maayacolabackup (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
maayacolabackup) wrote2011-09-01 01:32 pm
maayacolabackup) wrote2011-09-01 01:32 pm
Entry tags:
Catch the Moment (Kato Shigeaki/Nishikido Ryo, NC-17) [2/3]
***
When Shige's mom called to tell him Taro, his best friend from childhood, had passed away in a car accident, Shige couldn't quite process it.
The rest of the day passed in a blur, and Shige didn't manage to fall asleep, spending the night with his eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling and remembering Taro's gentle smile.
His mom called again in the morning, and Shige could barely keep his eyes open as the spoke.
"Shigeaki, the funeral is on Saturday. I'll make up your room, okay?"
"Okay," Shige croaked.
"Are you gonna be alright, honey?"
"Yes," Shige told her, even though he wasn't sure yet, because he didn't want her to worry. "I have rehearsal now, so I've got to go."
"Okay, try not to dwell on it, dear. Call me when you know when you're coming home, and I'll have your father pick you up from the station."
"Okay," Shige said, and he hung up the phone. He drove to work in a daze, steering on autopilot and waking up as he slid out of the car.
Shige has always been really good about holding things together, keeping himself poised and focused even when everything around him was going crazy, but he just couldn't seem to think about anything but Taro. He kept screwing up the choreography or dancing out of step, singing out of tune or forgetting to sing at all. He could tell the others were worried. Even Ryo looked worried, an unfamiliar expression on his face, his dark eyes searching and his wide, sarcastic mouth pressed silent, and as he's walking past Shige later he pressed a warm hand to Shige's shoulder in place of the acerbic words that usually spewed forth when anyone messed up as frequently and completely as Shige had during rehearsal today.
"Is everything okay?" he asked, and for some reason it was unexpected. Shige started and turned to look at Ryo, wondering why he was bothering. That kind of thing was more Koyama's role in NewS, and Koyama's role in his life.
"Well," Shige said, eyes dropping down to the floor to stare at the patterns on the tile. "My friend died yesterday."
"Your friend?" Ryo queried. "Who?"
"A childhood friend," Shige replied. "Someone I knew when I was younger. Someone I really valued."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Ryo said. "Well, when is the funeral?" Ryo asked, and Shige sighed.
"This weekend."
"So at least you get to go home and visit your friends and family. That'll be nice won't it? See your hometown."
"Yeah, it'll be great," Shige said, and maybe Ryo could sense the insincerity in his voice because Ryo's hand, still warm on his shoulder, squeezed.
"What's wrong? Ryo demanded.
"I don't want to go back there," Shige answered, his hand tangling in the hair at the nape of his own neck. "I don't want to go there at all. Taro was... The only thing worth going back there for, besides my parents."
"What about your other friends?" Ryo questioned, and Shige looked up from the tile.
"Other friends?" Shige said, lips pulling with bitterness. "I didn't have many of those. Any of those."
Ryo swallowed, and his hand slipped down from Shige's shoulder. "You have friends now," Ryo said, and Shige feels his eyebrows crawling up his face. "I mean, Koyama likes you best, for god knows what reason. And Massu likes you. Kusano, too. Hell, even Jin likes you, and you basically just judge him all the time with that look on your face like his existence offends you deep inside."
"It does," Shige said, a smile toying with the edges of his lips. "But he's a good guy."
"So it doesn't matter if you didn't have tons of friends before you were twelve, or whatever. You're still pretty cool now." Ryo glared at him. "And if you tell anyone I said that you were cool, I will deny, deny, deny."
"Thanks, Nishikido," Shige said. "But I still don't think I can go to the funeral."
"Don't be ridiculous," Ryo told him. "This Taro was your only childhood friend and you aren't going to go to his funeral? That's lame, Kato." Ryo crossed his arms in front of his chest. "You have to go."
"You don't know what it was like for me--" Shige started to say, but then he stopped, because he knew he shouldn't be putting his problems on others, on Ryo of all people. "I just don't think I can face it alone." He felt tears in the very corners of his eyes, and he bit the flesh inside his cheek to hold them back. He felt pathetic.
"I'll go with you," Ryo said, and when Shige turned to look at him with shock, Ryo looked just as surprised with his own words. But then he smiled crookedly at Shige, and Shige felt his stomach do a tiny flip. "I'm from Osaka, too, you know. I'll go visit my family. You can meet them, if you want."
"I couldn't possibly ask you to--"
"You didn't ask," Ryo told him, looking irritated, either by Shige or by his own kindness. "I offered, for some reason even I don't understand. So shut up and say 'thank you'."
"Thank you," Shige blurted out, and Ryo looked at him and smiled.
"That's what friends are for."
***
Koyama was looking at him, confused, and Shige shifted in his chair, trying to figure out how to respond.
"Well, he offered," Shige said, and Koyama tilted his head to the side.
"I get that. What I don't get is why he offered," Koyama replied, and then he smiled. "Ryo-chan is discovering his heart~"
Shige laughed. "Maybe. Maybe he still feels like he owes me from the whole trivia show thing. I don't know. It feels like we're...closer, lately." Shige remembered Ryo's face, eyes half-lidded from alcohol and sadness, as he talked about Satoko in a low, serious voice, his head on Shige's lap. "I feel like maybe we are finally stating to understand each other."
"Don't replace me, Shige," Koyama said, with a pout. "I would have gone with you."
"Really?" Shige said, looking into Koyama's earnest gaze.
"Well, of course I would have. You're my best friend. You've got lots of friends, Shige, and we all want to be there for you."
Koyama's expression was earnest, and Shige could feel himself getting choked up. "Thanks," he said, and Koyama put a hand on top of Shige's.
"Your welcome," he said. "I can't believe you're going to take Ryo to your house."
"Me either," Shige said.
Nyanta crawled up on Shige's lap, then, and Shige couldn't help but notice the cat was wearing a little blue sweater, with pink buttons and a Peter Pan collar. "Is that...?"
Koyama beamed at him, his eyes sparkling. Nyanta preened, the perfectly shaped sweater pulling across the chest, the pink buttons shining in the lamp-light. "It came out pretty well, don't you think?"
Shige looked consideringly at the sweater, remembering the weird lump of knitted yarn in Koyama's lap. It had somehow taken shape, a much different shape than Shige had ever dreamed it could take. "It did," Shige told him.
"It just takes a little perseverance to transform things, sometimes," Koyama said, and Shige suddenly felt like the world seemed full of a lot more possibilities.
***
The train ride down to Osaka was a quiet one. Shige read a book about the progression of women's rights in Japan, while Ryo slept with his mouth open, falling onto Shige's shoulder about a quarter of the way into the ride. Shige reached over and gently closed his mouth a few times, but it always fell open a few moments later so Shige gave up after the third or fourth time.
Shige's dad met them at the train station, looking flustered to meet Ryo. "You must be Nishikido," Shige's dad said. "It's nice to meet you. We don't get to meet many of Shige's friends, since he moved to Tokyo."
Ryo looked at him with a smile. "You've never seen me in photos with Shige or anything?"
"Oh we don't pay much attention to his idol stuff," Shige's dad said. "There's too many of you. The ones Shige really likes are the ones he let's see his house, haha."
"Oh, is that so?" Ryo said, and Shige tried not to blush when Ryo turned questioning eyes on him.
"Well Shige didn't have it very easy--"
"Dad," Shige said stiffly, and Shige's dad quieted, adjusting his hands on the steering wheel.
"Right, well, you'll sleep in the guest room tonight, Nishikido, and the funeral is tomorrow at nine in the morning."
"Sounds great," Ryo said, and Shige ignored Ryo's heavy gaze, opting instead to stare out of the window.
When Ryo appeared at Shige's doorway the next morning, dressed in a black suit, with a black vest and a black tie in his hand, hair combed back, Shige was only partially ready. He had on his dress slacks and a dark gray shirt, and quickly finished with his tie.
"Help me," Ryo said. "I'm used to having someone else do this for me, you know?"
Shige agreed with a laugh, and Ryo handed him the black tie. Shige swifly looped the tie around Ryo's neck and expertly knotted it into a double windsor, straightening the tie and stepping back.
Ryo smelled nice, Shige noticed, as he stepped away and reached for his own jacket.
"Thanks," Ryo said, before he cleared his throat. "You ready?"
"As I'll ever be," Shige replied. Ryo nudged him with his shoulder, and Shige smiled down at him, "Thank you. For coming."
"Yeah, well..." Ryo said, blushing and looking discomfited. "You're welcome, I guess."
When they arrived at the temple, Shige had trouble letting go of the steering wheel, after he had parked the car. "Come on," Ryo said. "You can do this. You've been shirtless next to Japan's heartthrob, Yamashita Tomohisa, putting yourself in direct competition with his abs. That takes bravery, Kato Shigeaki. So move it."
Shige laughed, and released his death grip on the steering wheel. "Yeah," Shige said. "Let's go in."
Ryo paused next to the photo of Taro at the entrance to the temple, his eyes assessing Taro's appearance. "This him?"
"Yeah," Shige said, swallowing. "That's him. Was him."
"Big guy," Ryo said offhandedly. "How tall was he, like 190 centimeters?"
"Yeah," Shige said. "About." Shige turned away from the picture. "He used to...protect me," Shige said, and Ryo turned to look at him sharply.
"From what?" Shige said, and there was something piercing in his voice.
"Oh you know, just kid stuff," Shige said, before he walked toward Taro's parents. Ryo hung back as he greeted them with deep bows, and then they both gave him big hugs.
The brief service, lead by two Buddhist monks, was simple and beautiful, and somehow, Ryo's strong and quiet presence at his side kept him from falling apart.
Taro had been...Before Johnny's had introduced him to other kids who were just as different as he was, Taro had been, well, his only friend.
After they've walked down the steps, Shige stopped and turned around to face Ryo. Ryo had one foot on the stony ground, and the other, behind, still on the last step. "What?"
"I couldn't...have done this without you." Shige said, and then with both hands, he rubbed frantically at his head, destroying his hair. "I mean, every tome I wanted to run away or cry I imagined you making fun of me or telling the story on stage in front of thousands of people and I stuck it out."
"...Is that...a good thing?"
"Yeah," Shige said. "Because it made me push myself, made me be stronger."
"Wow," Ryo said. "I'm really awesome."
Shige laughed, and Ryo peered at him closely. "Your hair is horrific right now, by the way. It looks like it got into a fight with a grizzly bear and lost."
"Well, well, if it isn't Kato Shigeaki," said a voice behind Ryo, and Shige felt his heart sink. "All grown up and in a gay boy band."
There were four of them, and Shige remembered each of their faces clearly.
"Do you want us to sign your CDs?" Ryo said sweetly, too sweetly, and Shige could see his fists clenched. "You look like the type that has all of them hidden under his bed in a box so his friends can't see."
"Wow, Kato, Taro isn't here anymore so you found a midget to protect you?"
"You also look like the type that doesn't want to keep his teeth," Ryo said, his own teeth clenched.
"Go away," Shige said weakly, while he pulled on Ryo's jacket and guided toward the car. "God, it's a funeral and we're twenty-five years old."
"And you're still running away from everything except textbooks," the tall thin man in the center said, and then Shige shoved a snarling Ryo into the passenger seat before quickly sliding into the driver's seat.
"Sorry," Shige said, and Ryo was quiet, his face set in an expression of displeasure.
"You were bullied," Ryo said, finally, and Shige wondered if he should pull over the car.
"Well, I wouldn't go that far--"
"You were bullied." Ryo said again, and then he swore. "and then you get to Johnny's, and everything is great, and then we bully you, too."
Shige pulled over the car, pulling it onto the shoulder of the road and putting it in park. "There's a difference between you guys teasing me, and those guys, alright?"
Ryo jumped out of the car, and Shige scrambled to follow him. Ryo flopped to the ground in the middle of the grass, weeds sticking up through his hair and between his fingers. His right hand came up to shield his eyes from the climbing sun, and he glared at Shige, who was still standing.
"How can you let them talk to you like that?" Ryo snapped. "Don't you have any self-respect?"
"It's over now, alright? I don't live here anymore."
"It doesn't matter! Those guys are assholes, and you just--"
"Stop! I know, okay? I know. It's not that easy."
"You deserve more than that. Those sad excuses of human life don't have the right to talk to you or anyone else like that. Grow some balls."
"They're not bad people, they just..."
"You can't let people walk all over you or anyone else. And you can rationalize that they're good people deep inside, or whatever bullshit you tell yourself, but in the end, even 'good people' make mistakes."
"No one's perfect."
"Right. So stick up for yourself. For what you believe. And for goodness sakes, Shige, you are too smart and too successful to be pushed around by the likes of those guys. They couldn't even come up with quality insults."
"I feel like I keep saying thanks, and it keeps being not enough."
"Thanks for what? Lecturing you in a field by the side of the road and picking fights with your childhood bullies?"
"Well, yeah." Shige said. "Somehow, those things are just what I needed."
"I tend to bring out the best in people," Ryo informed him, and Shige laughed and offered him a hand, pulling Ryo up when Ryo took it.
"You're a good guy, Kato Shigeaki. I don't waste my time on mediocre people; I'm too good for that, really," Ryo said. "And don't you forget it."
"Nishikido..."
"My name's Ryo, to my friends."
And then Ryo smiled, and a hundred tiny butterflies exploded in Shige's stomach.
***
Ryo's oldest brother, when he met Shige for the first time, took one look at him and laughed. "You look like you should be catching rings with your two dimensional flying fox sidekick."
"What?"
"Come on, Sonic, let's go introduce you to the family." Shige stared after him bewilderedly, and Ryo chuckled, grabbing his arm.
"Don't worry," Ryo said. "You should be used to the Nishikido sense of humor."
"It's going to be a long day, isn't it?"
"I have a lot of brothers," Ryo said in response.
When they left for the train station, Ryo's brother stopped him at the door while Ryo bid his mother farewell. "It was nice to meet you, finally," he said. "Ryo seems really fond of you."
"Really?" Shige said dubiously, scratching his neck. "We just started getting to know each other for real. We've been group members forever, but there's always been..."
"Ryo's hard to get to know. But worth it, we think."
"I think so too," Shige said, and when Ryo dragged him out to the taxi, bitching about how everyone in his family was too lazy to take him to the train station, Shige couldn't help but grin.
***
When Ryo invited him over for beers and 'general chilling out', Shige's first impulse had been to say no. It'd probably be weird, he thought, and he'd feel totally left out. But then Ryo had turned and invited Koyama too, and suddenly the prospect of hanging out at Ryo's apartment for the first time since, well, ever, didn't seem nearly as daunting.
When Shige knocked on the door, Kamenashi Kazuya of all people answered the door. "Yo," Kamenashi said, and ushered Shige in. "Welcome to the crazy assortment of people Ryo calls his 'chill friend's."
"What does that even mean?"
"You know, the people he can hang out with not-drunk."
"Ah," Shige said, and then he spotted Koyama, lying comfortably on the floor, hand supporting his head as he watched TV, and Ryo saw him, smiled, and patted the space next to him on the couch. Shige sat down, and Ryo handed him a beer.
The beer tasted awful on Shige's lips, but the atmosphere at Ryo's place was really good tonight, so it was a sacrifice he was willing to make. Yamapi sat on the arm of the sofa, texting Jin and occasionally making blank faces at the wall as Kamenashi joined Koyama on the floor and they watched a Discovery Channel documentary about the wonderful world of cute fluffy kittens, or something equally silly, and made cooing noises at the screen. Ryo, Shige could tell, was interested in the documentary as well, but he was fighting to keep a stoic, disinterested face whenever Koyama turned around.
"Ryo-chan, look at this KITTEN," Koyama said, and Ryo's eyes widened with delight before he glanced around the room and stifled his glee. "Isn't it cute?"
"Your mom is cuter," Ryo responded grumpily. "And at least I can have sex with her."
Shige snorted with disgust, and Koyama made a tiny frown of displeasure at him, that looked more miffed than offended. Kamenashi couldn't be bothered to turn away from the screen, mesmerized by the tiny paws and fluffy faces in front of him.
"Ryo-chan is such an Ebenezer Scrooge," Kamenashi mutters, carefully not loud enough to mask the sound of mewling kittens.
Shige watched Ryo's face, and at seeing the struggle on it, he couldn't stop himself from laughing. He leaned over toward Ryo and nudged Ryo's shoulder with his own, bumping them together. "Hey," he said. "Hey."
"Hey, what?" Ryo grouched, his lips falling into a pout.
"It's okay, you know." Shige leaned his head on Ryo's shoulder, and looked up at him from his new perspective. "These are your friends."
Ryo glared down at him, leaning his head on the sofa back so he could look sideways into Shige's eyes. "So?" Ryo asked, his voice defensive.
"So you don't have to pretend," Shige said, before awkwardly swallowing. "You can like the cute little kittens, and none of us are going to think any less of you."
"Why is talking to you like talking to my grandfather?" Ryo grumbled, and then met Shige's eyes.
Ryo flushed at whatever he saw there, and turned his eyes away from Shige as Yamapi chuckled. "I'll think less of you," Yamapi said, and then he chuckled some more. "Real men like cute little puppies."
Ryo growled and threw a pillow over at Yamapi, making him drop his phone. Yamapi swore, and leaped at Ryo, and Shige scrambled back to avoid their tussle.
"Don't be ridiculous," Ryo panted from atop Yamapi, where his smaller frame had pinned the man down to the floor. "Cats are noble, proud, solitary creatures."
"Dogs are strong, and MAN'S best friend," Yamapi crowed when he finally managed the leverage to switch their positions. "And cats are totally chick pets. Real GIRLS have cats."
Koyama sat up, put his hands on his cheeks, and sighed, as Shige suppressed the giggle that wanted to burst from his throat. Ryo looked ridiculous, his long black hair tousled and flipped up strangely from Yamapi's curled fist rubbing it threateningly, and Yamapi himself was a mess from wrestling with Ryo, who was stronger than he looked. "Boys, stop fighting," Koyama said, sounding like someone's mother, as usual. Well, not Shige's mother, but still, somebody's. "I have a cat."
"Gay," Yamapi said.
"I'll have you know I like both cats and dogs," Kamenashi informed them, still lying peacefully on his stomach in front of the tv, making obnoxious baby noises whenever a new kitten appeared.
"That just makes you a real hermaphrodite," Ryo snapped, and Kamenashi turned around with a raised eyebrow.
"You want me to fight you?" Kamenashi said, his voice low and a little dangerous. "Cause you won't like that."
Yamapi glanced at Kamenashi's painted nails and sparkly t-shirt, which read 'Diva' across the front in stylized cursive English letters and glitter, and rolled his eyes. "Oh, I'm so scared," he screeched, in falsetto, and Ryo laughed. They high fived, and Kamenashi smiled a grim little smile that even Shige, the newcomer to this kind of apartment hang-out, could see was dangerous.
"Oh dear," Koyama said, and Shige reached again for his beer and pulled his legs off the floor where the three of them, Yamapi, Ryo, and Kamenashi, sat. "This won't go well." Koyama sat down next to Shige on the sofa, leaning against him and twiddling his thumbs against each other nervously.
Yamapi and Ryo didn't look worried.
Kamenashi, it turned out, was stronger than both of them combined.
"Oh shut up," Ryo said, when Shige and Koyama had collapsed against each other, laughing.
"Nothing to worry about, eh?" Shige said, as Kamenashi winked at him.
"Put your fist in your mouth," Ryo said. "I admire any talent that makes you shut the fuck up."
Ryo's put out expression just made them laugh harder.
***
"We should write together," Ryo said.
"Write what?" Shige replied blankly.
"A song, dumbass," Ryo said, with a huff. "Obviously."
"You want to write with me?" Shige felt a little like a kid being picked first for soccer, and despite being a pop idol, his face on hundreds of thousands of walls around Japan, it wasn't a feeling he was used to.
"I thought you were supposed to be the smart one in the group," Ryo snapped.
"Ryo-chan, play nice," Yamapi said, and Tegoshi nodded.
"Ryo-chan's never wanted to work with Shige before," Tegoshi said. "So Shige is probably surprised and pleased~"
"Shut up," Shige said, and to his surprise, Ryo said it at the same time.
"We were just sort of friends before," Ryo said, looking past Shige at something in the distance. "But now we're..."
"So close!" Tegoshi squealed with joy, and Koyama had his thumbs through his belt loops, rocking back and forth with amusement.
"Why, oh why, do people think you are cute and innocent?" Shige asked Tegoshi, as Massu slung his arm around Shige's shoulder.
"He's definitely cute," Massu said, and Tegoshi jumped on Yamapi's back.
Yamapi grinned over his shoulder at Tegoshi. "Oishii!" Tegoshi giggled, and Yamapi looked smitten with it as usual. "And one out of two isn't bad," Yamapi finished, and Shige sighed.
"Well?" Ryo said to Shige impatiently, and Koyama sidled up to Shige's right, brushing the back of his hand against the back of Shige's hand, in a silent gesture of support.
"He'd love to," Koyama said, and Shige grinned.
"I would," Shige admitted, and a tiny smile hovered around Ryo's mouth while Tegoshi cheered from his position on Yamapi's back.
***
The chord progression Ryo had come up with was kind of difficult, and Shige, who was a pretty good guitar player, fumbled over it twice before Ryo sighed and put down his guitar.
He came over and stood behind Shige, leaning against his back and wrapping arms around Shige in order to hold the guitar. His hands gently moved Shige's fingers slowly, showing him how to move from one string to another easily for that particular switch. "Like this," he said, and Shige felt every inch of where Ryo's body touched his. "Sorry, it's hard for me to do it left handed so I had to get behind you."
It wasn't the first time they'd hugged; they had done it for the cameras more times than Shige would ever be able to count. But it was different, like this-- they were alone in Ryo's apartment, and no one was watching them, and no girls were screaming, and there was no reason for them to be touching at all. But they were, and Ryo's chest felt warm and strong against his back, and Shige could barely concentrate on the way Ryo moved his fingers across the guitar strings. Ryo's hair brushed against Shige's cheek and neck, and it smelled like jasmine soap and tobacco and maybe a little like cedar, but that might have just been Ryo's natural smell.
"I've got it now," Shige whispered. Ryo pulled away, and on the next try, Shige executed the chord progression perfectly, bringing a smile to Ryo's face.
Shige's skin burned still, minutes after Ryo's touch disappeared.
***
"How goes the song-writing?" Jin said, chewing with his mouth open. Yamapi smacked the back of his head.
"Close your mouth Bakanishi," Yamapi told him, and Jin smiled at him. Jin's smile was lovely, Shige thought, wide and bright and natural.
Shige's own smile was still a little awkward, despite years of practice.
"It's going really well," Ryo said, slurping ramen into his mouth. "It's one of the best things I've ever helped write."
Jin raised an eyebrow. "Better than 'Hey Girl'?" Jin asked, and Shige laughed.
"Oh no, nothing so sophisticated as that," Shige said, and Ryo and Jin punched him on opposite arms, perfectly synchronized chastising.
"You had that coming," Yamapi said, and Shige attempted his own grin.
"Don't get cocky, kid," Ryo told him smugly, and a tiny ramen noodle was stuck to his chin, distracting Shige from whatever response he'd been planning on making.
His hand itches to wipe the noodle off Ryo's face, and finally he couldn't help it. He reached up with his left hand and used his thumb to wipe across Ryo's lower lip, snagging the noodle. Ryo's eyes cross as he looks down at Shoge's thumb, and the expression on his face makes Jin laugh, and his laugh is just as warm as his smile.
But as warm as Jin's laugh is, Ryo's small grin of thanks makes Shige feel even warmer, and his thumb tingled where their skin had touched.
"I think it'll be a really good collaboration," Shige said, after swallowing thickly.
"I'm looking forward to it," Yamapi said, before he slapped Jin on the back of the head again. "Jin, I told you to close your mouth when you chew."
***
"Is it fun, writing with Ryo-chan?" Koyama asked, and Shige nodded.
"It is, but he's strict about lyrics."
"He does take song-writing very seriously."
Shige crossed his arms on the kitchen table, and laid his chin on his right arm. "He says there's no depth to my love lyrics."
"Is he right?"
"He might be. I've never been in love. I have no idea what it would feel like ,or how I would even know it when I felt it."
Koyama leaned forward, his hands gripping the edge of the table. "You'll definitely know it when you feel it, Shige."
"Yeah?" Shige said, licking his lips.
"Definitely," Koyama replied, his eyes narrowing playfully at Shige. "You'll definitely know."
***
"Hey, now that we're real friends instead of work friends, or whatever the difference is, can I ask you a personal question?"
"Um, yes?" Shige replied, and Ryo leaned sideways across the table, looking intently into Shige's eyes.
"What is this Wagahai shit?"
"Eh?" Shige asked, confused.
"Your blog is written from the perspective...of an imaginary cat. A cat that is kinda gay for Koyama's very real cat, and they have adventures while you and Koyama hold hands and skip across rainbows?"
"Well, I'm allergic to cats," Shige explained. "So I can't have a real cat named Wagahai. It had to be imaginary."
Ryo blinked, slowly. "Oh great, thanks, that cleared everything up." He slapped the table. "Shige, what the fuck?"
Shige chuckled. "Are you familiar with the 1905 work by Souseki Natsume? 'Wagahai wa neko de aru'?"
"No," Ryo said flatly, as if it should be obvious that Ryo had better things to do than read weird novels from post-restoration Japan. Shige supposes it should be.
"It's a novel written from the perspective of a cat, that offers criticism about the negative changes in Japan under the new Meiji government, and the impacts of Western influence."
"Okay."
"My blog is written in that structure so as to offer an outside perspective to our fans of the absurdity of our lives."
"So it's not insane because it's ~literary~. That's what you're telling me."
"Yes?" Shige replied, unsure if he should confirm Ryo's assessment.
"Your nerdiness knows no boundaries," Ryo said, standing up and patting Shige on the shoulder. "You probably like Star Trek, too."
"I do not," Shige protested.
"Yeah you do, I can see the love of Darth Vader in your nerdy, blind little eyes," Ryo retorted, his hand sliding down Shige's arm as he stepped away. "Don't deny it."
"Darth Vader is Star Wars," Shige said, and then he blushed.
"Point made," Ryo said. "I've got a Kanjani meeting in ten minutes, so we'll continue this later, I guess. See ya, Shige."
"Aren't you going out with Akanishi?"
"Naw, I'd rather hang out with you today."
Shige watched him leave, and wondered why he felt so warm.
***
When Shige's phone vibrated on his dresser in the middle of the night, he tried to ignore it. But it just kept buzzing and buzzing, and when he finally rolled over and narrowed bleary eyes at the flashing caller ID screen, he quickly answered.
"Ryo? It's three in the morning," Shige groaned. "Where's the fire?"
"Yamapi is gay," Ryo said quickly. "With Jin."
"You say that once a day, Ryo. I'm going back to sleep." Shige closed his eyes, flopping onto his back and keeping the phone pressed up against his ear anyway, because something seemed weird about Ryo's voice.
"No, Shige, I mean actually gay." The distress in Ryo's voice was sharp in the tiny speaker of Shige's phone, and Shige opened his eyes again.
"What are you talking about? Are you drunk?" Shige asked, his fingers tightening on the phone.
"I left my keys at Pi's apartment. I didn't realize until I had gotten down to the car. So I went back upstairs, and knocked. No one answered so I tried the door. It was open. They were both...Yamapi had Jin pushed against the wall...I saw..." Ryo's voice cracked, and Shige swallowed convulsively as he tried to process what Ryo told him.
Ryo was hyperventilating on the other end of the line, and Shige felt a little lost. "Where are you?"
"Outside your apartment," Ryo said, and Shige climbed out of bed, putting on his slippers and shuffling to the door.
"I'm buzzing you in," Shige told him, and hung up the phone.
Ryo looked frazzled and distraught when he walked into Shige's kitchen, as Shige was pulling tea mugs down from the cabinet and putting them on the table, where the honey already sat waiting. "Shige, oh my god."
"Who else have you told?" Shige asked him quietly, as he poured hot water from the kettle into the mugs.
"Nobody, are you crazy? I can't tell people this!"
Shige sighed and brought the mugs over to the table. "Did they see you?"
"Yeah. Yamapi tried to stop me, and Jin just looked scared," Ryo said to the table. His face was buried in his arms. "I'm so confused."
"What's the big deal?" Shige asked. "I mean, it's unexpected but...what's the big deal?"
"They're both GUYS, Shige," Ryo replied, and Shige sat down across from him, and cradled his mug between his hands. He looked at Ryo, who was now looking back at him with wild eyes. "They're both guys. Don't you think that's weird? Don't you think that's wrong?"
"No," Shige said honestly, setting his mug on the table softly. "Not really."
Ryo set his lips in a thin line. "What do you mean?"
"It's just Pi. And Akanishi, who I have never been close to, but he's sweet, and you've always seemed to like him. So what's it matter if they like to make out when you're not there?"
"I don't know," Ryo said, mouth tightening even further. "But it does."
The atmosphere the next morning at rehearsal was tense. Shige tried not to pay attention to the way Yamapi kept trying to catch Ryo's gaze, or the way Ryo studiously avoided looking in Yamapi's general direction.
"What's going on between Leader and Ryo-chan?" Koyama whispered to Shige when Ryo went to the restroom.
"I don't know," Shige lied, and then bit his lip when Yamapi squared his shoulders and marched out of the rehearsal room, in the direction of the restroom.
Shige gave it three minutes before he went out after him. The hallway was quiet, too quiet, and Shige walked a little faster, until he turned the corner and saw them standing there, by the washroom.
Yamapi is hunched over, his arms wrapped around himself as Ryo quietly stares at him. "Ryo-chan, please." Shige had never seen Yamapi look so defeated. "Please."
"Please what?" Ryo asked, and his voice was quiet but bordering on hysterical. "Please don't tell? Please pretend you don't know? Please WHAT?"
"Please let me explain it to you," Yamapi said, and Ryo scoffed.
"What's there to explain? You and Jin fuck when I'm not around."
Yamapi winces. "It's not like that."
"Not like what? You DON'T secretly sleep together, despite the fact that you're both guys and it could devastate your careers? Are you that desperate for sex? It's-"
"We're in love, Ryo-chan!" Yamapi yelled, before flushing, and it echoed hauntingly through the hallway. Ryo looked like a goldfish, mouth slack and eyes bulging.
"I need to think about that," Ryo said finally, and he spun on his heel. "Tell everyone I felt sick and went home early."
"Okay," Yamapi replied softly, his nails digging into his own skin as he tightly clutched his own arms. "Will you...call me?"
"Maybe," Ryo answered, and then he walked down the hall and called the elevator. He looked back up, toward Yamapi, and Shige could see the conflict and distress in his eyes. "But don't call me."
Ryo stepped into the elevator without meeting Yamapi's gaze, or seeing Shige. Yamapi collapsed against the wall and covered his face with his hands, and Shige couldn't just stand there and let him suffer alone.
"Leader," Shige said. "Yamapi." Yamapi looked up, and he smiled wryly at Shige.
"I suppose you heard."
"Well yeah. Also Ryo told me last night, and I kept him at my place so he wouldn't be unsupervised."
"Oh," Yamapi said. "I guess he couldn't go to me or Jin about it, ha-ha."
"No, I guess not," Shige replied, and then Yamapi looked up at the ceiling and blinked rapidly, as if he was fighting back tears. "It's going to be okay, Leader."
"Will it?" Yamapi asked, sliding down to the floor, his back against the wall of the hallway. "Shige, I didn't choose to fall in love with another man, with Jin."
Shige dropped down next to him, and the wall was cold behind his back. "I figured," Shige replied, without judgement.
"It's like... I look at Jin," Yamapi said, and he licked his lips while he sought the right words. "When I look at Jin, I don't see another guy. I just see Jin, who he is, what I like about him and what I love about him. And it doesn't matter, to me, that he's not a girl, you know?"
Shige didn't know what to say, not really, but the look on Yamapi's face made his heart hurt, with sympathy. "Leader..."
And Shige could understand, maybe, seeing a person and not the package.
"What if I lose Ryo-chan? What if other people find out? What if we both lose everything?" Yamapi sighed and anxiously pushed his hand through his hair. "I think about it all the time, the consequences of loving Jin like this, but I can't...not love him."
They sat in silence for a while, and Shige felt lost.
"Thanks for listening, and not thinking less of me," Yamapi said.
"Yamapi, you can't change your own heart, and you shouldn't have to to make other people happy," Shige said to him in reply, and Yamapi's smile spread across his face, like the sun.
"Thank you, Shige," Yamapi told him, and stood up. "Ready to go back to practice?"
Suddenly Shige knew what he had to do. You have to stand up for what you believe in, even when it's hard.
"No, I've got something I have to take care of."
It only figured that he'd find Ryo right outside the building, in the park across the street, lying length-wise across a bench and staring at the sky. It almost seemed like he wanted Shige to find him.
Shige stopped next to the bench, blocking the sun from hitting Ryo's face and making Ryo open his eyes. "Shige?"
"I had...have a lot of respect for you Ryo. I think you're a kind person, and a good friend, and you've been there for me, when I really needed it. But now I find myself in the unique position of losing that respect."
"What?" Ryo's hands curled up in the fabric of his t-shirt, and his eyes pierced into Shige's own. They were challenging, and they made Shige want to curl up and retreat back into silence. But Shige knew now wasn't the time to back down, because Yamapi needed him to do this. Hell, Ryo needed him to do this. Shige steeled his resolve.
"Ryo, what did you love about Satoko?" Shige asked calmly. He didn't break the gaze between them, holding Ryo's eyes with his own.
"About Satoko?"Ryo looked confused about where Shige was going with this thread of conversation.
"Yes, the woman you are in love with. Tell me what about her you liked."
Ryo finally pulled his eyes away from Shige, resting his head on the arm of the bench and glaring up into the cloudless sky. "Her laugh. The way she always had something nice to say about everyone, even when I was being mean. The way she used to twist her hair around her finger when she was thinking about something complicated. And the way she would pick up a gross bug in a second but she was scared of birds." Ryo's hands fisted even tighter in his shirt, and Shige wondered if Ryo's nails were digging into his palms. "I don't know, everything."
"It's funny," Shige said, after he was sure Ryo was done talking. "Cause none of the things you mentioned just now were her vagina."
Ryo's head whipped around on his neck so fast Shige thought it might fly off. He looked torn between shock that Shige had said the word 'vagina' and confusion about why Shige had said the word 'vagina.'
"I can't believe you just said 'vagina,'" Ryo said with awe, and Shige frowned at him.
Shige recalled the way Ryo has stood up to those guys, the way Ryo's shoulders had remained straight and his head high, even though he was significantly smaller and tinier than any of them. He remembered Ryo's defiant eyes, how Ryo had shown his inner strength even as Shige had cowardishly pulled them into the car.
Now Shige had to find his own strength, against the person who had shown him it's importance.
"Listen up, Nishikido." Ryo started at the tone of Shige's voice, and that just made Shige concentrate even harder on maintaining it. "One of your best friends in the world is in there, devastated, because he fell in love with a person, not a man or a woman, a person, who is another of your best friends, and you are out here throwing a temper tantrum because that person happens to have a penis."
Ryo looked ready to argue, to spit some of his famous venom, but Shige wasn't quite finished. "Ryo, if you're willing to lose a friend over something this stupid, you need to grow up."
Ryo's aghast face, shadowed with rage and turmoil, lingered in Shige's mind long after he left the park, taking the subway back to his apartment. His and Ryo's mugs from that morning sat waiting to be washed on the kitchen table, so Shige brought them over to the sink and ran the hot water, putting a little soap directly on the sponge instead of filling the basin. He made it halfway through washing the second mug before he started to shake.
Shige has always been massively uncomfortable standing up for himself. He's always found it easier to let things slide. It's what's always made him a target for teasing, he supposed.
It had been scary, to stand up to Ryo. To tell Ryo, a man that he admired and respected and had always, always secretly wanted to like him, that he was basically being an asshole.
But Shige remembered Ryo's words to him, in Osaka, as he had squinted up at Shige, hand above his eyes to protect them from the sun. "You can't let people walk all over you or anyone else. And you can rationalize that they're good people, but in the end, even good people make mistakes."
He remembered the look in Ryo's eyes when Shige managed to tell him a little about his life before Johnny's.
Ryo had taken care of him then. Shige was taking care of Ryo now-- by helping him realize that this wasn't worth losing his best friends over.
Ryo, Shige knew, was a good person. And maybe what Shige had said would be enough.
It started to rain.
***
Ryo's hair was wet from the rain outside, plastered to his head and to his neck and face, when Shige opened the door after buzzing Ryo in. "I'm an idiot, right?"
Shige wanted to collapse with relief. "Just right now," Shige said. "Just for now."
"Oh god," Ryo said. "I am a terrible friend," he said, sitting down in Shige's foyer to untie his shoes.
Shige retreated into his bedroom and returned with a pair of athletic pants and a t-shirt. Ryo stood up and took them in his arms. "I'm a really terrible person."
"Don't be ridiculous," Shige said. "Go change."
When Ryo emerged from the washroom in the dry clothes, Shige pressed a cup of cocoa into his hands. "I feel like a little kid," Ryo said, because Shige's t-shirt was a little tthe large, the sleeves reaching Ryo's elbows, and the pants were cuffed twice at the bottom to keep Ryo from tripping on them. "It sometimes feels like I'm the only normal sized person on the planet."
"Whatever helps you sleep at night," Shige told him, sipping slowly from his own chocolate. "Careful, it's hot."
"Oh is it? The steam confused me, I thought that meant it was cold," Ryo said sarcastically, before he deflated in Shige's favorite leather armchair. "God, I'm even a dick when people are trying to be nice to me."
"It's your way of relaxing, I suppose," Shige said, half laughing.
"Wow, do I have any redeeming qualities?"
"You might," Shige said. "But I'll only tell you about them if you call Yamapi or Jin right now. Or both."
"Can't I just admit I'm wrong to you privately and not face the consequences of my own jackassery until a later time, when this has all blown over?" Ryo set his mug on the table and buried his face in his hands. Shige, for some reason, wanted to put his hand on the back of Ryo's neck, and he barely resisted the urge.
"No," Shige said patiently, and handed Ryo his backpack, which he'd left in the foyer. "Not if you don't want to lose your two best friends."
Ryo dug around in the front pocket of his bag until he found his cell phone, and he flipped it open with trepidation. "I can do this."
"Rah Rah Rah," Shige said, waving his hands in the air like a cheerleader. "Gooooooo Ryo!"
Ryo threw his head back and laughed. When he finally stopped chuckling, he looked a lot better. "Just so you know," Ryo said, as he scrolled through his contacts. "You're...one of my best friends too, now." He narrowed his eyes. "Pretend I said that in some manly and standoffish manner."
"Rah Rah," Shige replied, and Ryo dialed.
"Pi?" Ryo breathed into the phone, and Shige gathered the two mugs and went into the kitchen. "I'm so fucking sorry," he heard Ryo say, before he turned on the water to give them privacy as he did the dishes from his dinner that still sat in the sink.
"You're one of my best friends too," Shige whispered, and it was okay that Ryo couldn't hear him, because Shige was pretty sure he knew. Some weird emotion was crawling it's way up the inside of Shige's chest, and he couldn't identify it. All he knew was that Ryo was here, in his apartment, because he wanted to be. And that was enough.
Ryo wandered into the kitchen a little later, his eyes suspiciously puffy, but Shige didn't comment. "How did I manage to fumble through my life before we became closer?" Ryo said, and Shige felt like bursting.
"I'm not quite sure," Shige replied, his voice thick and soppy. "You probably just got hit a lot. In the face."
"Don't cry," Ryo said, his own voice sounding wet. "I hate people who feel things."
Shige choked on his water.
***
"Why are you staring at Ryo-chan?" Tegoshi asked, sipping obnoxiously loud on his bubble tea. "You look like a high school girl with her first crush."
"What?"
"I'm just saying."
"I'm going to count to five," Shige said, and Tegoshi bolted, giggling as he ran.
***
"Why do we have to have costumes, again?" Ryo grumbled, and Shige laughed.
"Hideous sparkles and glitter are kind of our thing," Shige answered, with an ambivalent shrug. "I've come to accept it as an occupational hazard."
"Your hair is an occupational hazard," Ryo replied half-heartedly, as he encountered something so horrific he drew his hand back with a hiss. "It's an acoustic guitar performance. I want to at least wear jeans while I sing about losing my heart like a sap to some unknown girl from the past."
"It's a good song," Shige said. "It doesn't matter what we wear to perform it."
Suddenly, Ryo went rigid beside him, his hands falling from the clothes as he looked toward the hall.
"Satoko," Ryo said, and Shige looked up from the costume rack to finally see the girl that had stolen Ryo's heart.
She was small, with long straight hair and long eyelashes. Shige couldn't see anything remarkable about her, but he knew there must be if she had captured Ryo so completely. "Nishikido," she replied, and Ryo flinched.
"Not Ryo anymore?" Ryo asked lightly, but there was something wounded in his tone, that made Shige ache.
The girl, Satoko, wrung her hands together like she didn't know what to say. "I just wanted to apologize," she said quickly, sounding a little breathless, like she was rushing to get it all out. "For how everything turned out."
"How it turned out?" Ryo laughed, bitterly, and Shige wondered if Ryo felt like he was breaking inside. "Are you happy?"
"Yes," Satoko said, and Shige tried not to look over at them, because he didn't want to see Ryo's expression.
"Then you're not sorry for how things turned out, are you?" Ryo said. "Goodbye, Satoko-- Miyamoto."
"Nishikido!"
"You don't owe me anything," Ryo said, turning around and walking over to Shige, subtly leaning against him for support. "I'm going to be just fine."
"You always were so strong," she said, and then she walked out of the dressing room.
"Are you okay?" Shige asked, after five minutes passed in silence, except for the clanking of beads and Ryo's steady, heavy breathing.
"I thought it would hurt more," Ryo said, after another minute. "To talk to her. But...I didn't feel sad, just angry."
"Angry?"
"Yeah, angry about how she wasn't honest with me, at all, and dragged me along when she knew the whole time she wanted something different."
Shige didn't speak. He could tell Ryo had more to say.
"But I don't feel heartbroken, or like I want to curl up and die," Ryo continued. "I guess I've fallen out of love."
Ryo's eyelashes were dark against the pale skin of his cheeks as Shige looked down at him, and his mouth was set in a straight line. Strands of his hair fell haphazardly around his forehead, dark as crow feathers. He looked like the brooding hero of a gothic novel, Shige thought, dark and handsome and sad.
"I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing," Shige said, and Ryo's face curled into a small grin.
"Definitely good," Ryo replied, before running his hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face. "But there were nice memories, too."
Shige dropped his hands from where he had been aimlessly looking at costumes. "Let's go."
"Go where?" Ryo asked. "We have to be here in forty minutes, give or take."
"Just to the park across the street," Shige told him, grabbing the sleeve of Ryo's jacket and tugging.
"But why,?" Ryo said, even as Shige was corralling him out the door, grabbing his messenger bag and ushering Ryo out the door.
"What are we doing out here?" Ryo said. "Are you going to kidnap me? You're not a big enough celebrity to get away with that."
Shige groaned. "I'm going to teach you how to take a picture."
"Um, don't you just hold the camera up, and press one of those buttons?" Ryo asked as Shige took his camera out of his bag, and unearthed the actual camera from it's protective case.
"Technically, yes," Shige replied. "But realistically, no, it's greater than that."
"I wish you wouldn't talk to me like one of your smartie-pants Aoyama law school friends," Ryo said. "Because when you talk all artsy and metaphorical I kind of want to hit you."
"Realistically is not a hard word," Shige said, and then he cleared his throat. "What I'm trying to say is, the hard part about taking a picture isn't in actually pressing the button and taking the picture."
"Okay..."
"The hard part is knowing what image you want to save. What part of a scene you want to immortalize, or what detail you want to showcase."
"I see," Ryo said, looking contemplative.
"That way," Shige said, not looking at Ryo, "Next time you feel something, you can save it. You can keep it like a memory."
"Ah," Ryo said, and then he cleared his throat. "So teach me."
"Look at this leaf," Shige said, gesturing to a leaf on the ground by Ryo's right foot. "What about it is interesting?"
"It's a leaf," Ryo said deadpan, but then he squatted down to look more closely. "It's torn."
"And?"
"It's got an interesting shape."
"Good," Shige said, and handed Ryo the camera, after removing the lens cap and adjusting the settings. "Now take a picture of it."
"But I don't know how to use this camera!" Ryo protested, and Shige laughed.
"Just press the button," he replied, and Ryo gingerly took the camera. He snapped a photo and then handed the camera back up to Shige, who promptly squatted next to him. "Let's see."
The picture popped up on the display, and Ryo frowned. "There's too much other stuff," he said, and Shige grinned.
"Exactly," Shige said. "Half of taking a good picture is composition. Try and not get the gum wrapper this time."
Ryo took another picture, and they looked at it together, faces pressed close to peer at the display screen. Shige could feel Ryo's warm breath on his cheek, and for some reason, it made his heart speed up. He felt hot, and he had no idea why. "This one's much better," Ryo said, and Shige's neck went red.
"Yes, it is," Shige replied, standing up and leaving Ryo with the camera.
When he had finished composing himself, he spun around only to find Ryo in his face, and heard the whir of the shutter. "I don't want to take pictures of leaves."
"Take pictures of something else then," Shige said, but Ryo shook his head.
"Taking pictures is for memories, right? I want memories of you! You said you became an idol so you could be part of a moment right?"
"Yeah," Shige said. "But I wasn't ready."
Ryo chuckled. "Now you know how it feels," Ryo said. "Going on tour with you is like having the paparazzi around, except instead of having to break into the bus, they already have a key."
"Shut up, I am not that bad." He frowned, and Ryo took another picture.
"Can you capture feelings with a camera?" Ryo asked rhetorically, and Shige took the camera out of his hands, and fiddled with the settings. He looked though the viewfinder and settled the focus on Ryo. Ryo was smiling at him quirkily, his hands shoved in his jeans pockets to fight the autumn chill, and his eyes were alight with mischief.
Shige felt his heart seize painfully between his ribs, and he'd never felt so terribly alive. And Ryo looked perfect, through the lens, and Shige admired every graceful line of Ryo's small body, lithe and elegant and shadowed through the glass.
"Yes," Shige said, and snapped a picture. "You really can." And Shige wanted to tell him that it wasn't just the subject's feelings, but the photographer's as well.
"Are you okay?" Ryo said, stepping closer. "Your voice sounds weird. Like, you usually sound a little bit dumb, but just now it sounded like you were having a stroke."
"I'm fine," Shige choked, but he wasn't fine, at all, because it had suddenly become clear.
Shige's palms were sweaty, and his throat so tight that sucking in air was an arduous task, even out here in the middle of the park.
"If you say so," Ryo said dubiously, and Shige couldn't tear his eyes away from Ryo's mouth, which was perfectly shaped, and could convey so many emotions...
"Let's go back," Shige directed, but his voice was faint. As soon as they walked back into the building, Shige escaped into the bathroom. The camera hung heavy from the neck strap, pulling down on him. He took it off and sat it on the counter, before turning on the faucet and letting the cool water run.
He splashed his face twice, then let his hands fall from his face as he looked into the mirror. He looked sick, Shige thought, green around the edges and eyes filled with fear. "No, no, no, no," Shige said to himself, as water dripped down his neck and soaked the collar of his t-shirt. "Not this," he whispered.
He wiped his hands on his jeans and picked up his camera. He hit the review button, and the picture of Ryo's grinning face filled the display screen. Shige felt like he was on fire, like everything was burning all at once and he didn't know how to put it out, or if he even wanted to.
It wasn't like his first high school crush, or like when he saw a pretty girl he was too shy to approach at a party. Instead, he felt like he'd been speared through the chest, and there was nothing he could do but bleed all those impossible feelings out of his opened heart.
Shige had never been in love, but somehow, Koyama had been right; when he finally felt it, he knew exactly what it was.
Part Three
When Shige's mom called to tell him Taro, his best friend from childhood, had passed away in a car accident, Shige couldn't quite process it.
The rest of the day passed in a blur, and Shige didn't manage to fall asleep, spending the night with his eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling and remembering Taro's gentle smile.
His mom called again in the morning, and Shige could barely keep his eyes open as the spoke.
"Shigeaki, the funeral is on Saturday. I'll make up your room, okay?"
"Okay," Shige croaked.
"Are you gonna be alright, honey?"
"Yes," Shige told her, even though he wasn't sure yet, because he didn't want her to worry. "I have rehearsal now, so I've got to go."
"Okay, try not to dwell on it, dear. Call me when you know when you're coming home, and I'll have your father pick you up from the station."
"Okay," Shige said, and he hung up the phone. He drove to work in a daze, steering on autopilot and waking up as he slid out of the car.
Shige has always been really good about holding things together, keeping himself poised and focused even when everything around him was going crazy, but he just couldn't seem to think about anything but Taro. He kept screwing up the choreography or dancing out of step, singing out of tune or forgetting to sing at all. He could tell the others were worried. Even Ryo looked worried, an unfamiliar expression on his face, his dark eyes searching and his wide, sarcastic mouth pressed silent, and as he's walking past Shige later he pressed a warm hand to Shige's shoulder in place of the acerbic words that usually spewed forth when anyone messed up as frequently and completely as Shige had during rehearsal today.
"Is everything okay?" he asked, and for some reason it was unexpected. Shige started and turned to look at Ryo, wondering why he was bothering. That kind of thing was more Koyama's role in NewS, and Koyama's role in his life.
"Well," Shige said, eyes dropping down to the floor to stare at the patterns on the tile. "My friend died yesterday."
"Your friend?" Ryo queried. "Who?"
"A childhood friend," Shige replied. "Someone I knew when I was younger. Someone I really valued."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Ryo said. "Well, when is the funeral?" Ryo asked, and Shige sighed.
"This weekend."
"So at least you get to go home and visit your friends and family. That'll be nice won't it? See your hometown."
"Yeah, it'll be great," Shige said, and maybe Ryo could sense the insincerity in his voice because Ryo's hand, still warm on his shoulder, squeezed.
"What's wrong? Ryo demanded.
"I don't want to go back there," Shige answered, his hand tangling in the hair at the nape of his own neck. "I don't want to go there at all. Taro was... The only thing worth going back there for, besides my parents."
"What about your other friends?" Ryo questioned, and Shige looked up from the tile.
"Other friends?" Shige said, lips pulling with bitterness. "I didn't have many of those. Any of those."
Ryo swallowed, and his hand slipped down from Shige's shoulder. "You have friends now," Ryo said, and Shige feels his eyebrows crawling up his face. "I mean, Koyama likes you best, for god knows what reason. And Massu likes you. Kusano, too. Hell, even Jin likes you, and you basically just judge him all the time with that look on your face like his existence offends you deep inside."
"It does," Shige said, a smile toying with the edges of his lips. "But he's a good guy."
"So it doesn't matter if you didn't have tons of friends before you were twelve, or whatever. You're still pretty cool now." Ryo glared at him. "And if you tell anyone I said that you were cool, I will deny, deny, deny."
"Thanks, Nishikido," Shige said. "But I still don't think I can go to the funeral."
"Don't be ridiculous," Ryo told him. "This Taro was your only childhood friend and you aren't going to go to his funeral? That's lame, Kato." Ryo crossed his arms in front of his chest. "You have to go."
"You don't know what it was like for me--" Shige started to say, but then he stopped, because he knew he shouldn't be putting his problems on others, on Ryo of all people. "I just don't think I can face it alone." He felt tears in the very corners of his eyes, and he bit the flesh inside his cheek to hold them back. He felt pathetic.
"I'll go with you," Ryo said, and when Shige turned to look at him with shock, Ryo looked just as surprised with his own words. But then he smiled crookedly at Shige, and Shige felt his stomach do a tiny flip. "I'm from Osaka, too, you know. I'll go visit my family. You can meet them, if you want."
"I couldn't possibly ask you to--"
"You didn't ask," Ryo told him, looking irritated, either by Shige or by his own kindness. "I offered, for some reason even I don't understand. So shut up and say 'thank you'."
"Thank you," Shige blurted out, and Ryo looked at him and smiled.
"That's what friends are for."
***
Koyama was looking at him, confused, and Shige shifted in his chair, trying to figure out how to respond.
"Well, he offered," Shige said, and Koyama tilted his head to the side.
"I get that. What I don't get is why he offered," Koyama replied, and then he smiled. "Ryo-chan is discovering his heart~"
Shige laughed. "Maybe. Maybe he still feels like he owes me from the whole trivia show thing. I don't know. It feels like we're...closer, lately." Shige remembered Ryo's face, eyes half-lidded from alcohol and sadness, as he talked about Satoko in a low, serious voice, his head on Shige's lap. "I feel like maybe we are finally stating to understand each other."
"Don't replace me, Shige," Koyama said, with a pout. "I would have gone with you."
"Really?" Shige said, looking into Koyama's earnest gaze.
"Well, of course I would have. You're my best friend. You've got lots of friends, Shige, and we all want to be there for you."
Koyama's expression was earnest, and Shige could feel himself getting choked up. "Thanks," he said, and Koyama put a hand on top of Shige's.
"Your welcome," he said. "I can't believe you're going to take Ryo to your house."
"Me either," Shige said.
Nyanta crawled up on Shige's lap, then, and Shige couldn't help but notice the cat was wearing a little blue sweater, with pink buttons and a Peter Pan collar. "Is that...?"
Koyama beamed at him, his eyes sparkling. Nyanta preened, the perfectly shaped sweater pulling across the chest, the pink buttons shining in the lamp-light. "It came out pretty well, don't you think?"
Shige looked consideringly at the sweater, remembering the weird lump of knitted yarn in Koyama's lap. It had somehow taken shape, a much different shape than Shige had ever dreamed it could take. "It did," Shige told him.
"It just takes a little perseverance to transform things, sometimes," Koyama said, and Shige suddenly felt like the world seemed full of a lot more possibilities.
***
The train ride down to Osaka was a quiet one. Shige read a book about the progression of women's rights in Japan, while Ryo slept with his mouth open, falling onto Shige's shoulder about a quarter of the way into the ride. Shige reached over and gently closed his mouth a few times, but it always fell open a few moments later so Shige gave up after the third or fourth time.
Shige's dad met them at the train station, looking flustered to meet Ryo. "You must be Nishikido," Shige's dad said. "It's nice to meet you. We don't get to meet many of Shige's friends, since he moved to Tokyo."
Ryo looked at him with a smile. "You've never seen me in photos with Shige or anything?"
"Oh we don't pay much attention to his idol stuff," Shige's dad said. "There's too many of you. The ones Shige really likes are the ones he let's see his house, haha."
"Oh, is that so?" Ryo said, and Shige tried not to blush when Ryo turned questioning eyes on him.
"Well Shige didn't have it very easy--"
"Dad," Shige said stiffly, and Shige's dad quieted, adjusting his hands on the steering wheel.
"Right, well, you'll sleep in the guest room tonight, Nishikido, and the funeral is tomorrow at nine in the morning."
"Sounds great," Ryo said, and Shige ignored Ryo's heavy gaze, opting instead to stare out of the window.
When Ryo appeared at Shige's doorway the next morning, dressed in a black suit, with a black vest and a black tie in his hand, hair combed back, Shige was only partially ready. He had on his dress slacks and a dark gray shirt, and quickly finished with his tie.
"Help me," Ryo said. "I'm used to having someone else do this for me, you know?"
Shige agreed with a laugh, and Ryo handed him the black tie. Shige swifly looped the tie around Ryo's neck and expertly knotted it into a double windsor, straightening the tie and stepping back.
Ryo smelled nice, Shige noticed, as he stepped away and reached for his own jacket.
"Thanks," Ryo said, before he cleared his throat. "You ready?"
"As I'll ever be," Shige replied. Ryo nudged him with his shoulder, and Shige smiled down at him, "Thank you. For coming."
"Yeah, well..." Ryo said, blushing and looking discomfited. "You're welcome, I guess."
When they arrived at the temple, Shige had trouble letting go of the steering wheel, after he had parked the car. "Come on," Ryo said. "You can do this. You've been shirtless next to Japan's heartthrob, Yamashita Tomohisa, putting yourself in direct competition with his abs. That takes bravery, Kato Shigeaki. So move it."
Shige laughed, and released his death grip on the steering wheel. "Yeah," Shige said. "Let's go in."
Ryo paused next to the photo of Taro at the entrance to the temple, his eyes assessing Taro's appearance. "This him?"
"Yeah," Shige said, swallowing. "That's him. Was him."
"Big guy," Ryo said offhandedly. "How tall was he, like 190 centimeters?"
"Yeah," Shige said. "About." Shige turned away from the picture. "He used to...protect me," Shige said, and Ryo turned to look at him sharply.
"From what?" Shige said, and there was something piercing in his voice.
"Oh you know, just kid stuff," Shige said, before he walked toward Taro's parents. Ryo hung back as he greeted them with deep bows, and then they both gave him big hugs.
The brief service, lead by two Buddhist monks, was simple and beautiful, and somehow, Ryo's strong and quiet presence at his side kept him from falling apart.
Taro had been...Before Johnny's had introduced him to other kids who were just as different as he was, Taro had been, well, his only friend.
After they've walked down the steps, Shige stopped and turned around to face Ryo. Ryo had one foot on the stony ground, and the other, behind, still on the last step. "What?"
"I couldn't...have done this without you." Shige said, and then with both hands, he rubbed frantically at his head, destroying his hair. "I mean, every tome I wanted to run away or cry I imagined you making fun of me or telling the story on stage in front of thousands of people and I stuck it out."
"...Is that...a good thing?"
"Yeah," Shige said. "Because it made me push myself, made me be stronger."
"Wow," Ryo said. "I'm really awesome."
Shige laughed, and Ryo peered at him closely. "Your hair is horrific right now, by the way. It looks like it got into a fight with a grizzly bear and lost."
"Well, well, if it isn't Kato Shigeaki," said a voice behind Ryo, and Shige felt his heart sink. "All grown up and in a gay boy band."
There were four of them, and Shige remembered each of their faces clearly.
"Do you want us to sign your CDs?" Ryo said sweetly, too sweetly, and Shige could see his fists clenched. "You look like the type that has all of them hidden under his bed in a box so his friends can't see."
"Wow, Kato, Taro isn't here anymore so you found a midget to protect you?"
"You also look like the type that doesn't want to keep his teeth," Ryo said, his own teeth clenched.
"Go away," Shige said weakly, while he pulled on Ryo's jacket and guided toward the car. "God, it's a funeral and we're twenty-five years old."
"And you're still running away from everything except textbooks," the tall thin man in the center said, and then Shige shoved a snarling Ryo into the passenger seat before quickly sliding into the driver's seat.
"Sorry," Shige said, and Ryo was quiet, his face set in an expression of displeasure.
"You were bullied," Ryo said, finally, and Shige wondered if he should pull over the car.
"Well, I wouldn't go that far--"
"You were bullied." Ryo said again, and then he swore. "and then you get to Johnny's, and everything is great, and then we bully you, too."
Shige pulled over the car, pulling it onto the shoulder of the road and putting it in park. "There's a difference between you guys teasing me, and those guys, alright?"
Ryo jumped out of the car, and Shige scrambled to follow him. Ryo flopped to the ground in the middle of the grass, weeds sticking up through his hair and between his fingers. His right hand came up to shield his eyes from the climbing sun, and he glared at Shige, who was still standing.
"How can you let them talk to you like that?" Ryo snapped. "Don't you have any self-respect?"
"It's over now, alright? I don't live here anymore."
"It doesn't matter! Those guys are assholes, and you just--"
"Stop! I know, okay? I know. It's not that easy."
"You deserve more than that. Those sad excuses of human life don't have the right to talk to you or anyone else like that. Grow some balls."
"They're not bad people, they just..."
"You can't let people walk all over you or anyone else. And you can rationalize that they're good people deep inside, or whatever bullshit you tell yourself, but in the end, even 'good people' make mistakes."
"No one's perfect."
"Right. So stick up for yourself. For what you believe. And for goodness sakes, Shige, you are too smart and too successful to be pushed around by the likes of those guys. They couldn't even come up with quality insults."
"I feel like I keep saying thanks, and it keeps being not enough."
"Thanks for what? Lecturing you in a field by the side of the road and picking fights with your childhood bullies?"
"Well, yeah." Shige said. "Somehow, those things are just what I needed."
"I tend to bring out the best in people," Ryo informed him, and Shige laughed and offered him a hand, pulling Ryo up when Ryo took it.
"You're a good guy, Kato Shigeaki. I don't waste my time on mediocre people; I'm too good for that, really," Ryo said. "And don't you forget it."
"Nishikido..."
"My name's Ryo, to my friends."
And then Ryo smiled, and a hundred tiny butterflies exploded in Shige's stomach.
***
Ryo's oldest brother, when he met Shige for the first time, took one look at him and laughed. "You look like you should be catching rings with your two dimensional flying fox sidekick."
"What?"
"Come on, Sonic, let's go introduce you to the family." Shige stared after him bewilderedly, and Ryo chuckled, grabbing his arm.
"Don't worry," Ryo said. "You should be used to the Nishikido sense of humor."
"It's going to be a long day, isn't it?"
"I have a lot of brothers," Ryo said in response.
When they left for the train station, Ryo's brother stopped him at the door while Ryo bid his mother farewell. "It was nice to meet you, finally," he said. "Ryo seems really fond of you."
"Really?" Shige said dubiously, scratching his neck. "We just started getting to know each other for real. We've been group members forever, but there's always been..."
"Ryo's hard to get to know. But worth it, we think."
"I think so too," Shige said, and when Ryo dragged him out to the taxi, bitching about how everyone in his family was too lazy to take him to the train station, Shige couldn't help but grin.
***
When Ryo invited him over for beers and 'general chilling out', Shige's first impulse had been to say no. It'd probably be weird, he thought, and he'd feel totally left out. But then Ryo had turned and invited Koyama too, and suddenly the prospect of hanging out at Ryo's apartment for the first time since, well, ever, didn't seem nearly as daunting.
When Shige knocked on the door, Kamenashi Kazuya of all people answered the door. "Yo," Kamenashi said, and ushered Shige in. "Welcome to the crazy assortment of people Ryo calls his 'chill friend's."
"What does that even mean?"
"You know, the people he can hang out with not-drunk."
"Ah," Shige said, and then he spotted Koyama, lying comfortably on the floor, hand supporting his head as he watched TV, and Ryo saw him, smiled, and patted the space next to him on the couch. Shige sat down, and Ryo handed him a beer.
The beer tasted awful on Shige's lips, but the atmosphere at Ryo's place was really good tonight, so it was a sacrifice he was willing to make. Yamapi sat on the arm of the sofa, texting Jin and occasionally making blank faces at the wall as Kamenashi joined Koyama on the floor and they watched a Discovery Channel documentary about the wonderful world of cute fluffy kittens, or something equally silly, and made cooing noises at the screen. Ryo, Shige could tell, was interested in the documentary as well, but he was fighting to keep a stoic, disinterested face whenever Koyama turned around.
"Ryo-chan, look at this KITTEN," Koyama said, and Ryo's eyes widened with delight before he glanced around the room and stifled his glee. "Isn't it cute?"
"Your mom is cuter," Ryo responded grumpily. "And at least I can have sex with her."
Shige snorted with disgust, and Koyama made a tiny frown of displeasure at him, that looked more miffed than offended. Kamenashi couldn't be bothered to turn away from the screen, mesmerized by the tiny paws and fluffy faces in front of him.
"Ryo-chan is such an Ebenezer Scrooge," Kamenashi mutters, carefully not loud enough to mask the sound of mewling kittens.
Shige watched Ryo's face, and at seeing the struggle on it, he couldn't stop himself from laughing. He leaned over toward Ryo and nudged Ryo's shoulder with his own, bumping them together. "Hey," he said. "Hey."
"Hey, what?" Ryo grouched, his lips falling into a pout.
"It's okay, you know." Shige leaned his head on Ryo's shoulder, and looked up at him from his new perspective. "These are your friends."
Ryo glared down at him, leaning his head on the sofa back so he could look sideways into Shige's eyes. "So?" Ryo asked, his voice defensive.
"So you don't have to pretend," Shige said, before awkwardly swallowing. "You can like the cute little kittens, and none of us are going to think any less of you."
"Why is talking to you like talking to my grandfather?" Ryo grumbled, and then met Shige's eyes.
Ryo flushed at whatever he saw there, and turned his eyes away from Shige as Yamapi chuckled. "I'll think less of you," Yamapi said, and then he chuckled some more. "Real men like cute little puppies."
Ryo growled and threw a pillow over at Yamapi, making him drop his phone. Yamapi swore, and leaped at Ryo, and Shige scrambled back to avoid their tussle.
"Don't be ridiculous," Ryo panted from atop Yamapi, where his smaller frame had pinned the man down to the floor. "Cats are noble, proud, solitary creatures."
"Dogs are strong, and MAN'S best friend," Yamapi crowed when he finally managed the leverage to switch their positions. "And cats are totally chick pets. Real GIRLS have cats."
Koyama sat up, put his hands on his cheeks, and sighed, as Shige suppressed the giggle that wanted to burst from his throat. Ryo looked ridiculous, his long black hair tousled and flipped up strangely from Yamapi's curled fist rubbing it threateningly, and Yamapi himself was a mess from wrestling with Ryo, who was stronger than he looked. "Boys, stop fighting," Koyama said, sounding like someone's mother, as usual. Well, not Shige's mother, but still, somebody's. "I have a cat."
"Gay," Yamapi said.
"I'll have you know I like both cats and dogs," Kamenashi informed them, still lying peacefully on his stomach in front of the tv, making obnoxious baby noises whenever a new kitten appeared.
"That just makes you a real hermaphrodite," Ryo snapped, and Kamenashi turned around with a raised eyebrow.
"You want me to fight you?" Kamenashi said, his voice low and a little dangerous. "Cause you won't like that."
Yamapi glanced at Kamenashi's painted nails and sparkly t-shirt, which read 'Diva' across the front in stylized cursive English letters and glitter, and rolled his eyes. "Oh, I'm so scared," he screeched, in falsetto, and Ryo laughed. They high fived, and Kamenashi smiled a grim little smile that even Shige, the newcomer to this kind of apartment hang-out, could see was dangerous.
"Oh dear," Koyama said, and Shige reached again for his beer and pulled his legs off the floor where the three of them, Yamapi, Ryo, and Kamenashi, sat. "This won't go well." Koyama sat down next to Shige on the sofa, leaning against him and twiddling his thumbs against each other nervously.
Yamapi and Ryo didn't look worried.
Kamenashi, it turned out, was stronger than both of them combined.
"Oh shut up," Ryo said, when Shige and Koyama had collapsed against each other, laughing.
"Nothing to worry about, eh?" Shige said, as Kamenashi winked at him.
"Put your fist in your mouth," Ryo said. "I admire any talent that makes you shut the fuck up."
Ryo's put out expression just made them laugh harder.
***
"We should write together," Ryo said.
"Write what?" Shige replied blankly.
"A song, dumbass," Ryo said, with a huff. "Obviously."
"You want to write with me?" Shige felt a little like a kid being picked first for soccer, and despite being a pop idol, his face on hundreds of thousands of walls around Japan, it wasn't a feeling he was used to.
"I thought you were supposed to be the smart one in the group," Ryo snapped.
"Ryo-chan, play nice," Yamapi said, and Tegoshi nodded.
"Ryo-chan's never wanted to work with Shige before," Tegoshi said. "So Shige is probably surprised and pleased~"
"Shut up," Shige said, and to his surprise, Ryo said it at the same time.
"We were just sort of friends before," Ryo said, looking past Shige at something in the distance. "But now we're..."
"So close!" Tegoshi squealed with joy, and Koyama had his thumbs through his belt loops, rocking back and forth with amusement.
"Why, oh why, do people think you are cute and innocent?" Shige asked Tegoshi, as Massu slung his arm around Shige's shoulder.
"He's definitely cute," Massu said, and Tegoshi jumped on Yamapi's back.
Yamapi grinned over his shoulder at Tegoshi. "Oishii!" Tegoshi giggled, and Yamapi looked smitten with it as usual. "And one out of two isn't bad," Yamapi finished, and Shige sighed.
"Well?" Ryo said to Shige impatiently, and Koyama sidled up to Shige's right, brushing the back of his hand against the back of Shige's hand, in a silent gesture of support.
"He'd love to," Koyama said, and Shige grinned.
"I would," Shige admitted, and a tiny smile hovered around Ryo's mouth while Tegoshi cheered from his position on Yamapi's back.
***
The chord progression Ryo had come up with was kind of difficult, and Shige, who was a pretty good guitar player, fumbled over it twice before Ryo sighed and put down his guitar.
He came over and stood behind Shige, leaning against his back and wrapping arms around Shige in order to hold the guitar. His hands gently moved Shige's fingers slowly, showing him how to move from one string to another easily for that particular switch. "Like this," he said, and Shige felt every inch of where Ryo's body touched his. "Sorry, it's hard for me to do it left handed so I had to get behind you."
It wasn't the first time they'd hugged; they had done it for the cameras more times than Shige would ever be able to count. But it was different, like this-- they were alone in Ryo's apartment, and no one was watching them, and no girls were screaming, and there was no reason for them to be touching at all. But they were, and Ryo's chest felt warm and strong against his back, and Shige could barely concentrate on the way Ryo moved his fingers across the guitar strings. Ryo's hair brushed against Shige's cheek and neck, and it smelled like jasmine soap and tobacco and maybe a little like cedar, but that might have just been Ryo's natural smell.
"I've got it now," Shige whispered. Ryo pulled away, and on the next try, Shige executed the chord progression perfectly, bringing a smile to Ryo's face.
Shige's skin burned still, minutes after Ryo's touch disappeared.
***
"How goes the song-writing?" Jin said, chewing with his mouth open. Yamapi smacked the back of his head.
"Close your mouth Bakanishi," Yamapi told him, and Jin smiled at him. Jin's smile was lovely, Shige thought, wide and bright and natural.
Shige's own smile was still a little awkward, despite years of practice.
"It's going really well," Ryo said, slurping ramen into his mouth. "It's one of the best things I've ever helped write."
Jin raised an eyebrow. "Better than 'Hey Girl'?" Jin asked, and Shige laughed.
"Oh no, nothing so sophisticated as that," Shige said, and Ryo and Jin punched him on opposite arms, perfectly synchronized chastising.
"You had that coming," Yamapi said, and Shige attempted his own grin.
"Don't get cocky, kid," Ryo told him smugly, and a tiny ramen noodle was stuck to his chin, distracting Shige from whatever response he'd been planning on making.
His hand itches to wipe the noodle off Ryo's face, and finally he couldn't help it. He reached up with his left hand and used his thumb to wipe across Ryo's lower lip, snagging the noodle. Ryo's eyes cross as he looks down at Shoge's thumb, and the expression on his face makes Jin laugh, and his laugh is just as warm as his smile.
But as warm as Jin's laugh is, Ryo's small grin of thanks makes Shige feel even warmer, and his thumb tingled where their skin had touched.
"I think it'll be a really good collaboration," Shige said, after swallowing thickly.
"I'm looking forward to it," Yamapi said, before he slapped Jin on the back of the head again. "Jin, I told you to close your mouth when you chew."
***
"Is it fun, writing with Ryo-chan?" Koyama asked, and Shige nodded.
"It is, but he's strict about lyrics."
"He does take song-writing very seriously."
Shige crossed his arms on the kitchen table, and laid his chin on his right arm. "He says there's no depth to my love lyrics."
"Is he right?"
"He might be. I've never been in love. I have no idea what it would feel like ,or how I would even know it when I felt it."
Koyama leaned forward, his hands gripping the edge of the table. "You'll definitely know it when you feel it, Shige."
"Yeah?" Shige said, licking his lips.
"Definitely," Koyama replied, his eyes narrowing playfully at Shige. "You'll definitely know."
***
"Hey, now that we're real friends instead of work friends, or whatever the difference is, can I ask you a personal question?"
"Um, yes?" Shige replied, and Ryo leaned sideways across the table, looking intently into Shige's eyes.
"What is this Wagahai shit?"
"Eh?" Shige asked, confused.
"Your blog is written from the perspective...of an imaginary cat. A cat that is kinda gay for Koyama's very real cat, and they have adventures while you and Koyama hold hands and skip across rainbows?"
"Well, I'm allergic to cats," Shige explained. "So I can't have a real cat named Wagahai. It had to be imaginary."
Ryo blinked, slowly. "Oh great, thanks, that cleared everything up." He slapped the table. "Shige, what the fuck?"
Shige chuckled. "Are you familiar with the 1905 work by Souseki Natsume? 'Wagahai wa neko de aru'?"
"No," Ryo said flatly, as if it should be obvious that Ryo had better things to do than read weird novels from post-restoration Japan. Shige supposes it should be.
"It's a novel written from the perspective of a cat, that offers criticism about the negative changes in Japan under the new Meiji government, and the impacts of Western influence."
"Okay."
"My blog is written in that structure so as to offer an outside perspective to our fans of the absurdity of our lives."
"So it's not insane because it's ~literary~. That's what you're telling me."
"Yes?" Shige replied, unsure if he should confirm Ryo's assessment.
"Your nerdiness knows no boundaries," Ryo said, standing up and patting Shige on the shoulder. "You probably like Star Trek, too."
"I do not," Shige protested.
"Yeah you do, I can see the love of Darth Vader in your nerdy, blind little eyes," Ryo retorted, his hand sliding down Shige's arm as he stepped away. "Don't deny it."
"Darth Vader is Star Wars," Shige said, and then he blushed.
"Point made," Ryo said. "I've got a Kanjani meeting in ten minutes, so we'll continue this later, I guess. See ya, Shige."
"Aren't you going out with Akanishi?"
"Naw, I'd rather hang out with you today."
Shige watched him leave, and wondered why he felt so warm.
***
When Shige's phone vibrated on his dresser in the middle of the night, he tried to ignore it. But it just kept buzzing and buzzing, and when he finally rolled over and narrowed bleary eyes at the flashing caller ID screen, he quickly answered.
"Ryo? It's three in the morning," Shige groaned. "Where's the fire?"
"Yamapi is gay," Ryo said quickly. "With Jin."
"You say that once a day, Ryo. I'm going back to sleep." Shige closed his eyes, flopping onto his back and keeping the phone pressed up against his ear anyway, because something seemed weird about Ryo's voice.
"No, Shige, I mean actually gay." The distress in Ryo's voice was sharp in the tiny speaker of Shige's phone, and Shige opened his eyes again.
"What are you talking about? Are you drunk?" Shige asked, his fingers tightening on the phone.
"I left my keys at Pi's apartment. I didn't realize until I had gotten down to the car. So I went back upstairs, and knocked. No one answered so I tried the door. It was open. They were both...Yamapi had Jin pushed against the wall...I saw..." Ryo's voice cracked, and Shige swallowed convulsively as he tried to process what Ryo told him.
Ryo was hyperventilating on the other end of the line, and Shige felt a little lost. "Where are you?"
"Outside your apartment," Ryo said, and Shige climbed out of bed, putting on his slippers and shuffling to the door.
"I'm buzzing you in," Shige told him, and hung up the phone.
Ryo looked frazzled and distraught when he walked into Shige's kitchen, as Shige was pulling tea mugs down from the cabinet and putting them on the table, where the honey already sat waiting. "Shige, oh my god."
"Who else have you told?" Shige asked him quietly, as he poured hot water from the kettle into the mugs.
"Nobody, are you crazy? I can't tell people this!"
Shige sighed and brought the mugs over to the table. "Did they see you?"
"Yeah. Yamapi tried to stop me, and Jin just looked scared," Ryo said to the table. His face was buried in his arms. "I'm so confused."
"What's the big deal?" Shige asked. "I mean, it's unexpected but...what's the big deal?"
"They're both GUYS, Shige," Ryo replied, and Shige sat down across from him, and cradled his mug between his hands. He looked at Ryo, who was now looking back at him with wild eyes. "They're both guys. Don't you think that's weird? Don't you think that's wrong?"
"No," Shige said honestly, setting his mug on the table softly. "Not really."
Ryo set his lips in a thin line. "What do you mean?"
"It's just Pi. And Akanishi, who I have never been close to, but he's sweet, and you've always seemed to like him. So what's it matter if they like to make out when you're not there?"
"I don't know," Ryo said, mouth tightening even further. "But it does."
The atmosphere the next morning at rehearsal was tense. Shige tried not to pay attention to the way Yamapi kept trying to catch Ryo's gaze, or the way Ryo studiously avoided looking in Yamapi's general direction.
"What's going on between Leader and Ryo-chan?" Koyama whispered to Shige when Ryo went to the restroom.
"I don't know," Shige lied, and then bit his lip when Yamapi squared his shoulders and marched out of the rehearsal room, in the direction of the restroom.
Shige gave it three minutes before he went out after him. The hallway was quiet, too quiet, and Shige walked a little faster, until he turned the corner and saw them standing there, by the washroom.
Yamapi is hunched over, his arms wrapped around himself as Ryo quietly stares at him. "Ryo-chan, please." Shige had never seen Yamapi look so defeated. "Please."
"Please what?" Ryo asked, and his voice was quiet but bordering on hysterical. "Please don't tell? Please pretend you don't know? Please WHAT?"
"Please let me explain it to you," Yamapi said, and Ryo scoffed.
"What's there to explain? You and Jin fuck when I'm not around."
Yamapi winces. "It's not like that."
"Not like what? You DON'T secretly sleep together, despite the fact that you're both guys and it could devastate your careers? Are you that desperate for sex? It's-"
"We're in love, Ryo-chan!" Yamapi yelled, before flushing, and it echoed hauntingly through the hallway. Ryo looked like a goldfish, mouth slack and eyes bulging.
"I need to think about that," Ryo said finally, and he spun on his heel. "Tell everyone I felt sick and went home early."
"Okay," Yamapi replied softly, his nails digging into his own skin as he tightly clutched his own arms. "Will you...call me?"
"Maybe," Ryo answered, and then he walked down the hall and called the elevator. He looked back up, toward Yamapi, and Shige could see the conflict and distress in his eyes. "But don't call me."
Ryo stepped into the elevator without meeting Yamapi's gaze, or seeing Shige. Yamapi collapsed against the wall and covered his face with his hands, and Shige couldn't just stand there and let him suffer alone.
"Leader," Shige said. "Yamapi." Yamapi looked up, and he smiled wryly at Shige.
"I suppose you heard."
"Well yeah. Also Ryo told me last night, and I kept him at my place so he wouldn't be unsupervised."
"Oh," Yamapi said. "I guess he couldn't go to me or Jin about it, ha-ha."
"No, I guess not," Shige replied, and then Yamapi looked up at the ceiling and blinked rapidly, as if he was fighting back tears. "It's going to be okay, Leader."
"Will it?" Yamapi asked, sliding down to the floor, his back against the wall of the hallway. "Shige, I didn't choose to fall in love with another man, with Jin."
Shige dropped down next to him, and the wall was cold behind his back. "I figured," Shige replied, without judgement.
"It's like... I look at Jin," Yamapi said, and he licked his lips while he sought the right words. "When I look at Jin, I don't see another guy. I just see Jin, who he is, what I like about him and what I love about him. And it doesn't matter, to me, that he's not a girl, you know?"
Shige didn't know what to say, not really, but the look on Yamapi's face made his heart hurt, with sympathy. "Leader..."
And Shige could understand, maybe, seeing a person and not the package.
"What if I lose Ryo-chan? What if other people find out? What if we both lose everything?" Yamapi sighed and anxiously pushed his hand through his hair. "I think about it all the time, the consequences of loving Jin like this, but I can't...not love him."
They sat in silence for a while, and Shige felt lost.
"Thanks for listening, and not thinking less of me," Yamapi said.
"Yamapi, you can't change your own heart, and you shouldn't have to to make other people happy," Shige said to him in reply, and Yamapi's smile spread across his face, like the sun.
"Thank you, Shige," Yamapi told him, and stood up. "Ready to go back to practice?"
Suddenly Shige knew what he had to do. You have to stand up for what you believe in, even when it's hard.
"No, I've got something I have to take care of."
It only figured that he'd find Ryo right outside the building, in the park across the street, lying length-wise across a bench and staring at the sky. It almost seemed like he wanted Shige to find him.
Shige stopped next to the bench, blocking the sun from hitting Ryo's face and making Ryo open his eyes. "Shige?"
"I had...have a lot of respect for you Ryo. I think you're a kind person, and a good friend, and you've been there for me, when I really needed it. But now I find myself in the unique position of losing that respect."
"What?" Ryo's hands curled up in the fabric of his t-shirt, and his eyes pierced into Shige's own. They were challenging, and they made Shige want to curl up and retreat back into silence. But Shige knew now wasn't the time to back down, because Yamapi needed him to do this. Hell, Ryo needed him to do this. Shige steeled his resolve.
"Ryo, what did you love about Satoko?" Shige asked calmly. He didn't break the gaze between them, holding Ryo's eyes with his own.
"About Satoko?"Ryo looked confused about where Shige was going with this thread of conversation.
"Yes, the woman you are in love with. Tell me what about her you liked."
Ryo finally pulled his eyes away from Shige, resting his head on the arm of the bench and glaring up into the cloudless sky. "Her laugh. The way she always had something nice to say about everyone, even when I was being mean. The way she used to twist her hair around her finger when she was thinking about something complicated. And the way she would pick up a gross bug in a second but she was scared of birds." Ryo's hands fisted even tighter in his shirt, and Shige wondered if Ryo's nails were digging into his palms. "I don't know, everything."
"It's funny," Shige said, after he was sure Ryo was done talking. "Cause none of the things you mentioned just now were her vagina."
Ryo's head whipped around on his neck so fast Shige thought it might fly off. He looked torn between shock that Shige had said the word 'vagina' and confusion about why Shige had said the word 'vagina.'
"I can't believe you just said 'vagina,'" Ryo said with awe, and Shige frowned at him.
Shige recalled the way Ryo has stood up to those guys, the way Ryo's shoulders had remained straight and his head high, even though he was significantly smaller and tinier than any of them. He remembered Ryo's defiant eyes, how Ryo had shown his inner strength even as Shige had cowardishly pulled them into the car.
Now Shige had to find his own strength, against the person who had shown him it's importance.
"Listen up, Nishikido." Ryo started at the tone of Shige's voice, and that just made Shige concentrate even harder on maintaining it. "One of your best friends in the world is in there, devastated, because he fell in love with a person, not a man or a woman, a person, who is another of your best friends, and you are out here throwing a temper tantrum because that person happens to have a penis."
Ryo looked ready to argue, to spit some of his famous venom, but Shige wasn't quite finished. "Ryo, if you're willing to lose a friend over something this stupid, you need to grow up."
Ryo's aghast face, shadowed with rage and turmoil, lingered in Shige's mind long after he left the park, taking the subway back to his apartment. His and Ryo's mugs from that morning sat waiting to be washed on the kitchen table, so Shige brought them over to the sink and ran the hot water, putting a little soap directly on the sponge instead of filling the basin. He made it halfway through washing the second mug before he started to shake.
Shige has always been massively uncomfortable standing up for himself. He's always found it easier to let things slide. It's what's always made him a target for teasing, he supposed.
It had been scary, to stand up to Ryo. To tell Ryo, a man that he admired and respected and had always, always secretly wanted to like him, that he was basically being an asshole.
But Shige remembered Ryo's words to him, in Osaka, as he had squinted up at Shige, hand above his eyes to protect them from the sun. "You can't let people walk all over you or anyone else. And you can rationalize that they're good people, but in the end, even good people make mistakes."
He remembered the look in Ryo's eyes when Shige managed to tell him a little about his life before Johnny's.
Ryo had taken care of him then. Shige was taking care of Ryo now-- by helping him realize that this wasn't worth losing his best friends over.
Ryo, Shige knew, was a good person. And maybe what Shige had said would be enough.
It started to rain.
***
Ryo's hair was wet from the rain outside, plastered to his head and to his neck and face, when Shige opened the door after buzzing Ryo in. "I'm an idiot, right?"
Shige wanted to collapse with relief. "Just right now," Shige said. "Just for now."
"Oh god," Ryo said. "I am a terrible friend," he said, sitting down in Shige's foyer to untie his shoes.
Shige retreated into his bedroom and returned with a pair of athletic pants and a t-shirt. Ryo stood up and took them in his arms. "I'm a really terrible person."
"Don't be ridiculous," Shige said. "Go change."
When Ryo emerged from the washroom in the dry clothes, Shige pressed a cup of cocoa into his hands. "I feel like a little kid," Ryo said, because Shige's t-shirt was a little tthe large, the sleeves reaching Ryo's elbows, and the pants were cuffed twice at the bottom to keep Ryo from tripping on them. "It sometimes feels like I'm the only normal sized person on the planet."
"Whatever helps you sleep at night," Shige told him, sipping slowly from his own chocolate. "Careful, it's hot."
"Oh is it? The steam confused me, I thought that meant it was cold," Ryo said sarcastically, before he deflated in Shige's favorite leather armchair. "God, I'm even a dick when people are trying to be nice to me."
"It's your way of relaxing, I suppose," Shige said, half laughing.
"Wow, do I have any redeeming qualities?"
"You might," Shige said. "But I'll only tell you about them if you call Yamapi or Jin right now. Or both."
"Can't I just admit I'm wrong to you privately and not face the consequences of my own jackassery until a later time, when this has all blown over?" Ryo set his mug on the table and buried his face in his hands. Shige, for some reason, wanted to put his hand on the back of Ryo's neck, and he barely resisted the urge.
"No," Shige said patiently, and handed Ryo his backpack, which he'd left in the foyer. "Not if you don't want to lose your two best friends."
Ryo dug around in the front pocket of his bag until he found his cell phone, and he flipped it open with trepidation. "I can do this."
"Rah Rah Rah," Shige said, waving his hands in the air like a cheerleader. "Gooooooo Ryo!"
Ryo threw his head back and laughed. When he finally stopped chuckling, he looked a lot better. "Just so you know," Ryo said, as he scrolled through his contacts. "You're...one of my best friends too, now." He narrowed his eyes. "Pretend I said that in some manly and standoffish manner."
"Rah Rah," Shige replied, and Ryo dialed.
"Pi?" Ryo breathed into the phone, and Shige gathered the two mugs and went into the kitchen. "I'm so fucking sorry," he heard Ryo say, before he turned on the water to give them privacy as he did the dishes from his dinner that still sat in the sink.
"You're one of my best friends too," Shige whispered, and it was okay that Ryo couldn't hear him, because Shige was pretty sure he knew. Some weird emotion was crawling it's way up the inside of Shige's chest, and he couldn't identify it. All he knew was that Ryo was here, in his apartment, because he wanted to be. And that was enough.
Ryo wandered into the kitchen a little later, his eyes suspiciously puffy, but Shige didn't comment. "How did I manage to fumble through my life before we became closer?" Ryo said, and Shige felt like bursting.
"I'm not quite sure," Shige replied, his voice thick and soppy. "You probably just got hit a lot. In the face."
"Don't cry," Ryo said, his own voice sounding wet. "I hate people who feel things."
Shige choked on his water.
***
"Why are you staring at Ryo-chan?" Tegoshi asked, sipping obnoxiously loud on his bubble tea. "You look like a high school girl with her first crush."
"What?"
"I'm just saying."
"I'm going to count to five," Shige said, and Tegoshi bolted, giggling as he ran.
***
"Why do we have to have costumes, again?" Ryo grumbled, and Shige laughed.
"Hideous sparkles and glitter are kind of our thing," Shige answered, with an ambivalent shrug. "I've come to accept it as an occupational hazard."
"Your hair is an occupational hazard," Ryo replied half-heartedly, as he encountered something so horrific he drew his hand back with a hiss. "It's an acoustic guitar performance. I want to at least wear jeans while I sing about losing my heart like a sap to some unknown girl from the past."
"It's a good song," Shige said. "It doesn't matter what we wear to perform it."
Suddenly, Ryo went rigid beside him, his hands falling from the clothes as he looked toward the hall.
"Satoko," Ryo said, and Shige looked up from the costume rack to finally see the girl that had stolen Ryo's heart.
She was small, with long straight hair and long eyelashes. Shige couldn't see anything remarkable about her, but he knew there must be if she had captured Ryo so completely. "Nishikido," she replied, and Ryo flinched.
"Not Ryo anymore?" Ryo asked lightly, but there was something wounded in his tone, that made Shige ache.
The girl, Satoko, wrung her hands together like she didn't know what to say. "I just wanted to apologize," she said quickly, sounding a little breathless, like she was rushing to get it all out. "For how everything turned out."
"How it turned out?" Ryo laughed, bitterly, and Shige wondered if Ryo felt like he was breaking inside. "Are you happy?"
"Yes," Satoko said, and Shige tried not to look over at them, because he didn't want to see Ryo's expression.
"Then you're not sorry for how things turned out, are you?" Ryo said. "Goodbye, Satoko-- Miyamoto."
"Nishikido!"
"You don't owe me anything," Ryo said, turning around and walking over to Shige, subtly leaning against him for support. "I'm going to be just fine."
"You always were so strong," she said, and then she walked out of the dressing room.
"Are you okay?" Shige asked, after five minutes passed in silence, except for the clanking of beads and Ryo's steady, heavy breathing.
"I thought it would hurt more," Ryo said, after another minute. "To talk to her. But...I didn't feel sad, just angry."
"Angry?"
"Yeah, angry about how she wasn't honest with me, at all, and dragged me along when she knew the whole time she wanted something different."
Shige didn't speak. He could tell Ryo had more to say.
"But I don't feel heartbroken, or like I want to curl up and die," Ryo continued. "I guess I've fallen out of love."
Ryo's eyelashes were dark against the pale skin of his cheeks as Shige looked down at him, and his mouth was set in a straight line. Strands of his hair fell haphazardly around his forehead, dark as crow feathers. He looked like the brooding hero of a gothic novel, Shige thought, dark and handsome and sad.
"I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing," Shige said, and Ryo's face curled into a small grin.
"Definitely good," Ryo replied, before running his hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face. "But there were nice memories, too."
Shige dropped his hands from where he had been aimlessly looking at costumes. "Let's go."
"Go where?" Ryo asked. "We have to be here in forty minutes, give or take."
"Just to the park across the street," Shige told him, grabbing the sleeve of Ryo's jacket and tugging.
"But why,?" Ryo said, even as Shige was corralling him out the door, grabbing his messenger bag and ushering Ryo out the door.
"What are we doing out here?" Ryo said. "Are you going to kidnap me? You're not a big enough celebrity to get away with that."
Shige groaned. "I'm going to teach you how to take a picture."
"Um, don't you just hold the camera up, and press one of those buttons?" Ryo asked as Shige took his camera out of his bag, and unearthed the actual camera from it's protective case.
"Technically, yes," Shige replied. "But realistically, no, it's greater than that."
"I wish you wouldn't talk to me like one of your smartie-pants Aoyama law school friends," Ryo said. "Because when you talk all artsy and metaphorical I kind of want to hit you."
"Realistically is not a hard word," Shige said, and then he cleared his throat. "What I'm trying to say is, the hard part about taking a picture isn't in actually pressing the button and taking the picture."
"Okay..."
"The hard part is knowing what image you want to save. What part of a scene you want to immortalize, or what detail you want to showcase."
"I see," Ryo said, looking contemplative.
"That way," Shige said, not looking at Ryo, "Next time you feel something, you can save it. You can keep it like a memory."
"Ah," Ryo said, and then he cleared his throat. "So teach me."
"Look at this leaf," Shige said, gesturing to a leaf on the ground by Ryo's right foot. "What about it is interesting?"
"It's a leaf," Ryo said deadpan, but then he squatted down to look more closely. "It's torn."
"And?"
"It's got an interesting shape."
"Good," Shige said, and handed Ryo the camera, after removing the lens cap and adjusting the settings. "Now take a picture of it."
"But I don't know how to use this camera!" Ryo protested, and Shige laughed.
"Just press the button," he replied, and Ryo gingerly took the camera. He snapped a photo and then handed the camera back up to Shige, who promptly squatted next to him. "Let's see."
The picture popped up on the display, and Ryo frowned. "There's too much other stuff," he said, and Shige grinned.
"Exactly," Shige said. "Half of taking a good picture is composition. Try and not get the gum wrapper this time."
Ryo took another picture, and they looked at it together, faces pressed close to peer at the display screen. Shige could feel Ryo's warm breath on his cheek, and for some reason, it made his heart speed up. He felt hot, and he had no idea why. "This one's much better," Ryo said, and Shige's neck went red.
"Yes, it is," Shige replied, standing up and leaving Ryo with the camera.
When he had finished composing himself, he spun around only to find Ryo in his face, and heard the whir of the shutter. "I don't want to take pictures of leaves."
"Take pictures of something else then," Shige said, but Ryo shook his head.
"Taking pictures is for memories, right? I want memories of you! You said you became an idol so you could be part of a moment right?"
"Yeah," Shige said. "But I wasn't ready."
Ryo chuckled. "Now you know how it feels," Ryo said. "Going on tour with you is like having the paparazzi around, except instead of having to break into the bus, they already have a key."
"Shut up, I am not that bad." He frowned, and Ryo took another picture.
"Can you capture feelings with a camera?" Ryo asked rhetorically, and Shige took the camera out of his hands, and fiddled with the settings. He looked though the viewfinder and settled the focus on Ryo. Ryo was smiling at him quirkily, his hands shoved in his jeans pockets to fight the autumn chill, and his eyes were alight with mischief.
Shige felt his heart seize painfully between his ribs, and he'd never felt so terribly alive. And Ryo looked perfect, through the lens, and Shige admired every graceful line of Ryo's small body, lithe and elegant and shadowed through the glass.
"Yes," Shige said, and snapped a picture. "You really can." And Shige wanted to tell him that it wasn't just the subject's feelings, but the photographer's as well.
"Are you okay?" Ryo said, stepping closer. "Your voice sounds weird. Like, you usually sound a little bit dumb, but just now it sounded like you were having a stroke."
"I'm fine," Shige choked, but he wasn't fine, at all, because it had suddenly become clear.
Shige's palms were sweaty, and his throat so tight that sucking in air was an arduous task, even out here in the middle of the park.
"If you say so," Ryo said dubiously, and Shige couldn't tear his eyes away from Ryo's mouth, which was perfectly shaped, and could convey so many emotions...
"Let's go back," Shige directed, but his voice was faint. As soon as they walked back into the building, Shige escaped into the bathroom. The camera hung heavy from the neck strap, pulling down on him. He took it off and sat it on the counter, before turning on the faucet and letting the cool water run.
He splashed his face twice, then let his hands fall from his face as he looked into the mirror. He looked sick, Shige thought, green around the edges and eyes filled with fear. "No, no, no, no," Shige said to himself, as water dripped down his neck and soaked the collar of his t-shirt. "Not this," he whispered.
He wiped his hands on his jeans and picked up his camera. He hit the review button, and the picture of Ryo's grinning face filled the display screen. Shige felt like he was on fire, like everything was burning all at once and he didn't know how to put it out, or if he even wanted to.
It wasn't like his first high school crush, or like when he saw a pretty girl he was too shy to approach at a party. Instead, he felt like he'd been speared through the chest, and there was nothing he could do but bleed all those impossible feelings out of his opened heart.
Shige had never been in love, but somehow, Koyama had been right; when he finally felt it, he knew exactly what it was.
Part Three
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