  

It the direct opposite of Chester. The wild arrays of his emotions and his ability to give Mike’s music a message: or rather, their music, all six of them that made up the band. 

Chester, the man in question, didn’t feel exhausted by performing. His hyperactive nature and energy weren’t alleviated by singing with every atom that he had; Chester was able to be even more amped up after a concert, unlike many people who he was friends with, including Rob and Brad.  

The thought of Brad reminded him of how the guitarist had kicked him hard in the kidneys. Knowing my luck, I’ll be in the ICU again, Chester thought with humor about a very serious situation. I still remember that article about my hospital stay, but fuck, I can’t remember the name of it. His mind could sometimes go from one subject to another, almost like a ping pong match. 

The thought of the news story about his hospitalization just before this summer linked to the memory of his son at home who was just learning how to crawl. Although it sucked to not be able to see Draven grow up in his earliest years, the photos and videos Sam sent him reminded him of how precious and loved a life was.  

Why is it that you never think of that, asshole?   

Chester ignored the voice. He hadn’t told anyone about the intensity of the self-criticism and voices that were more than just voices, inside his mind. That would only make him seem weak and even more distant to his bandmates. It’s not like they want to hang out with me anyway, Chester thought to himself. He knew it was pathetic, but he wished Mike was here.  

Mike always seemed to know how to cheer him up.  

Like that one time when Chester had been very sad on Halloween and Mike dressed up in a silly costume just to cheer him up. The man started to laugh from the memory as if the time had not faded, but a gasp almost tore from his throat as pain radiated near his kidneys where Brad had punched him.  

Ouch. A bolt of agony echoed down Chester’s sides as he attempted to see if the punch was serious as Mike would insist it was. Instead, the singer gritted his teeth and focused on the boy in front of him.  

The teen was still looking at him as if he hadn’t moved a muscle. Chester didn’t know what to make of that, as he had been “lost” inside his mind for more than a minute. 

Why are you so crazy?   

What the fuck is wrong with you?!  

Sometimes his depression and anxiety loved to torture him - and be assholes that didn’t know how to leave him alone. 

He didn’t know why he felt emotions, felt the burning anger and suffocating sorrow and the brightness of happiness – Chester knew what it was like to lose control over his emotions, spilling his soul out. 

There was a sadness and something uneasy and fragile, almost like fear of love.  

Chester sighed. He looked at the kid more closely. He saw that the kid was wearing a school uniform. How the fuck is he wearing that?  

It’s 110 degrees outside! At least inside here, there’s air conditioning.  

The vocalist thought without regard to his own state of dress. Don’t ask why Chester wore what he did during the Live in Texas show.  

Why did he bring more than a dozen shoes on tour? Mike was the few that didn’t find that habit annoying.  

The teen obviously had money to get a ticket and get on a plane from wherever he had been. If he was from Japan, Chester thought, or if he just likes to dress up.  

Did we meet this kid before? His face looks familiar…  

His eyes were awesome. Chester had never seen eyes like them before. Wait… he remembered now. That face with red eyes…now Chester could understand why the boy looked familiar! 

Chester wanted to punch himself in the face from his lack of memory. 

After the first show in Japan when they toured for their first album, there had been many young adults, teens, and high school students in the crowd who had met the band and had their CDs signed. Chester vividly remembered now of a young college student with dyed hair with short black strands.  

She was wearing a graphic t-shirt with the band’s logo, and was wearing pants despite the warm weather in Tokyo. Chester had seen the shock of gorgeous purple hair as the young fan bowed and greeted Brad and Rob before dragging along a young boy, who was introduced to Chester.  

Chester recognized the red eyes that appeared as intense and unique as they had been two years ago. Excitement began to course through the vocalist’s frame as more details of the Meet and Greet filtered through his mind.  

The girl, Sakura, I think it was, was more excited than him, because he just stared! Some fans can get that way. If I met Scott Weiland now…I would not be able to say anything! It was so cute! The purple highlights in her hair made her look intriguing, and Chester had smiled at her after she blushed slightly after complimenting her hair.  

It’s a shame she didn’t come this time. I heard her say his name, which was what again?  

He could see the cassette player and CD in the kid’s bag, the iconic dragonfly soldier pushing against the fabric, peeking outside at the world. It had been two years, but it warmed his heart that the fans enjoyed their music. 

She asked for the cassette and CD to be signed, with a message. His name…not hers, which was so sweet of her, as I heard him talking to her in Japanese!  

And I know what an older sister sounds like when spoiling her younger brother!  

The memory of the sibling pair made him think of his own older sisters.  

“You’re that kid!” Chester’s voice echoed in the locker room, his tattooed arms moving with gestures as excitement filtered through his eyes. His eyeglasses almost fell off his face from accidentally pushing them on the floor from how animated he was to see the young fan after two years.  

“Your name is Izaya, right?” 

The kid almost did a double-take at him, a stunned expression pulling across his expression as the charismatic vocalist smiled at him. 

The boy looked at him like he was some kind of beautiful scenery of nature. 

“From the first Tokyo tour in 2001! Remember, guys?”  

The vocalist started to dance a little as he looked at his bandmates. Rob was glancing at the kid without recognition, and the clean-shaven man of the group was beaming toward the kid -  Izaya, if he remembered correctly.  

Chester, absorbed in music only he could hear in his mind, hips moving in a circular motion, did not see how Mike’s gaze lingered on the man’s backside or his back, muscles rippling with every movement.  

He didn’t notice how Mike and Rob both looked away or bit their lips. 

“You were here with someone that day! She was very beautiful, with those purple locks! I’m surprised you came without her to Texas. She was….” Chester trailed off as he saw the teen’s eyes widen in shock, then go through a multitude of emotions that concluded in a blank expression.  

Shit! I messed up again!   

A part of him wanted to know why the teen had shut down, but Chester’s mind began to fill with negative thoughts. 

Guilt and blame started to filter through his mind even as his brown eyes looked at the young teen, who now looked as if he was made out of stone. 

“What is your name?” 

Anything to get you talking, kid. I’m so sorry about the slip-up I made. I’m such an idiot sometimes!  

The AC in the room didn’t make the room less tense even as the silent boy continued to stare at them. 

Mike turned to Chester then, the emcee’s gaze not leaving the vocalist’s deep eyes and smooth cheekbones.  

It was very hard to not hug him – or touch him at this moment, wanting so badly to caress the man’s dark hair, soaked in sweat and looking so…hot.  

And it wasn’t the weather. 

“I think we’ll leave you alone for a while. Somebody’s shy,” Mike whispered with a wink at the fan, but then his teasing tone disappeared at the recognizable confusion filtering through his face. 

Rob followed shortly after Mike, the youngest of the band glancing with a bit of worry at the two people who would be left alone. They could trust Chester with the young fan, who always seemed to bring out the best in people if it wasn’t Brad.  

Rob himself saw how Mike looked at Chester; with so much love and desire it was agony to see, as Rob himself had fought against getting as close as he could to the lead singer, maybe to press a kiss with his sweaty, pretty hair.  

The best part of being in the back was that he could ogle and study Chester, when no one noticed how his breathing hitched and imagining what it would be like to act on his feelings. 

It reminded Rob of how dynamic and brash the oldest member of the band could be at times, having almost choked with laughter at the memories of the interviews they shared over the years.  

Rob simply wanted to get close to Chester, as much as he could. It was obvious to him that Chester was in love with Mike, and the emcee had no idea. Perhaps everyone brushed it off as typical Chester exuberance, or if the late nights at Mike’s apartment and the lyrics sessions that went on for hours, was an extension the vocalist’s way of loving; the extremes of the emotions, the pure kindness and rages that he had, that were overwhelming in a certain sense. 

He was glad he was silent one, because no one paid attention. If he was lucky enough, no one would find out his secret. 

Rob swallowed the pain flowing through his heart every time the two interacted on stage. It felt as if the two were extensions of each other, the way they sang and seamlessly brought such chemistry since their first stage performance. Sometimes, the way they talked to each other, it was as if the entire world disappeared.  

Mike especially was enamored with him. Rob would be laughing if the living reality of his feelings were not as painful. Mike’s “addiction” to Chester was well known and often stepped in closer to the smaller man when other people were around. It was almost a protective gesture, of how deeply Mike and Chester, by an extension, were enveloped in each other’s existence. 

Hell, Mike had almost dragged his vocalist away from Phoenix when Chester was given a hug after months of silent treatment and without touch. Mike had briefly interacted with their frontman, but even from where Rob was sitting, he could see how the vocalist smile at Mike. 

The drummer didn’t know how he had developed a crush on the man who had changed their lives. He had never felt this intense emotion around someone, to simply crave their presence and to feel so happy even at the simple sight of them. Chester was so loving and generous to all of them despite the fluctuations in his moods.  

Only Rob could begin to understand what addiction truly was and how it destroyed you and your loved ones. You became almost a shell of your former self, but for Rob, he hadn’t had the same intense sadness and anxiety their vocalist had.  

Rob had anxiety to the point of isolation, but it had been Chester who had knocked on his door when the other friends had tried for days for Rob to open the door and push through his anxiety. 

Chester had asked him what he needed. That was one of the first times Rob had been asked that question without anything in return. Without any attachments to the question, such as play one more song or try to take your anger out on the drums. The strategies worked, but, as Chester had told him as Rob was frozen by the anxiety that made it hard for him to face the day without wanting to cry, the voices are still there. They prod at your insecurities and drive you crazy until all you can think about is... 

They pick at me...  

That one song they were developing, Rob wished for the first time that Mike couldn’t read Chester so heartbreakingly easily. 

Rob had been expecting an answer from the blond-haired man who was more of a rockstar than any of them could be. But there were times that Chester simply felt this weight that made it difficult to talk to him. 

No one in his family had heard of depression when he asked. He didn’t know what it was. It was helplessness inside when you could nothing as you watched someone you cared about and loved to be “that bad” of a place. 

That was why the youngest member of the band had silently been by Chester’s side whenever the drugs or the alcohol became a result from the voices and thoughts no one was able to understand. 

Sure, there were times that Rob and the other members of the band were weary whenever Chester was hungover or just having a bad day. Sometimes, the bad day would be yelling at them for one thing or another. There were many times that it would be Rob that had to haul Chester off to his hotel room that he shared with Mike after passing out from partying.  

He didn’t share his reasons for the substances, and Rob sometimes wondered how he was able to stay clean when Chester struggled so much between sobriety and falling back to old patterns.  

It wasn’t fair.  

Why did they give him chance after chance despite Brad’s consuming anger and jealousy over the vocalist, when maybe they should have fired him? It wasn’t just because of his voice or what he provided for the band.  For Rob, the answer was very clear when he saw the bleeding heart Chester had, and how excited he could become from the simplest things. His energy and stamina made Rob feel light, and the dark-haired young man hoped that his growing affection for the vocalist hadn’t been noticed by anyone. 

Brad gets too unmovable sometimes. That guitar wasn’t that big of a deal. He’s just upset over how Mike’s been absorbed with Chester as usual and doesn’t see how much it takes to be sober or clean when your body craves for that one hit or one more drink.  

He doesn’t like not being Mike’s second friend, no longer best friend. Mike doesn’t even notice how much Chester adores and idolizes him to the point that even fans say there is something special about their relationship. I know Brad loves Chester, but the stress all of us have, and Chester going through withdrawals right now isn’t making the environment good.  

Rob had no idea what happened specifically in Brad’s mind to assault their singer, but he had been stunned and appalled when their friend started hitting Chester in their locker room after doing such an amazing show. Brad might not understand yet, but Chester was the soul of their band.  

His voice was only a small reason why Linkin Park skyrocketed to fame as high as they have been.  

Now Mike was walking away with a last glance at the vocalist, as if he could disappear into thin air as Rob quietly counted the seconds until Chester was out of sight. 

Until he could pretend that what he felt wasn’t real.

Chester's POV

“My name is Izaya,” the student stated as Bourdie and Mike’s profiles exited the locker room, his voice sounding loud in the echo. 

Chester realized the boy – still a child with a bit of baby fat still in his cheeks, wasn’t looking at them as he said those words. 

He’s talking to me , the man with the dragonfly tattoo thought with slight shock as the boy’s worship continued. His stomach sank, and Chester fought against the words that wanted to come from his mouth. 

Suddenly, even before Chester could realize what was happening, the boy appeared very close to him. His red eyes, which were dull before, now seemed animated as the teen put his hand around Chester’s disgusting dark green shirt and moved his face closer until their eyelashes were touching.  

Chester was stunned. He could feel the child’s breath on his face, trembling, and he was sure that his shocked face exposed how vulnerable his mental state was right now. 

Fuck. Uh…w-what?  

Was this even real? The teen looked like he wanted to kiss him. But that would be… 

Chester panicked, not knowing what to do in this very compromising situation. 

Chester didn’t even notice that the boy had one of his hands around his sweaty neck, pulling the adult closer to the desperate teen. 

He saw the desperation, the longing, the…helplessness as the teen now pulled Chester closer to his own lips, panicking Chester’s frozen body. 

He couldn’t move. 

His chest felt tight, and his anxiety reached elevated levels as the boy attempted to kiss him on the lips.

Chester pushed the kid aside, both of them stumbling as Izaya landed with a thump as his back collided against the lockers, hard. Chester managed to catch himself in time before he knocked his head against the bench.  

Shit. Oh, shit. Fuck. Fuck. No, fuck me! Fuck my fucking life!  

“I’m so so , sorry, kid!” Chester immediately ran to the dark-haired teen’s side, not touching him as revulsion tore through his non-existent self-esteem as their fan – never his fans – stared at him with a lost look in his red orbs. 

“Izaya…” 

The kid was looking at him, almost as if he was about to snap or cry.  

“I wasn’t thinking, and I’m sorry! Are you all right? I fucked up badly, and I’m so – ” 

His heart stopped when he saw a flash of silver clutching the teen’s hand.  

 It was hard to see what it was until the glint came closer to the light.  

The silver blade looked beautiful. It was even shining from where Chester was standing still, horror filling his lungs as a small hand pressed the knife to the young teen’s neck.  

Chester had to meet the boy’s eyes. They were deep red, swimming in a loss and despair that he himself knew more about .   

Why did he try to kiss me? That’s more than weird. Oddly enough, none of the members had encounters like this. The guilt from the hurt in the boy’s eyes tore his heart. 

He looks tired, Chester thought with a difficult swallow. His eyes appeared open and vulnerable, the fingers shaking when the adult called his name. 

“Izaya.” There was nothing else to say. What could he say? He was about the same age when the nightmare of the molestation stopped.  

HE abandoned him. Rejecting him. Leaving him alone. No more getting almost raped every time….but the scars…loneliness…of being left alone…! 

His parents didn’t even notice that anything was wrong. 

Who knew what was going on in this young boy’s brain. Could Chester honestly say to this young life that life was going to get better? 

Looking at him, at his life choices, his mistakes, and his own suicidal tendencies?  

They could make a rap sheet out of his faults. For Mike, for all the studious and meticulous ways he functioned to push them to be the best version of themselves, Chester wanted to be more. 

Mike was perfect.

Chester was nothing.  

His wife regularly told him his faults, screaming at him for doing things that he didn’t do, and steadily began to become unhappy whenever Chester went on tour. 

He wasn’t the best human being. He honestly didn’t know half of the shit his wife screamed at him before turning cold, not giving him any affection that he begged for. 

Mike didn’t like his wife. Neither did most of the band members. But it was his fault that he chose to drink away the arguments they had. Sam had told him the last time they saw each other that she didn’t know why she married him. That had cut a deep hole in him even as the addict inside of him craved for oblivion.  

But Mike... 

Mike would be devastated.  

Even if Chester was a fucking mess and the singer had no idea why the emcee even tolerated him. Being around Mike, unlike with Sam, lifted him up and made him believe that he was a good person. That he was worthy to love, and to live. Sam used to be that way as well, until...she saw how fucked-up the man she married was.  

She didn’t know the things Mike knew. She didn’t know how the scars left behind continued to plague him, how he wanted to die. 

But Mike and his new family, even if they didn’t hang out with him because of his best friends Jack Daniels and Mary, cared about him. They made him want to try and not give up. 

Be someone to be proud of.  

Chapter Text

I Was Drowning (Part I)

Why am I so adored when I...cause so much pain?

To be worthy of the adoration Chester knew that he received, but something inside...down inside his mind, knew that he didn’t this. He didn’t deserve a scrap of love his selfish heart still begged and pleaded from others.   

There was no way Mike actually wanted him as a romantic partner. They traveled together, spent so much time together, and for Chester, Mike was his guiding light.  

What was it like to be so young and wish for life to just stop? Chester knew.   

For the pain to be gone?  

He understood the agony of surviving, not living, and just existing until the pain killed you.  

“Hey, Izaya.” Those eyes wouldn’t leave him alone. They looked as lonely as if he were looking at himself at that age, already addicted to substances to escape the shitty reality he was in.

“It’s going to be okay, kid.”  

Chester reached out his hand, but he must have done something wrong. The school uniform was such a parody of the easiness of youth, the gold buttons glinting as if challenging the adult to say, “It’s going to be okay.” 

His hand was so small. 

So small compared to his own. His fingers and hands were smooth and cool to the touch.

The kid had a couple buttons of the school uniform undone, exposing a simple white t-shirt. Chester could see his chest moving, rapidly rising and falling as the blade continued to press against Izaya’s neck.  

Those eyes, beautiful and haunting, looked like jewels or rubies, pulling Chester into the abyss of the young boy’s suffering.   

I…  

I…can do this .   

It didn’t matter if he ended up in a hole in his own mind. Maybe, distracting the kid would save him from a choice he wouldn’t take back.  

“Your songs saved my life.”  

Music had always been significant to him. The music that he listened to helped him, when the thoughts and horrors in his mind wouldn’t leave him alone.  

His voice was tired. More than that, his side hurt where Brad had punched and hit him. He didn’t know why the teenager had run all the way into the locker room, besides being chased, but something about the look in his red eyes made Chester think about what he could do.   

“Memories consume,” he whispered.   

“Like opening the wound,” 

“I’m picking me apart again.  

You all assume,  

I’m safe in my room 

Un…less I try…” 

He swallowed the scream and tears, never letting go of the boy’s gaze.   

The distant look and posture slightly changed. The puppet Izaya had been appeared slightly more animated, the moment Chester opened his mouth to sing a song very close to his heart.   

Sing with me, the man thought as he slowly inched forward, sorrow and frustration flowing through his entire being as memories of his mistakes and drug addiction poured through a wound that was always bleeding.  

“Safe here in my room 

“Unless I try to start again,” his voice came out stronger, pulling out energy that he didn’t know he had. Waking up with no memories of what he did, disappointment and anger in people’s face.   

Mike not talking to him.   

Not being able to get out of bed, from being too high or drunk, or depressed to even function.  

The misery of his own mind.  

“Until I try to start – a-again,”  

Chester stopped. His breathing quickened, his hands curling into fists and screams burying his mind as the feeling of taking something sweet as any drug tore through his growing self-loathing.   

His mom throwing him out of the house, after finding him fucked-up and high at seventeen. Taking so much acid, he was stunned that the adult could hold a conversation. Chester took as many substances as he could to quiet his mind.   

To escape the memories and not because he wanted to fit in. It was a battle of life or death in his mind, to survive another day.  

Why did his mind treat him so badly? Mike and none of the others had even heard of depression or the thoughts going through his mind, Joe asking him, why he felt so sad if he was in LA in a band?  

People – even his sisters and parents – commented about his mental health, not knowing what to do with him. Sam screamed at him, yelling at him for the shit in his mind and making his mind a living minefield with every word she said.  

It didn’t matter if you were fit, healthy, or a king of the universe. Sometimes you don’t feel anything. On the opposite end, you feel too much and your mind circles around the same problem that isn’t an issue but feels like important.   

He freaked out a lot. Not in an effective way.  

His constant cycle of sobriety and going down the drain, repeatedly, voices and thoughts inside his mind, tormenting him with their torture. His wife, screaming at him and scared of him when he turned into that monster, violence against himself causing many fights and arguments.   

Mike not looking at him when he came to practice high.   

I make excuses. I…hold them down. They don’t need me.   

I’m nothing. I’m nothing.   

It hurts. It hurts.   

Why don’t I just die?!! I should have fucking died before I ruin everything, all their hard work, and here I am –  

“Unless I try to start again.” 

Chester looked at his arms and saw the flames on his wrists. He could see the kid staring at them in almost awe, and his heartbeat quickened. Please reach me, the man thought as tears continued to trail from his eyes. 

“I don’t want to be the one  

The battles always chose 

C…Cause inside I realize,” 

Chester cried, sobs catching in his throat as he tried not to break down. Shameful tears flowed from his eyes, memories actually consuming him as the reality of his actions again tore his heart to shreds.  

“I’m the one confused.” His scream bore the demons and regrets he carried with him. The boy continued to stare at him, his fingers slightly relaxing from the damning blade.  

His voice could be heard from the other room. Mike and the other band members could hear his voice from here, he was sure now. How pathetic. Why…do I do this to myself?  

I’m so stupid.   

“I don’t know what’s fighting for  

Or why I have to scream 

I don’t know why I instigate  

And say what I don’t m-mean…” 

Chester couldn’t see. The tears and sobs tearing from his eyes made him think of how Mike always held him when he cried. It didn’t seem to  matter how many times Chester broke down in his arms and cried into his shirt.   

I told my own child to stop fucking crying all the time!! When I’m a mess and do the same thing!  

What a fucking asshole I am! I hate myself, I hate myself, why do I say such stuff? I’m so sorry…I’m so sorry….  

“I don’t know how I got this way 

I know it’s not alright 

So I’m breaking the habit…”  

Chester pulled the boy to him, bringing the spellbound child into an embrace, feeling his hitched breath as his tears and emotions continued to unravel.   

He felt the smooth hilt of the blade, carefully covering the boy’s hand with his own.   

“I’m breaking the habit tonight.” 

He pulled the knife away from the boy’s hand, the coolness of the sharp steel reminding him of the young life standing in front of him. He was shocked when this time, he was pushed away, and the teen placing himself a foot away from him.   

Chester had no idea how it happened. He was seconds away from a breakdown as he put his…soul on display, and the dark-haired Japanese kid slowly started repeating…  

The lyrics? 

How…?  

He was speaking in a language Chester didn’t understand, the melody and pull of the music of the language still the darkness in his mind.   

Eventually, after more than a couple of minutes, Chester was near the boy again, the dark places in his head approaching the surface as the tattooed man placed his hand over the teen, whose eyes hadn’t left his since Chester had pocketed his knife.   

The boy's voice grew stronger as Chester continued to sing with him, his heart soaring above the darkness in his mind. 

They finished the lyrics together, Chester never letting the boy try to grab the knife again.  

Chapter Text

August 2, 2003

Dallas, Texas, USA

Chester POV

“Chester!” 

Chester's heart continued to pump blood into his veins even as his heart rate betrayed him by spiking. 

Mike.  

There are so many Mikes in this world, and yet I...

I close my eyes and yet I cannot control of how I feel, about you, about...us.

I want to see your smile, to make me feel like I deserve the love you give me. 

The name was a balm to his breaking heart. It was like the sun came out, finding Chester in his darkest moments when the lyrics Mike wrote tore deep into his soul. 

The mahogany brown-haired man turned to look at who was calling his name, his hand still on the living teenager as a smile finally reached his eyes at the sight of Mike. 

“Mikey!” The personal nickname slipped out before Chester realized it, laughter filling in his lungs instead of drowning in negative memories and a reel of his fucked-up choices burning him alive. A stirring of desire, warm and making Chester feel okay, loved, and sane….almost overwhelmed him.  

I love you, he wanted to say. It was only Mike who chased the demons away. When Chester was with the younger, braver man, he felt as if he didn’t need alcohol or drugs to chase away the thoughts in his mind.

Chester didn't know if he could ever live without someone in his life. 

Mike was like a security blanket, or like Allie, his therapy cat, his very existence reducing the thoughts to nothingness. 

Allie was his sweet little kitty, who always knew when he was freaking out or even physically sick. The cat had been on the tour bus even, and thinking about her brought a whisper of a smile to Chester's lips.

Allie chased away his demons by being his emotional support when Mike wasn't around.

With Mike, Chester felt like he could be himself. He was afriad. Of his mind. Of his guilt.

Of the weight he still carried.

But Mike was there, and the younger man provided stability and a sense of safety.

Of peace. The calmness of his mind not turning into a...house that wasn't safe.

I feel whole around you. I feel okay, alive, and sane around you…when you don’t do anything.  

I wish I could kiss you.  

Instead, the man hid his emotions deep inside his heart and smiled even wider at his friend. Chester yelled,  

“Check this out, Mike! This kid just turned one of our songs into a cover in a kick-ass language!” 

“Japanese?” Mike guessed, his bright brown eyes glancing at the teen who had been singing until they came into the locker room.  

“Nah,” Brad stated with certainty, his jealousy rising as he saw Mike continue to stare at the lead singer, anger almost pushing him to punch Chester again. “I think it’s…Slavic.” 

“And you know this how?” Joe asked with a raised eyebrow. Rob and Dave quietly made up the back, Mike having insisted on going back to the locker room after calming down Brad.  

Well, that before the tallest member of the group stopped Brad and Mike from killing each other.  

It was exhausting to know why Brad was being such a dick to Chester. Sometimes Rob wanted to take Chester away from the emcee and the guitarist before the combined pressure would potentially kill him.

Despite the kind exterior, Mike could be known to be an extremely hard boss. He pushed and pushed the vocalist and the rest of the band, to the brink. Chester had gotten very sick and had gotten various injuries just on the last tour cycle. He seemed intent on pushing himself, complete dedication to being a rockstar.  

But Rob didn’t think Chester partied to get the taste of the rockstar life, as Brad and Joe even discussed at one point.  

There was something that Rob talked to Chester about. Only his friends knew that at one point Rob had been addicted to drugs and alcohol, but Chester seemed to know immediately. The real reason why Rob wasn’t giving the singer a tough time about his substance use as much as Brad was? 

Chester had been on the sober-wagon journey since the early 1990s. It wasn’t his fault that Rob managed to go through addiction and didn’t have the same cravings and…thoughts in his head that the vocalist talked about. 

The only one who came close to understanding Chester enough was Mike. 

Mike had been close to punching his middle school friend himself after pulling him off of Chester.  

Mike’s chest immediately tensed in worry and distress as he saw pain and blood across Chester’s jaw. He hadn’t been given enough time to look over the injured man before his warm palm pressed against Mike’s chest. It was just Mike’s good luck that Chester didn’t hear his heart beating from his touch. 

I hope he’s okay with the kid from Japan, Mike thought as his mind wandered over to his vocalist before turning to Brad, who was almost pouting.  

Mike would have laughed if this was a joke, or a simple rough-housing; or extra information by Chester Bennington that they all were familiar with now. 

Their techs didn’t care about the guitars! It wasn’t unusual to Brad to throw his guitar after every set, so the emcee had zero idea why Brad’s hostility to the vocalist – even threatening to kick him out of the band when they found out about the hard drugs and alcohol, despite knowing they would have a slim chance of survival if Chester left – turned into violence.  

Mike worried. His clumsy but lovely best friend was always getting hurt. It didn’t matter if it was a small trip from his feet or if he fell sick with meningitis. The man seemed to want to push himself increasingly, to the point where his body suffered. 

Why did he always self-destruct?

It was a mystery. Or a secret.

A secret that not even Chester knew.

Why couldn’t Mike tell Chester of how his heart pounded whenever they were on stage together, of how sometimes he just wanted to keep the vocalist to himself, and hunger that started since – ? 

Brad POV

They all had to pull Brad off the smaller vocalist, whose voice had always been loud and could be heard in the other room. Brad hated it when Mike started smiling like an idiot whenever Chester did anything. But sing, especially. His voice had allowed the band to survive, and he was a kind man but… 

I’m so…frustrated! Brad screamed inside as the man pulled off his headphones from his sensitive ears, narrowing at the memory of how close the young teen was to Chester. 

“I can speak some Yiddish, and the syntax was –” 

Of course, Brad’s harsh mind thought as he gritted his teeth as the band members moved on to looking at the strange Japanese kid.  

Probably fucking diseased like Chester is, with the drugs, came his thought in pure aggravation as his glare stared daggers in Chester’s direction.

Chester POV

The joke wouldn’t come as he remembered how horror and despair filled his lungs as the boy had pressed a knife to his neck. Chester had just managed to get the knife out of the boy’s hands as the rest of the band came rushing in.  

It was too early to sing the song. Chester couldn’t even speak the second half of it. He blinked away tears that were threatening to trail onto his face. It didn’t matter how fucked-up the song made him, turning him into a mess as he sang the lyrics Mike wrote.  

They changed the words slightly, and Chester wasn’t able to meet Mike’s concerned and unconditionally loving gaze, as the lyrics shifted into something more profoundly tragic from Chester’s flowing script against Mike’s blocky handwriting.  

I blame myself for everything. I can’t forgive myself. But if it means saving someone else, who is hurting so badly, then I can just deal with the pain.

A tiny, but ironic smirk briefly echoed across his expression as memories started to increase in his head.  

Soon Chester was lost in his mind, the demons talking to him as he struggled against the numbing and sinking thoughts as Mike was still attempting to talk to the boy in his broken Japanese. The boy who had gotten on a plane from Japan, with no parents in sight.  

Chester inwardly sighed, his heart lurching as familiar emotion welled up in his chest. He recognized the almost physical and agonizing loneliness that he had felt starting after his parents divorced at the age 11.  

No.  

A voice reminded him.  

He tried to pull away from those thoughts, but as  always, he let those thoughts fuck with his mind. He had already exhausted himself with singing “Breaking the Habit.” He was going to kill himself, Chester remembered as his thoughts continued going into a never-ending cycle. He felt the sudden urge to take a gun to his head. 

His heart was heavy. Why was it that when he was supposed to be happy, he felt…numb? It felt like centipedes or flies were crawling in his skin. Chester took a breath, trying to resist the urge to fucking take the knife the kid had gotten from the Yakuza – like, WTF?!! – and slash it around his neck. Actually, a better fucking idea was to take the knife and stab in in his neck so he would hurt and scream as he choked on his own blood. Fuck. He really should try to take – 

“Ches?”  

Chester started, almost jumping up in the air as he was pulled out of his dangerous mind by one concerned looking Rob. Chester felt his body heat in embarrassment as he saw he had zoned out and missed half the conversation.  

It had nothing to do with the Texas heat. 

“Sorry, guys.” Chester pulled on his mask and smiled. “I didn’t sleep well last night and the heat in fucking unbearable, man!” 

“Chester.”  Mike knew well by know the tell-tale signs when Chester was lying about his health – physically and mentally.

“We’ve been hydrated all day. The crew has been so kind to us and I've been worried about you."

The dreaded words that never remained the same. 

"Are you okay?"

Chester swallowed slowly, familiar shame crawling up his spine. When Mike looked at him like that, with such deep compassion and understanding that the vocalist wanted to get on his knees and beg for Mike to forgive him as he cried.  

Everything he did was never enough. He wasn’t good enough for Mike. He didn’t deserve him. He didn’t deserve being part of this band.  

He didn’t deserve or even want success.  

Chester would always fuck up. It was practically his bachelor degree that he was too poor to get. Sam  even said – 

“Chester!” Chester blinked and found Mike standing beside him and touching his shoulder gently.  

“Ches. It’s okay He said it slowly, and Chester saw in his sudden blurry vision that Brad was by his left side. “You’re okay.” 

I’m not. Chester thought as his fingernails dug into his palms. I’ll never be alright. I’m tired. I’m scared. But you still don’t get it!! 

Fuck!  

Chester’s self-destructive thoughts continued to burn into his mind as Mike was starting to panic as his best friend suddenly clutched his chest as if he was in pain and he saw familiar signs of hyperventilation.  

No, please, the rapper in the band thought with increasing dread. Today was an amazing show! There weren’t any calls from Sam. He even slept through the night without drinking as much as he usually does!  

Mike was torn apart by Chester slipping in and out of sobriety, to consuming whatever drug or alcohol available. The other band members ignored him, acted like Chester didn’t even exist – whenever he was trying to become clean, then going back to habits, and going through painful, visceral withdrawals.  

Mike didn’t understand why Chester took so much alcohol and drugs to feel “okay and confident.” He had plenty to be confident about! But even though Chester became a rockstar, his demons seemed to follow him everywhere.  

But that did not matter right now.  

Chester was in a bad place in his head right now – right after performing a concert that Mike told him he was proud of his best friend.

What the fuck caused the change?

Why did he suffer so much? 

Mike thought he and his bandmates were going to do the grounding technique again, something that he started to learn about as soon as he and Chester started figuring out his voice and making lyrics together.  

He thought he was going to have to take that one step…but then someone else intervened.  

Chester was startled to find his hand being touched by a smaller one. Not by much, but definitely not belonging to an adult. The boy who had practically stolen a VIP pass, gotten passed security, broke into their locker room after being chased by assholes, all before throwing himself at Chester in a very clumsy and desperate want –

For longing, for affection.

Even if it meant half pulling a stunned Chester into an almost kiss. 

Chester had  panicked he admitted now. He wasn’t used to being flashed or groped by fans, boys and girls alike. There was hunger in their eyes that Chester was scared of – and so he was a bit too hasty as the Japanese teen stumbled and almost twisted his ankle from the force of the push.

The look of devastation and heartbreak on the kid’s face as he stared at Chester with his weird red eyes, made the frontman hastily moved forward until his blood turned into ice in his veins as the kid pulled a switchblade from the ground and put the sharp edge against his neck. 

Now the same kid was gently – almost too gently – moving his fingers against Chester’s hand. The touch was soft, gentle. As he looked into the sudden knowing eyes Chester slowly felt himself calm at the sight of the young boy’s face. His throat burned his chest fucking hurt, and it felt like he couldn’t take a breath as he thought of his sons, Jaime and Issiah, and baby Draven. He missed them.  

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. I’m still not…okay.” 

“Ches.”  

He felt his heavy heart as Mike continued to look at him. It was almost as if they were the only ones in the room.

“We know. I know your head isn’t a good place right now. It’s okay.” 

Chester needed a distraction. He wanted a drink so bad. A Jack Daniels would be great right now.  

Or 40.  

He shook his head in an attempt to shake off his mood.  

He watched blearily as Mike tried to talk to the boy named Izaya…Issaih…? Again.  

The boy didn’t speak. He refused to. Or maybe he didn’t want to. 

“Ryoushin?” 

The boy’s entire posture changed. He suddenly wrenched his hand from Chester’s causing the adult to stumble a little bit as he glared at Mike. The boy didn’t speak. He refused touch any other of the band members, intense disdain or hatred that Mike almost stepped back.

Brad challenged the boy with his own stare, and Rob attempted to speak to diffuse the situation, but the teenager started to scream in Japanese 

Chester didn’t understand a single word. But he could see the utter devastation in those eyes. There was anger too, but deeper down, he knew – intimately, deeply, unfortunately – the crushing loneliness and despair. 

And then the boy pressed play on his CD player again. 

Immediately, Chester heard his voice screaming over the small CD player the teen had brought with him. 

“It's easier to run

Replacing this pain with something numb

It's so much easier to go,”

And then he began to sing.  

Actually sing.  

Chester watched as the teen almost seem to ease – become part of the music. It wasn’t like before when the boy had barely spoken as Chester attempted to take away the sharp blade from his throat and distract him enough to get him to breathe out his pain – even though they were about a generation apart, and grew up in completely different countries, there was something raw and open about the boy that Chester knew.  

His voice was surprisingly good. Chester would put his voice in tenor range, and even though Japanese was a completely different language than English, the middle schooler sang the notes and melody without missing a beat.  

He even started to sway a little. 

Chester swallowed. No one in the band liked that song. Even though it was put to rest after only playing it once in the LP Underground before Meteora was released, it wasn't Dave's favorite song. 

There were times that the songs hit too close to reality, to the wounds deep inside. 

Why did it feel like he was watching himself, in this single fan who appeared to not know English?

"Something has been taken from deep inside of me

A secret locked away that no one can ever see. 

Wounds so deep they never show

Like moving pictures in my head

For year and year they play..."

A thin finger poked at the temple belonging to a boy that caused all six of band members to solely focus on the most odd fan encounter they had ever had since they had debuted as Linkin Park. 

"If I could change I would

Take away the pain I would."

Chester’s brown eyes bored into the boy’s eyes as he saw the same fingers that had tried to pull him into an uncoordinated and sloppy kiss jab his finger into his temple, hard. 

A gun. Chester’s chest tightened. The Japanese teen named Izaya had mimicked Chester in shooting himself.  

He felt sick. The tattooed man almost expected to feel agonizing pain in his abdomen and back, the lightning of mind-breaking waves of pain and heaviness enough to make him vomit again, just like in the early days.  

Suddenly, the soundtrack and the singing stopped.  

Chester could only hear his breathing becoming quicker as he saw the teen almost meeting his gaze in a knowing  - fucking how? – glance, their dark brown chocolate and red blood-soaked eyes met for several minutes.  

“So.” Brad interrupted the intense eye-gazing of the two, making Chester almost shudder from the shock Brad’s voice invoked from the…moment the two had. The lead singer avoided the concerned look in Mike’s eyes and the nervous pacing Pheonix was now doing. Usually, he and Mike held those glances, as if they were the only ones in the world.  

It annoyed the four bandmates to no end when the two singers would just block out the world when they seemingly communicated without a word. 

Chester somehow still remembered how hot embarrassment had quaked through his body when Mike had laughed at his bandmates comments about there being something “special” about them.  

Even more, his neck prickled at the memory of Brad’s heavy glare. In all his years, Chester had never been the focus of such stubborn, intense jealousy before. In his teenage angsty dreams, he always thought he would feel good when he finally got that recognition.  

Sam had been the one to listen to him as shameful, hot tears rolled down his face as he haltingly, attempted to speak clearly as he cried into his clunky 1999 phone. He felt afraid.  

Afraid. What was there to be afraid of? 

“You’re an angsty teen that hates his parents. Who apparently,” Brad added with a hint of respect and incredulously, “bought a plane ticket from Japan to come here, to Texas. Do you mind telling us why?” 

“Kaeru.” 

Izaya looked as if he hadn’t heard Mike try to speak to him. 

"しらねよ," Izaya said as if talking about the weather. Haphazardly, Chester noted that the black-haired teen was tensing his fingers into fists so tight they looked white as bone.  

“Listen.” Rob, the quiet one, was speaking to the boy even though no one knew for sure if he could understand English or Mike’s attempt at Japanese. Rob was patient. Bourdie is the best, Chester thought with a fond smile. He was always the one behind Mike whenever he…fucked up and came to the studio high or blackout drunk out of his mind.  

The youngest had actually been the one to find Chester violently vomiting in a trash can in one of their first concerts, before they even were on tour. The drummer hadn’t said a word. Chester had been in so much pain he had barely noticed that he had come back with a frantic Mike by his side, asking – no, demanding if Chester was okay, what had happened to him? 

For the first time in a long time, the boy from Arizona that had no home to call his own besides his shitty car and his friend Ryan’s old room, felt as if he wasn’t a burden. As if people…actually cared.  

Chester couldn’t even answer. His head was about to explode, and his eyesight was blurry – more blurry than usual, and tears had now started leaking from his eyes. He never told Mike that he threw up again – with blood this time – Oh, what a wonderful mess, Chester! A voice mocked in his mind – because he had been crying too badly from Rob’s and Mike’s combined kindness.  

The vocalist tried to remember what happened next, but he could only recall flashes of Brad and Phoenix attempting to get him off from the floor.  

His next, half-awake, half-drunk memory was of finding himself lying with Mike in his hotel room, their legs entwined with each other’s. Chester remembered vaguely of how horrified and aroused he had been, feeling Mike’s erection on his thigh.  

It’s just morning wood, he tried to tell himself even as his breathing quickened a little and his mind was suddenly awake. Mike’s face was blurry – he could barely make out any features without his glasses or contacts – but he knew without a doubt that Mike was asleep. The young man wet his chapped lips as he thought of how cute Mike must look – his face peaceful, his hair messy in the morning, his lips full and pink. He was very handsome, more handsome than Chester’s stupid butt face. 

Chester tried to pull away from his friend as he felt his groin beginning to stir. He would die of mortification if Mike found out about his hard-on and woke up with Chester wanting to hump him into the mattress and start making out with him like a horny teenager.  

He was married.  

Mike was married.  

The older man tried to think of Sam, of his wife, but somehow the thoughts of his wife didn’t fill him with love, fondness, or even lust. He had been on the road so long with Linkin Park that he spent two years of his marriage with Mike the band and touring, living on horrible fast food, and sleeping in bunk beds with Mike that certainly he should feel something for his wife for four years.  

When was the last time he had jacked off? 

Chester didn’t remember. 

A part of Chester wanted nothing more to press his lips against Mike’s to see what it felt like – ignoring the burning, incessant jealousy of Anna’s lips in particular – and just keep on kissing his best friend until he woke up and Mike would surprise him by crushing their lips together, crawling on his lap as he pulled on his hair –  

But his rational, cruel part of his brain tore away from his rapidly beating heart, guilt and self-loathing engulfing his lungs as Chester suddenly tried to not panic. His thought spinning in his head, a whirlpool of emotions, feelings, and sensations…. 

What are you doing? FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!! You cheating, criminal motherfucker! Keep this SHIT to yourself! Mike would be disguised! You’re disgusting!! Think of Sam, who you vowed to stay faithful to!  

What the fuck?!  

Maybe if…he…hadn’t….if HE…  

NOOO!!  

Chester barely remembered what happened after almost having flashback to his abusive childhood from his  fucked-up, never-going-to-be okay mind as he half-stumbled out of Mike’s hotel room.   

Mike POV

Mike was very worried when he didn’t find Chester in his hotel room. He had asked Brad if he had seen Chester, but the guitarist had shrugged and held up his hands in exasperation.   

I really need to talk about to him about this jealousy, Mike had thought as he hurried passed the hotel staff without saying a customary greeting.    

It was still early in the morning. Where was Chester? It had been a very hard night.  

Mike had never seen his best friend as distressed and pained as he was last night. Brad, Rob, and Mike had tried to tell Chester to calm down and to breathe, but the vocalist was unable to hear them or still under the influence he physically couldn’t hold a conversation like many times in the past.   

Brad had been worried when he saw Chester start to sway, and Mike felt a scream caught in his throat as he saw Chester’s dark, expressive chocolate-brown eyes roll back in his head just before his body started collapsing backwards.  

Mike had somehow been able to catch the smaller man before he could hit his head on the floor. He was surprisingly light for being in his mid-20s. Mike knew he had a soft spot for Chester. Brad accused him of giving him too much freedom and allowed his “addiction” Mike winced as he remembered the growing anger and frustration with the singer  who would often disappear for hours on end and some other band member would sneak Chester into the parties Mike and his group shunned in disgust.   

The disgust was never aimed at Chester though. Despite the band’s growing concern that morphed into frustration and disappointment whenever Chester would come back to the tour bus or recording studio high as a kite or so blackout drunk their bandmate wouldn’t be able to speak.  

He was often funny and so goofy when he was drunk or high, Mike never could understand how their accident prone bandmate was always able to find his way back to them. Sometimes Chester’s buddy, Ryan Shuck, who were close, would be with him, the two of them making ruckus by talking or singing nonsense. Mike would never forget the time he felt their energy in 2001 – both drunk, Mike noted in distaste with his nose crinkling at the smells of alcohol and sweat as both Ryan and Chester were both dancing very closely, so close their noses could touch as they sang Voltage to each other in front of the tour bus.  

Mike noted that the two had some kind of electricity about them that was sexual, Mike realized belatedly remembering how it felt on stage with Chester as they performed Voltage to the audience. There had been a change about their connection, feeling like a lightning strike of burning, raw, something he didn’t know, that didn’t hurt. Mike had no idea what it was but now, as he watched as his best friend and Ryan began to grind against each other in detached fascination, Mike began to realize that he was feeling sexual  feelings.   

Lust.  

Mike  almost recoiled from that thought as if he had been punched in the throat, no way. He wasn’t…wasn’t that way. He had always been attracted to girls, had a girlfriend in high school, and had a girlfriend named Anna. So then  why, a voice whispered in his ear sounding too much like Chester to be a coincidence, why are you always looking at him? Watching him on stage, as he jumps and just acts like a little kid? Hell, you had a hard-on when he started undressing on stage! The guys wouldn’t stop teasing me about the look on your face for weeks, and that other time…  

And you said it was because of his gorgeous tattoos.  

Tattoos! Thank God Chester believed that….even though he saw a faint smirk that made Mike’s stomach flip and bubble with excitement before he exited the locker room for the first of the two shows in Texas.

Within a flashback within a flashback (Naruto, anyone?) Mike was now able to see his feelings for a man he was happy and proud to call his best friend.  

He was in love.  

Michael Kenji Shinoda was in love with his co-vocalist and frontman, Chester Charles Bennington. 

The thought scared him shitless.  

The Japanese American’s faze drifted to the teenager who flown all the way from Japan to the  Texas heat. He was stunned. Mike knew they had a dedicated fan on their hands, but younger teens and eleven-year-olds and younger would typically come with a parent or adult present. 

And the kid came from Japan? 

He only had a small backpack with him.  

Did he even have a hotel room before, presumably, going back in time on the plane? 

Why did this kid come here instead waiting for them on their World Meteora Tour? The dates and setlists were more than already planned, and it wasn’t until next year that Linkin Park would finish their tour. 

Why was he here? 

I hope we don’t have a runaway on our hands, Mike pleaded bleakly. 

The kid and Chester were still staring at each other. Is that how it looks like to the others when we are like this? Mike swallowed. Chester could be so intense, and his emotions, all the lightness and darkness, anger, joy, elation, and sorrow, pissed-off, drunk or high, silly, sweet and kind whenever he woke up in the morning, were reflected in his dark eyes that Mike wanted to – 

“After the show, you will have to call your parents. They must be really worried about you,” Brad calmly stated after breaking the tension between the two adults and young teen. 

The reaction was instantaneous. Mike was fascinated by the hue and shading of the yet-unnamed teen’s red eyes. If he had been the same age, he would have thought the kid had no reaction.  

But being at least a decade older, Mike and the other band members saw of how the black-haired teen stiffened and backed away defensively. There were warring emotions in his eyes, shock, disgust, distress, and then – 

He laughed.  

It wasn’t a happy laugh or an elated laugh that Mike had come to know during his four-year Meet and Greets by the Linkin Park Underground – but unstable. Mike had a vivid vision of hearing Chester laughing the same way, unhinged and despairing in the throes of a very painful withdrawal period sometime back – at the end of his rope. Mike glanced at Chester, and both vocalists were communicating silently.

Something was going on with this kid. 

And then, the biggest surprise of all: 

“You humans are so interesting.” 

Chapter Text

Spoils of Youth 

Summer 2003

Toshima Ward

Tokyo, Japan

Izaya POV

Flashbacks to July 2003 and Present Day 2015

Is it okay to be in love with a dead person? 

No…that wasn’t quite right.  

Is it okay to be in love with your best friend, but you knew they were interested in someone else?  

That day in junior high school was one of the moments that made Izaya who he was. However, in Shinra’s world, the day Shinra was stabbed was simply a moment in time when Celty rejected his advances in love. 

Shinra didn’t speak of the stabbing unless he had to, almost as if the event that had changed Izaya’s entire outlook on humans, hadn’t even occurred. 

In another universe, Izaya might have gone to juvenile detention facility in Tokyo. There was no record of the star elementary school student even missing school, and so the thought of Izaya stabbing another student, and a friend, was quite a shock to the faculty.  

Of course, the idea to ignore the problem and agreeing on how to punish students who were violent and a potential threat to society was also a convenient reason why Izaya hadn’t been charged for the alleged crime.  

Izaya hadn’t been considered for the harshest punishment, it had had been handled by the adults.  

He didn’t care. Shinra hadn’t even blinked when his dark-haired classmate had told him his parents hadn’t come to the hearing about his crime.   

Crime. Such a simple word can cause various and visceral actions by human beings. Some would react in horror and disgust; some would be enraged and demanded justice.

Some didn’t react at all. Their hearts were immobile and cold.  

They had no reaction.

It was as if the world could end but they – deemed crazy or other psychological terms that Izaya was being familiar with – had no distinguishing features displaying their arousal to a deceit or to a horrific event.  

Izaya’s parents were part of that specific group. He should have known that his parents wouldn’t pause their overseas business to pay attention to their eldest son.  

They hadn’t gone to his First Year Entrance (the start of primary school) ceremony as Izaya’s classmates were watched on by their parents. Despite this, Izaya still heard the whispers. The speculations about why there was a boy with red eyes alone with no parent in sight.  

Izaya hadn’t been aware at the time how isolating school would be. His child self, having just turned seven and eager to start his education, in a hopeless and naïve pattern of thought – had believed now he wouldn’t be alone.

He suppose one of the reasons he connected so deeply to Chester Bennington was that they both were forced to raise themselves.

Izaya privately thought his own parents were practically divorced, but they had left him alone for years.

Now he would have companions, and then it wouldn’t matter that he only saw his parents once a year. Izaya pitied his childhood self. That child was still unaware of the evils and horrific things occurring during the time he existed, and that children could be cruel.  

Izaya did not make a single friend during his six years of elementary school. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t popular or was the opposite; Orihara was an excellent athlete and received top marks in school. Every time the red-eyed and quiet boy named Izaya introduced himself and tried in his quiet way, to be friends, something was off.  

With him. No one in elementary school approached him during recess during which he read, before school field trips. Izaya found Sports Day events boring and extremely irritating. Izaya now laughed at the lack of awareness his younger self had.  

Parents had such an important role to play during formative years in development. Schooling and gaining bonds was only part of the sphere a child would grow up in.  

If parents were absent, there were multiple reactions that a child would have. Izaya found that he enjoyed watching people; even if he was a ghost to the humans at school, he could at least observe them and understand their behavior. People watching was still one of Izaya’s favorite activities, although certain individuals were disturbed by the young man’s fascination with watching people in their daily lives.  

“You’re like the Japanese version of Sherlock Holmes!” 

Oh, that voice. Izaya could recognize it anywhere. Even if he lost his entire memory, that one voice would be in his mind for eternity. The voice was calming to him, the high tenor a medicine that Izaya denied he needed for a long time. Of course, that specific voice was very recognizable, and fans all over the world were awed by the range of a single human being.  

To Izaya, however, that voice was like the breeze on a warm summer day, a sakura petal during the hanami season, and the dull light during winter.  

It spoke of safety.  

It spoke of belonging and home. 

But back then, before that fateful day, Orihara Izaya was a teenager whose limited interests including people watching and gathering information. He had gotten some odd jobs of information gathering by a few neighbors years ago when he was a child to support Mairu and Kururi, and the dark-haired boy found out that he liked gathering and knowing information.  

Izaya started gathering information about the adults and his peers. Names, birthdates, addresses, the very things that were most sacred to people. As he grew older and became an information broker, there were some very dark information that he indeed did know and was himself horrified by. 

Information was his way of life. He could never do anything else, nor would he want to.  

It was the only way he was of use. 

Usefulness had its advantages.  

The Yakuza. Random citizens. A corrupt businessman, or a sly politician. All had secrets. All had words and information that they would die to keep safe, and Izaya knew all of them. It brought of rush of exhilaration and feelings that he did not yet understand. Izaya had attempted to explain what information meant to individuals, but even they had a hard time understanding.  

The cold emptiness to be replaced by something other than being alone and knowing nothing, and then knowing everything about people, controlling them, playing with them, it made him feel like a God! 

The moment he said that to them, there was silence. 

There was a reason Izaya called human beings “my humans,” and claimed to love all of humanity.  

Diagnoses were thrown around, and the shouts were particularly vicious and concerned.

Izaya was observing this entire scene with a smirk on his face when a voice said,  

“It’s similar to being on a stage, isn’t it?” Izaya turned to him, a slow and guarded warm indicated a range positive emotions racing in his Stomach, “You are the one pulling the threads! Like one of those puppet masters! Or the mayor in the Wizard of Oz!” 

The character wasn’t the mayor in the Wizard of Oz, but it was close enough. 

He never had a…connection like this before. It wasn’t supposed to happen.

They all belong in different realities. 

Especially Chester.

The day Izaya decided to take the blame for Shinra’s stabbing wasn’t because he was afraid of being punished. No. Such trivial pieces of images that would become memories had no connection. The boy who had lost his money belonging to his father during a gambling ring run by Izaya, was now his target of torment.  

Nakura-kun had a life of hell after stabbing Shinra. No amount of juvenile detention would soothe the revenge leaking in Izaya’s heart.  

His parents didn’t bother to even check their mail from Raijin which a letter informing them of an incident involving their son. 

This lack of care or even outlook on their estranged son was the usual reaction. It had always been. 

His parents didn’t arrive in Tokyo, ashamed and disappointed in their junior high son who had “stabbed” his friend. His mother didn’t scream at him for delaying a very important meeting she was supposed to be the head of, or his father stood awkwardly without fully acknowledging Izaya’s presence in the room. 

“I’m surprised you made a friend," his mother had said after a week-late phone call. That had heard people avoid you or are distant.” That had been the extent of their conversation April, a couple of months before Live in Texas.

Now he was a fully grown man and thinking fondly of the humans who he cared about too much for him to admit. 

No one else knew the extent of his relationship to the band Linkin Park. Hell, he suspected Shizu-chan believed he didn't like music. 

It was not shocking to him anymore when after seeing one parent for one year, there was silent dinners with Mairu being quiet. Izaya disliked the family dinners, so much so that at the age of 14 he decided he would not force himself into that torture cell. His mother stated they were working hard for them.

Why are you not more grateful? Your father and I calculate how much money you and the twins need. 

Izaya not felt this amount of building rage as he flashed back to when Mairu and Kururi had temper tantrums and wanted mom and dad. Izaya both loved and hated taking care of his baby sisters.

At two years old, Mairu and Kururi had been the ones to tell their kindergarten class they had brother for a family.

They didn't remember their parents or knew what the definition of father or mother was. 

"Iza-nii is everything!"  

When people saw the three of them walking outside, Izaya was always praised for being such a responsible older brother. Izaya wanted to run up to every one of these faceless creatures, because they understood nothing, didn’t care, and continued their daily lives. 

Izaya was alone. Even in first grade, where children knew each other from kindergarten, Izaya had been left to fend for himself.

He approached people, children, and even adults, but throughout the years as a school student, Izaya only watched. Human behavior was so fascinating.

Despite his peers liking him enough to not become a victim of bullying, the students didn’t know him. Izaya remembered when he was young and lonely, desperately craving his parents’ pride and joy. Even a smile. Izaya didn’t know humans were capable of smiling or have so may arrays of  facial expressions.

When the twins were born, Izaya was very angry when he was told he would be looking after them while they were overseas doing very important work for their business.  

For the first time, Izaya felt something different than disappointment and desperation for the affection he craved; he felt a rock being placed on his lungs and anger and rage – so much of it, added to the stress of now having to raise his sisters Mairu and Kururi.  

The responsibility an 8-year-old was forced to carry. 

He didn’t spend too much time on negative thoughts. The 24-year-old had bigger issues than dealing with his non-resentment over his parents. 

I told Namie I had a normal childhood, the information broker thought as he wandered around Shinjuku, the city he considered close to home. 

His secretary didn't care about anyone except her incestous love with her brother, so it isn't as if she would remember any of their conversations she reluctantly had with her employer. 

That someone…Izaya hadn't hated Shinra’s headless girlfriend when he first encountered the brown-haired boy. How could he hate someone he hadn’t met? He was impressed by Shinra’s girlfriend’s dedication to make sure that there was someone else who would listen to the junior high school student’s prattle. 

Izaya was lost. In his head, he knew that Shinra was as normal as they could get in their definition of normality. Why did it bother him to the point of feeling a sharp jolt  to his heart that Shinra had only taken the knife wound not because the older boy wanted to.

For the junior high school student, taking a knife in the abdomen would...because the scar would impress Celty.

Izaya had a sensation of being far away from his body, his human-shaped vessel only a husk as the thirteen-year-old saw Shinra, but it was like through a mirror or glass that he would never be able to touch.  

Izaya felt nothing as he methodically pressed a towel against Shinra’s bleeding side.  

Even as he had called the ambulance, the actual perpetrator had fled after failing to stab Izaya. He knew the student’s name. His reputation became coated in red after it was reported that Izaya had stabbed Shinra over a fight. The young minds, humans all stuck together in the simplicity of it all – avoided him, and Shinra became popular.  

No one from Raijin Junior High School could explain the bizarre relationship between those two.  

Not many knew that Izaya was a fan of Linkin Park. Why would they? No one made the effort to know him through the six years of primary school…why start now?

Izaya had wanted to laugh, hard, when a new rumor started that he worked for the Yakuza.  

If only they knew. Izaya was probably the only one who remembered the Violet Ghoul.  

At age eleven, Izaya had decided to practice parkour. He didn’t know exactly why. After he finished his housekeeping, fed the twins, and put them to bed…after finishing his own homework, Izaya would practice late at night until sunrise. 

There were not too many places to practice such a specific array of movements as the alleys and walkways were cluttered with restaurants, bars, izakaya, and tourist traps.

There were a couple of places that were empty until dawn, and Izaya had been practicing parkour when a voice called out.

It had been springtime, he remembered because the abandoned warehouse had a sakura tree growing inside it from an errant seed. Sakura petals got into Izaya's eyes as the boy continued to practice, but the sudden voice caused the amateur to lose his balance and fall to the ground.  

Izaya looked up from where he had been sprawled on the ground, his uniform dirty and his face covered in dirt. 

The voice belonged to a young woman, who looked around college-age. Her long hair slightly fell into her dark eyes, which were watching him in curiosity. Her face made the girl with dyed hair look younger than she probably was, considering Izaya noticed that the woman was carrying a tiny knife. The only thing she carried was a small knapsack on her back, with no make-up or jewelry at all. Izaya continued to observe, watching her as he often did. She was wearing a dark jacket over the red t-shirt, almost like the Raijin Junior High uniform. 

She didn’t look like it bothered her that a young boy was outside late at night. Izaya still had a tiny bit of baby fat around his cheeks, and his dark hair had been short.

Up until junior high school, Izaya had been considered small. Some mistook him as a girl.

The reason didn’t matter, because the first thing strangers and children noted were his eyes.  

“Hey, kid. Are you wearing contacts?” 

Ah. People always had a negative reaction to his eyes. Some children were afraid of him and screamed when they saw him. People whispered that he was probably a demon. When Izaya had been accepted into school, he had almost been rejected. The principal and teachers wanted to know if those red eyes were real, as if he was a monster about to be ripped apart and examined.

The school rules in Japan were very strict, even in Tokyo.

From ages 6 to 18, the students would wear uniforms. The girls would be unable to wear anything to cover their legs during the winter and some had to be sent home to change.

It was such a despicable system.

Students’ hair had to be a certain way.

There was even a report of a student being forced to dye her hair because it was not the usual Japanese, black or dark brown, straight hair.  

Izaya had to get a letter written and signed by his doctor that his eyes were genetic, and they were not contacts. There is no indication of insanity or disturbed mental capacity.  He had been extremely annoyed when he had to go through the same process again in March.  

Izaya had some right to hate humans. They had shown him nothing but fear, ignorance, apathy, and even anger. But yet when the woman had asked if he was wearing contacts, the answer to his question made him not think at all.  

“That’s so cool, kid. I would kill to have those eyes.” 

Izaya had no words to say. What was this feeling inside him? The warm feeling, soaking through his lungs, making his throat tight. Why did it feel that he was about to cry? 

“Who are you?” the woman asked immediately when she saw the confusion and joy written across the boy’s face.  

Izaya remembered looking at her, awe and something so warm he couldn’t help but smile at this stranger.  

"My name is – ' 

He didn’t care anymore that his parents hadn’t acknowledged him enough that they didn’t even go to his trial.  

He didn’t care that he was raising twin girls who were three years old and still capable of bringing out frustration and rage in him. He never took it out on them. He wasn’t that kind of monster.  

He didn’t care that he was currently running and running, not stopping even as his feet stumbled over rocks. His mind instead was occupied by memories of junior high school.

Izaya had been apatheticly listening to Shinra talking about his fake girlfriend as the dreaded day began. He had already taken Mairu and Kururi to kindergarten and he still had housework to finish before the end of the week if he didn’t want another argument with his parents.  

He heard the girl across from him squeal. He was about to tell her to be quiet when Izaya’s red eyes zeroed in on a cassette tape of Hybrid Theory that she was showing her friends.  

“I heard they’re going to a place in America next.” 

“Of course they’re going to play in America, Shinomiya. Where did your brain go?” 

“I really want them to play here though! Those tickets would be expensive, and my parents hate that music.” Izaya had to turn to his side to see the teenage girl’s face annoyed at the thought of her parents.  

“They’re called Linkin Park,”  

And then Izaya’s ears pricked at the familiar name.  

“But my mother doesn’t like them. I have to listen in secret.”  

She sighed dreamily, almost touching the cassette as if it was something precious or a lover.  

“The lead singer is so talented! I didn’t know anyone could sing like that, with such a range!” 

“I wish I could go to Texas!”  

“Only someone crazy would go all the way to Texas just to see this band. Even if they are good,” her friend held up her hands as Shinomiya was about to defend not the band, but Chester.  

It was obvious.  

The schoolgirl had a crush on an American singer who would not even give her the time of the day.  

Words, no, lyrics floated from the tormenter’s boy’s lips.  

“Only someone crazy would go all the way to Texas just to see this band.” 

In Izaya’s defense, the plane ticket had been an impulse buy. Logically, he knew what he was about to do was a rather poor idea.  

Somehow, having the option of seeing someone who had influenced her and the man who was in Izaya’s dreams, was too impulsive, and but felt almost...too good to go to Texas.  

To the United States, with his parents’ money that they sent for living expenses...and he didn’t care. He actually felt a ripple of joy envelop him as he bought tickets to see a band across the world.  

It felt as if his heart was about to pound out of his chest.  

The twins had a babysitter. He overpaid the teenage girl to keep quiet. Mairu had been so excited about Izaya meeting the “Angel Sleepy Voice” that she had almost knocked over one of their mother’s vases.  

Izaya sometimes sang Linkin Park songs to get them to shut up when he had work he needed to do, not be a parent for a couple of hours. Consequently, Mairu and Kururi would hum the melodies when they were happy. 

Why would they be happy? They had no reason to, as their older brother was a poor replacement for their mother and father.  

Izaya took out the plane ticket and stared at it, not thinking about the future, or about how long the flight was going to be, or even how he was even going to go to the venue where the band was playing.  

Chester Bennington’s voice echoed in his ears. How many times had Izaya listened to the album that had come out in March?  

And now he would finally be able to meet the humans who made this music, who quite frankly, saved Izaya from going insane from raising two twin girls when he was a child himself.  

Is this what excitement feels like? Izaya thought as he pocketed the ticket, glancing at the calm late July sky. There wasn’t any wind or wispy clouds.  

His heart hurt, in a comforting way, and Izaya winced inside as his face ached. Not from pain or hurt, physical or mental. 

But from smiling. 

Chapter Text

Chapter Ten

Last Time

And then, the biggest surprise of all: 

“You humans are so interesting.”

August 3, 2003

1 hour after Live in Texas

Mike’s eyes widened. Chester was looking at the schoolboy in shock. 

“Wait.” Brad ran his hands through his sweaty hair. Agitation didn’t begin to explain the negative energy Mike could feel in waves. “Why didn’t you speak English before? It would have been easier!” 

The teen grinned. It was almost a predatory grin, one that sent chills down Mike’s spine. 

“It was fun.” 

“Listen.” Pheonix was now speaking with the Japanese teen as if the knowledge he knew English the entire time didn’t even happen.

“We are all – ” he gestured to the six bandmembers of Linkin Park – “honored and amazed you came here all the way from Japan! That’s amazing! But why are you here? We have plans to go to Japan – ” 

“Dave!” Brad furiously hissed.  

Chester actually laughed. His face broke out into a smile that Mike was so relieved to see. If he could, he would make sure that Chester never had a reason to not smile again. 

“Opps.” Pheonix’s face was now as red as his hair. “I wasn’t supposed to say that. Anyway, kid – ” 

“My name isn’t Kid.”  

Funnily enough, the look of impatience and disgruntled was the most childish expression the child had so far. 

“So, then what is it?” Rob asked patiently, ever the saint. 

Mike didn’t understand the teens’ name when the raven-haired boy finally said his name. It didn’t miss Mike’s notice that he said the name to Chester.  

To Chester.

Not the band. Mike softly smiled. It took only Chester’s big heart and his…just being Chester, why people easily trusted and loved him. 

Then, Mike thought about the name he heard the teen told them. 

His name was what?!! What were his parents thinking. Mike almost wondered if this teen was messed up because of his name. 

“I have never heard that name in my life,” Mike confessed at the same time Brad replied,  

“Like the prophet? Issiah?” 

Oh yeah. Chester said his name when he first came in here… He always has the best photographic memory out of all the people –   

But Mike’s Chester-obsessed mind was halted by the sudden change over the young man’s face. 

The child named whatever-the-fuck his name was looked calm. He was actually half smiling, and Mike thought he actually looked like the young person he was supposed to be. 

“My father named me with the character to watch over. This kanji, and here,” the kid took out his flip phone and typed out the characters of his first name.  

Mike’s eyes widened at the phone. They were all getting used to mobile phones.  

“The pronunciation is usually rin, so if my father had been a different human, my name would have been Rinya.” 

“You talk about humans like you’re not one of them,” Pheonix laughed. “You’re just pulling our legs.”  

Chester looked at Pheonix in half shock, half disappointment to Mike; confusion until the teen stood still. It took a couple of seconds later for the teen to recover slightly, but Mike saw hurt and pain in his eyes for the first time. 

“Right, Issiah?” Pheonix tried but then fell silent at the teen’s serious expression. 

“It’s Izaya. EE-ZAA-YAA.” He explained it to them as if they were schoolchildren. 

It shouldn’t be a difficult name to pronounce. But somehow, only Mike was able to pronounce it after four failed attempts. 

“That’s a cool name,” Chester said with high energy as he smiled freely at Izaya. “It’s the same name as my younger son.”  

Izaya looked uncomfortable, as if he had no idea what to do about the praise. The blinding smile Chester gave seemed to be too much for the teen.

Raven bangs covered his eyes as a light blush decorated across his face.  

Suddenly the flip phone belonging to the teen came alive with a shrill ring.

Mike and the other adults watched as a frown formed across Izaya’s face as he saw who was calling.

He muttered  indecipherable Japanese words that no one understood and answered the phone with a heavy sigh. 

Mike could hear the sound of high and childish voices from where he was standing, and he felt bad for the teen named Izaya, who was holding his phone at arm’s length now and rubbing his left ear in irritation.  

“Mairu. Kururi.”  The tone he used was surprisingly gentle and kind, so unlike the chaotic teen who had snuck into the Linkin Park’s locker room to meet Chester. He sounded like an older brother. He didn’t even have to raise his voice at them even when his arm had the phone as far away from his ears as possible.  

帰る。明日は。 

えええええ？本当に？ 

本当に。約束。 

There were two voices. Were they the same age? Mike called them twins just to make it easier on his confused brain. 

He could hear the slight tremble and fear in the twin’s voice. 

Izaya even smiled slightly as he then listened to the twin speak into the phone. Mike couldn’t hear much of the other twin, as she seemed to be in monosyllables and was constantly interrupted by the other one, who Mike realized, was the main talker. The band watched as Izaya seemed to ease into his role as an older brother, radiating in something other than chaos. 

He looks okay. Tired and jetlagged, but okay.  

The flip phone closed with a snap. 

Mike was about to ask who the children on the phone were, but Chester asked a question to the teen instead.

“You’re a good brother. It’s hard being the sibling that looks after the younger ones.” 

Izaya looked at Chester in shock. He suddenly looked much younger, losing the pain in his eyes and becoming tired instead.

His lips didn’t move until Chester gestured for the boy to come to him. 

It was like pulling teeth. Izaya wouldn’t move from where he was standing, looking as if he had seen a ghost. 

“My sister Tobi who was a few years older than me, basically raised me because our parents were busy working.  I am very….aware of the look of an older sibling who took on the role of a parent.” 

Mike was now trying to understand, confusion and hurt slicing his heart. Why didn’t he tell me?   

There was always overwhelming information when Chester talked. Like the time when he mentioned it turned him on when the audience sang with him during setlists, or that he lost his virginity with an impressive girl when he was 14. He shared information about his life that the band members did not need to know. So then why hadn’t Chester mentioned any of this history to him? 

Chester’s siblings weren’t mentioned too much, except in the case of that he was the youngest. His siblings were distant, barely mentioned figures in the family life Chester had as a kid. He hadn’t mentioned anyone named Tobi when discussing his childhood! 

From what Chester described; his family had fallen apart after his parents’ divorce when he was 11. 

“Ches?” Mike could see how Chester was now watching Izaya as the kid seemed to breathe more deeply now. 

“Aneue…” Izaya spoke slowly, as if he was carefully measuring his words. “Mada…suki?” 

Chester smiled and a gentle look appeared in his eyes. 

What the fuck is going on? Mike hated being the one not understanding anything.  

“Of fucking course!” 

Since when does Chester understand Japanese?!   

Mike and the Linkin Park members watched this bizarre conversation. 

Before Izaya could even reply, his flip phone rang again. The dark-haired boy looked very annoyed as he answered the phone.  

What is it with people and screaming?! Mike wished he had his headphones in right now to stop from hearing a very loud male voice talking in frantic Japanese. 

“Shinra.” Izaya sighed and looked irritated, but he still had a relaxed posture. He said something in Japanese, which the boy – presumably around the same age – shouted into the phone very loudly.  

“Oh, right, you are in America!”  

The friend or cousin named Shinra replied in English.  

“How was  it, Orihara-kun ?” 

Was it Mike, or did he see a flash of sadness appear in Izaya’s face before disappearing just as quickly as it had appeared? 

“I thought you were only interested in your headless girlfriend, Shinra.” Izaya looked at the band and smirked at the flabbergasted looks the adults were sporting. “You’re not interested in humans.” 

Again with the humans, Mike thought. For some reason, this Shinra person seemed…off. 

“Hai, hai! Did you hear about the boy who threw an entire file cabinet at his teacher in his junior high?! And my darling Celty! Celty!” 

Mike started to get more disturbed as this Shinra character never seemed to shut up about his nonexistent girlfriend. A part of him felt pity for Izaya. The boy was obviously humoring his friend by saying, “ Sou? Sou ? Ah, sore wa … ”   

I have never met anyone who could talk that much about one person, Mike thought as the conversation – was  it a conversation if it was extremely one-sided – never seemed to end.  

Rob seemed to be thinking deeply. Mike couldn’t see Chester’s expression, but he could imagine the look of shock and sympathy  to Izaya.  

“Celty this, Celty that….thank God I’m not like that,” Mike whispered to Brad.  

Somehow Brad seemed to find that hilarious, because he snickered loudly and put his hand on Joe’s shoulder, who also immediately starting chortling with laughter.  

Even Rob’s pensive face transformed one full of mirth and amusement.  

“What?” Mike half-whispered. “I’ve never been like that in my life! Like, ever, not even with Anna!” 

That seemed to make the group of grown twelve-year-olds turn even more immature.  

They burst into laughter, almost howling at Mike’s words.  

What did he do? Did he say something wrong? 

Mike had no idea what was going on. He was not like the friend who had called Izaya from Japan! 

“Hey, your name is Shinra, right?”  

Chester, bless him to heaven and earth, stopped the love rant that Shinra had been on for the past fourteen minutes. He was directly speaking to the phone, the familiar showman eager to meet his fans showing now.  

“Since you know Izaya so well, have you listened to a band called Linkin Park? I was –  

“Oh, no, no, Shiranai-san (Stranger). No!”  

Shinra actually burst into laughter.  

“I don’t even consider Orihara-kun my friend!” 

A pin could drop.

Mike could not look at Izaya.

Horror filled his heart as Shinra continued to speak.  

“I needed someone to make a biology club, and he said he was interested in humans, so he was a perfect experiment!” 

“Experiment?” Chester whispered.  

Mike swallowed, seeing the growing rage in his best friend’s eyes. Oh, when Chester got mad, you better be ready for screaming. And not the kind Mike wanted him to.  

Mike watched as his friend clutched the cell phone in his hands so tightly it looked like it was seconds from breaking. Mike’s dark eyes couldn’t help but appreciate the muscles and sweat around Chester’s arms. His flame tattoos were breathtaking, and they only enhanced the breathtaking and stunning aura Chester had.  

“You call a friend experiment, Shinra?” 

Izaya was not saying a word.  

“Well, I wouldn’t call him a friend, exactly. I mean, even though I got stabbed to save his life –"

“What happened?!” Chester screamed.  

Mike was stunned as well. Izaya was almost stabbed? And Shinra saved his life? 

“ – and I only care about my darling Celty! Did you know that she likes – ” 

“Listen, Shinra. Pick up Izaya at the airport when he goes home.”  

Mike had seen Chester become serious in many situations. He could be the goofiest person on the planet, the sweetest and kindest, and also such a good person to be around. But it was almost like Chester was ordering the teen to do a task. His voice was almost between a growl and a whisper, turning almost the tone when he screamed the lyrics created by him and Mike.  

Why did Mike find that voice so arousing? He shuffled his feet so he didn’t have to focus on Chester’s voice and wanting desperately to find out what else that voice was capable of making.  

Don’t. Mike breathed and closed his eyes. Don’t go there. You’re fucking married! You are promised to Anna!   

It’s not my fault Chester is so hot.   

By the time Mike had gotten his brain online again, he saw several concerned looks by the band members as he saw Izaya simply standing there with the closed mobile phone in his hand. 

The teenage boy – and he was a boy, Mike thought as he saw Chester even lean down to Izaya’s smaller height and whispered something to him. The boy who had stood still as his “friend” said that horrible word vomit suddenly looked up at Chester and laughed.  

The boy wasn’t looking at the band members as he laughed. Mike looked at Chester’s confused expression as the morose yo-yo – the intensity of his emotions that eerily resembled some of Chester’s mood swings –  of a teen who started laughing as if someone had actually told him a funny joke.

Mike had not seen a look of mirth or even happiness on the boy’s face, but he saw how the boy’s body shook with laughter and an actual free smile, almost gleeful, on his face.  

Then, as quickly as the laughter came, tears started filling his eyes.

Mike wanted to help, as Izaya had apparently reached the end of his emotional rope as his laughter turned into half-sobs as tears ran down his face. Even as the boy attempted to wipe the tears away, the liquid was unrelenting as a look of agony crossed the raven-haired boy’s face.  

Chester carefully wrapped his arms around the boy. Izaya almost withdrew as his tear-stained face saw the understanding and kindness across the adult’s face, but Mike watched in almost-awe as Chester was able to use the boy’s weight against him to pull him near his shoulder, where his chin now rested.

He could see the lost and negative emotions that Chester talked about with him. The ghosts in his mind and the abuse that was the reason for depending on substances to function. 

Mike tried to understand. 

He saw a similar expression he had seen on Chester's face before.

If this was despair and sadness, Mike hadn’t seen it expressed on a face so young before. He had his own troubles in his youth, as did all his childhood friends, but not this.

Never this.  

He didn’t understand, but was always desperate to because he didn’t like not being able to do a thing for Chester. What were the demons Chester talked about? Ever since the man had met the…sunlight of his life, because Chester, despite how he self-deprecated to the point of Brad not even finding the jokes funny anymore and the darkness…the places Mike feared and hated, was his shining star.

The man who made their dream a reality became a different person, not the guy he became when drunk or high (funny as hell but always screaming at everybody and then falling into a deep depression and thoughts about killing himself) 

Mike shuddered at the thought. Would that even be possible?

I can't imagine my life without you.