For three minutes, he's mine.

The entire rest of Japan can have him the rest of the time, with their wild-eyed adulation and their UFO dolls and their posters of him in every pose from dripping wet in sheets to glossed and polished and coifed within an inch of reality, but for three minutes, Ashriel is mine.

Elysium is the band, Kepharel, Omeliel, Yarashiel, and Ashriel are what the public calls the tarento: 'talents.' Not a one of them is anything but beautiful, of course. Voices? They're not bad. There's the cute one and the womanizer and the sporty boy next door one and of course the lead, the one that keeps his smiles for backstage and the one who's body I must know better than my own. Not that he's my lover or anything like that. Nothing so intimate. But when he stumbles off the stage in the moment of downed lights, groping for his waterbottle, it's me his artificial eyes seek out in the gloom. They're lavender tonight, his eyes, and his hair's red, next week it'll be something different. Gaffers and security guards and sound technicians let him by, as the music starts up again on stage and Yarashiel (that's the ladies' man, the one that always has a cigarette) is starting his set.

Three minutes.

Three.

"Goddamn but it's hot out there tonight!" Ashriel stops in front of me, tossing his empty bottle to one of the busily running gofer girls and holding out his arms, crucified. My hands dance over the hidden snaps on the buckles of his black vinyl top, pulling it open roughly and shucking it off, handing him a towel. "Can we hold off on the cutaway jacket, Tomi? I don't really want to die onstage. Not of heatstroke, anyway."

It's really Tomiji; Ashriel's the only one that uses the abbreviation. The time for the extra syllable, even one so small, it's just that much extra time he doesn't have. Not that I mind; it's his name for me, and that at least is something I can claim he gave me. Our voices are not so quiet as one would think they'd need to be, Yarashiel's song and dialog are loud, violent, throbbing just a few feet away.

"Right. You want the white shirt, then?" I already had it pulled for him, the concert hall is hotter than midsummer, hotter even than Ashriel. The inside of his vinyl buckle top is dripping wet.

"Yeah. Yeah, I like that one."

Of course he does. It's his favorite. The fangirls love it; when he leans over the wide neckline shows a rich expanse of skin, when he pulls it up to show off the navel ring they only scream louder.

Two.

And the boots are off, and the black satin pants are in a pile on the cold concrete floor. He shimmies out of his underpants, can't have them for this costume, the sides of the pearl-gray leather pants lace up all the way to the top. I never have time to really look at him, naked in the blue backstage light. I'm holding his shirt open so he can dive into it, offering me his wrists so I can fasten the pearl buttons and add a few rings, giving him my shoulder as he steps back into his boots, bouncing to get his feet into them.

"Good audience tonight?" I ask, flipping the long red braid out of his collar and raveling it to change the color if the ribbon. The new one is silver and sheer, and I pull it out of my own hair where I kept it ready. I'm not his hairstylist, but some things I've learned to do, just so there's only one person messing about with him backstage. He asked me to, rather than having three people underfoot. The lip gloss is in my hip pocket, waiting for the last minute.

"Yeah, they always are." He winks at me, and sighs as my hands brush the damp back of his neck as I smooth the finished braid. "Unnn, GOD your hands are cool."

He must be sweltering, my hands have been damp with sweat since the show started. But I can't stop him as he leans back against me, grateful for a moment, for stillness. He smells like sweat and warm lights and hairspray and the faintest touch of cologne, spicy and expensive as the ends of his bangs brush my cheek. So close to him now, how many out there would kill for this chance, to feel these seconds of his heartbeat, to straighten the laces at his hips while he tries to even his breathing.

Taken out of context, we could have just had sex.

One.

"One minute, Ash!" the stage manager says as she rushes by, her voice echoing in my own headset over the murmur of a dozen light technicians calling cues.

"Showtime!" Ashriel tells me with a wink of a kohl-lined eye, hands on hips and pouting at me. "C'mon and paint me up, lover boy." He's back into stage mode now, thinking of the audience. Yarashiel is finishing the monologue at the end of his set and the lights are shifting slowly from blue to crimson.

Ashriel's lights.

The gloss goes on silver over his lips, frosting him, making him look surreal.

"Mmm." He rubs his lips together, tongue flickering out. "Warm. Where you been keeping that stuff?" I blush but he doesn't see, pivoting for me, to meet with approval. "Well? Do I pass?"

"You look perfect."

"Mm-wah!" He plants a kiss on the side of my face, part gratitude, part to blot his lipgloss. His fingertips hold me still, his silver rings already hot from his skin. "Couldn't do it withoutcha, Tomi. You're fabulous."

And he is gone, a silver blur onto the stage and even with my eyes closed I know when the lights come up; I hear them screaming his name. The fog machines wheeze quietly beneath the playback and the red-lit mist creeps over the audience, making them gasp with delight, as if it was Ashriel touching them as he sings.

I wonder what it is like to be out there, to be sung to. I've seen him, of course. Behind the set and on the small monitors, but it's voyeurism, really. Like looking at someone else's lover.

He's theirs now, and I'm backstage with an armful of his damp clothes, and his still-warm lip-print burning on my cheek.

Three minutes.

~owari~

by Tenshi
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