FIC – Sonata 14, C Sharp Minor

[dalicious]

tokyo ghoul; kaneki + tsukiyama, also occasionally banjou
route 29/pre-gourmet au
2865 words
for chi


It's not uncommon to hear piano music late at night, in that house in Goldenrod City that they've holed up in for the winter; it's usually on particularly cold nights, when the heating system rumbles through the house almost as violently as the storms that ensure the streetlights outside aren't visible. The whole thing lends the entire night a stifling, too-dark atmosphere that's usually rife with nightmares, and it's on those nights that Kaneki gets out of bed and puts coffee on downstairs. He always brings Tsukiyama some even if he doesn't always drink it, wandering into the study that the Gourmet had claimed as his own soon after they had all moved in.

Sometimes Tsukiyama stops playing when he hears Kaneki enter, but most of the time he doesn't; there's undeniably a sort of tension that enters him, changing the tone of his playing, and it takes him a little while to loosen up, but he always manages eventually. The chairs in his study are the rare sort that are designed for both aesthetics and comfort, and Kaneki is content to let himself sink into the plush red fabric, his own cup of coffee clasped in both hands, and he just lets his eyes wander – sometimes over those floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining the nearby wall (they're nowhere near full yet, though it doesn't seem to be for want of trying) but usually he finds himself watching Tsukiyama. He never smiles when he plays, something Kaneki finds a little surreal to look at because Tsukiyama is always smiling; instead, he's just focused in that way that people tend to be when they're off inside their heads. It's a very natural expression; the effect is strange, but maybe it's a little beautiful, in its own way.

Sometimes Kaneki considers asking if he's awake because the nightmares have found him, too.

He never does; instead, he just leans his head against the high back of that chair and he listens to whatever Tsukiyama feels like playing that night. His repertoire is broad, covering Bach and Debussy and Dvorak and something that Kaneki thinks he'd told him was Rachmaninov; it's always Beethoven that signals the fact that he's willing to talk. He can probably play the Moonlight Sonata in his sleep, and given how late it usually is when he plays Kaneki wouldn't be surprised if he's somehow managed to do exactly that at least once.

But eventually his right hand settles into that familiar pattern, and Kaneki sits up a bit straighter, even if he doesn't have anything particularly interesting to say. Some nights they just make small talk, idle chatter about their day or their Pokémon, topics that don't amount to much in the end because they both already know everything that's currently being discussed. The good nights are the ones in which they end up talking about Tokyo, because while Kaneki doesn't miss the violence he still misses home; on nights like that Tsukiyama tells him about Touka (they had known each other when they were younger and oh, he'd been so in love with her then, though he isn't anymore – maybe she'd changed, or maybe he had, but the fact is that there's nothing at all between them, if there ever had been to begin with) and sometimes he says a few things about Rize, though he says from the start that he probably doesn't have any of the answers that Kaneki is looking for. Sometimes he asks Kaneki to tell him about Hide; he asks about Nishiki once, only to laugh and back off when Kaneki doesn't seem to understand why, shaking his head and offering the explanation that he'd heard they attended the same college.

It's at moments like that that Kaneki feels a bit strange, like there's something he's missing but he has no idea how to ask what it is; he isn't sure how to tell Tsukiyama that he often gets this look in his eyes that implies he knows something Kaneki doesn't.

It's not a mocking look, either; maybe it'd be easier to tolerate if it were. But instead it's wariness, the sort of look that one gets when they're not sure the ground they're standing on is going to hold them, and there's a tightness to his smiles that makes Kaneki understand why he likes nights like this, sitting in Tsukiyama's study while he plays, because then he seems focused and calm and Kaneki isn't reminded of the notion that maybe Tsukiyama has just been a predator for too long.

Because it's easier to accept that than to think that there's something he's not telling him.

Banjou lives with them as well, in that large house in Goldenrod City; Kaneki isn't entirely sure how that happened given his relationship with Tsukiyama, if it can be called that at all. On good days they tolerate each other, and the teasing runs light through Tsukiyama's words and Banjou's responses are awkward but good-natured; they try very hard to not let Kaneki see them have bad days. Sometimes he sees it anyway, on days when they're loud and Tsukiyama's stance is aggressive and Banjou is obviously trying not to hit him, and Kaneki tries his best not to feel strangely guilty about the way they immediately stop shouting at each other as soon as they hear him trying to slip up the stairs unnoticed.

They always talk for a few minutes longer, their voices decidedly quieter but no less tense. It's always Banjou who comes up after him, and that's something Kaneki is usually grateful for, because after things like that he isn't sure how well he could take seeing Tsukiyama smile and try to act as though he hadn't been throwing physical threat displays around moments before. He hasn't seen much compared to some, but he's seen enough of how ghouls settle debates; somehow he knows that the day they settle theirs it's going to be Tsukiyama licking Banjou's blood off his hand.

Banjou's presence in his room is always welcome on days like that, though. Kaneki knows he shouldn't trust so easily; he knows what it can cost people, he knows what it's cost him in the past, and he knows exactly how fortunate he is to be here now where he can have just a bit of it back, even if it's only for a little while. But there's something about Banjou that's familiar and welcoming, even if he only remembers him from the time he's spent here. They don't talk about much but the conversations are easy; it's not like it was with Hide, nowhere close, but perhaps it's more like he'd imagine a conversation with a much older sibling to be – one where the age gap is too large for them to be very close, but it makes the room feel safe anyway.

Banjou looks at him strangely sometimes, too, but it's not the same sort of splintered, secretive look that Tsukiyama offers him; the look in Banjou's eyes is closer to sadness.

The days in which no one is fighting are surprisingly domestic, however. Kaneki finds work in a local café, and it's not like Anteiku because nothing is ever going to be like Anteiku, but it's steady income and people tip well in Goldenrod, high off their success in the Game Corner; Tsukiyama often stops by at the end of his shift, and if it's been a good day for him training-wise he'll take Kaneki out for dinner.

He never tries to select the restaurant, which Kaneki found odd at first, given that he's heard of Tsukiyama's reputation for being notoriously picky; even here it seems that hasn't changed and perhaps that's the reason why he doesn't bother designating anywhere to go, since he usually doesn't eat much regardless of the eventual location. But he insists that he enjoys going out even so, and Kaneki tries not to feel guilty about it because Tsukiyama really does seem to like it, albeit in an odd, fixated sort of way – he tends to watch Kaneki eat, chin propped in his hand and his gaze attentive to the point of staring, and the one time Kaneki had tried to ask him what he was thinking about he'd seemed to realize and he'd settled back in his chair, laughing lightly as he did so and saying that he likes watching people enjoying what they eat.

It's something he's discussed with Kaneki once before, shortly after he came to Johto; food has always been closely linked with happiness, as far as Tsukiyama is concerned, he just hasn't quite found exactly where the connection is.

Kaneki has often considered asking him whether he thinks he can find that happiness now that he can actually experience proper food, which is apparently what gave him the inspiration for this in the first place, or if he thinks that he can only find it as long as he can kill and eat humans; he never does.

He does ask him once if he's ever felt guilty.

The question comes during one of those late nights at the piano, and Kaneki can't look at him when he asks; if he's honest, he's unsurprised by the bluntness of Tsukiyama's answer – because of course he hasn't, and he doesn't see why Kaneki would think such a thing in the first place – but he still can't help the way it makes his hands tense up against the warm ceramic of the mug he's been clasping. In a way he's disappointed by the fact that he's unsurprised, though he isn't sure which of them he's disappointed with; perhaps it's this that emboldens him, that gets him to force his voice out to ask what he does next.

He wants to know whether Tsukiyama is the sort to torture his kills, to hunt for entertainment rather than through necessity; for the first time since they've started doing this, Tsukiyama freezes up so badly he slips and sours his chord. He stops as soon as he realizes, though he doesn't try to use the pedals to dampen the sound; he simply lets it ring out, loud and dissonant and resonating in the air between them, and Kaneki can feel himself move through instinct, pressing back against the chair with his eyes squeezed shut.

He can hear Tsukiyama breathing long after the chord dies. The sound is quick and unusually labored, as though he's trying to regain control of himself; he murmurs something to himself quietly in a language Kaneki doesn't understand (though he's is fairly sure it's Italian, the vowels are broad and open) before he begins playing again, his right hand settling back into that familiar opening, so steady it's almost hypnotic in the silence.

It takes him a short while longer to speak aloud, to wonder where Kaneki heard a thing like that; Kaneki isn't sure how to feel about the term he uses when he does – it's not uncommon for Tsukiyama to call people amore but there's no teasing behind it this time, the usual mockingly flirtatious tone that accompanies the word conspicuously absent, and if anything it's almost too gentle. He isn't sure he likes it, and after a while he just offers a soft noise in place of words, the sound quiet but negative, because in all honesty he hadn't heard it from anyone.

To his credit Tsukiyama seems to understand, and further still he doesn't call him a liar; he simply continues to play, though most of the emotion that usually accompanies the piece is gone – usually it flows through him easily, escaping his body through his hands, through the keys, and if Kaneki had to describe it to someone he'd probably say it's one of the more convincing arguments for ghouls having a soul that he's ever heard. But for now that quality is noticeably missing, replaced by stiff chords on the left and that oddly labored sound to Tsukiyama's breathing, and that almost too-gentle tone hasn't left his voice when he speaks again, his words soft but audible when he tells Kaneki that he used to be.

It's the sort of admission that hangs heavy; Kaneki doesn't try to press him or coax anything further out of him, instead just sitting there and listening to him play, letting Tsukiyama find the words on his own. Eventually he seems to find some that he likes, or at least some that he thinks will work for this particular situation, and he tells Kaneki quietly that he's been trying very hard to not be that person anymore.

The story Tsukiyama tells him then is different from the usual ones about his experiences in the 20th Ward; he tells him about a man he met once, one that he didn't care about any more than he cared about the rest. The man was nothing special, aesthetically speaking, and if anything his appearance had been so unremarkable that Tsukiyama normally wouldn't have noticed him at all – but paradoxically, his scent had been more appealing than anything he'd ever experienced before. It was enough to get his attention, to make Tsukiyama decide that he would be a suitable target – and so he'd taken him and he'd tortured him, and then circumstances had changed and he'd had to let him go; later he'd taken a hostage, to get that man's attention, to call him to the place he'd wanted him, and he'd tortured him again, and it was only after he was nearly killed by one of the man's friends (someone who was looking out for him, because the man was rather well-liked) that he stopped and left well enough alone.

Unfortunately, the man attracted as many enemies as he did admirers; it wasn't long before he was captured by a rivaling faction, and Tsukiyama had taken it as a slight. He accompanied others to rescue him, and he'd decided from then on to be that man's sword, to prevent future slights like that from happening again.

And after a while he'd taken that man back to the first place that he'd tortured him, and he had helped him destroy it.

There's a strange, almost breathless laugh behind his words when he tells Kaneki that the man still hates him for what he'd done; while Tsukiyama concedes that perhaps he's right to not trust him – because he does still want to eat him when he's honest, because that scent still fascinates him and the notion that he'll never be able to have the full experience is maddening, it frustrates him like very few things do – he finds something almost laughably ironic about the fact that the idea of anything happening to that man is enough to do ugly things to him. That sometimes Tsukiyama misses him so much he feels almost heartsick about it, and that he's spent most of his time here trying to figure out what that man would want him to do now, and that he honestly still doesn't know but he's fairly sure it's not what he's been doing.

He seems to have lost his place in the piece, playing the same section of it over and over; Kaneki doesn't feel the need to point it out. Instead he listens, and he drinks his coffee in silence; it's not the sort of thing he would have expected Tsukiyama to admit to in the first place, and even if the things he's telling him don't sit well with him, he can at least appreciate that he's being told. After a while Tsukiyama seems to come back into himself, and he tells Kaneki that he still doesn't feel guilty for anything that he's done, because guilt is something experienced by those that have been broken and he has never, ever been broken; he tells him that he's still the sort of predator that enjoys stalking his prey just as much as he does killing it, and he's never going to stop being that predator because that's just who he is, and if it were up to him then he would stalk and kill that man he's been talking about, and he would eat him, and he would enjoy it.

But it's for that man's sake that he's trying to not be that person anymore.

Tsukiyama stops playing altogether then, turning toward Kaneki with the quiet assertion that he probably finds him terrible now; he doesn't wait for a response – either confirmation or denial – before he says he's going to try to go back to sleep. Kaneki watches him leave the room, mumbling a quiet good-night to him as he passes, but he doesn't get up to follow him upstairs. He spends the rest of the night in the study, pulling one of Tsukiyama's books down off the shelf next to him and trying to read it despite the fact that his head feels a bit too muddled to make much sense of the words, and he remembers none of it the next morning; he just knows he wakes up with a stiff neck, still sitting in that red plush chair, and one of Banjou's coats seems to have been draped over him sometime in the early morning hours.