Dissonant Notes (Ryo/Ueda, R) [1/3]

[maayacolabackup]

Title: Dissonant Notes
Pairing/Group: RyoDa
Rating: R
Warnings: Canon, slightly in the future (begins January 2012), Ryo is bad at living
Summary: Maybe it’s because in the hunched shape of Ueda’s shoulders, Ryo can see the mirrored reflection of his own insecurities looking back at him. It could also be indigestion. Ryo’s not going to lie: he hopes it’s the latter.
Notes: Originally written for sashjun at je_holiday!!!  here I had a lot of fun writing this! It was a new challenge. (And thanks to my lovely and darling beta-team (natsukashi_yume especially), who is made of sparkles and rainbows and puppies, for tackling both my emo and my atrocious spelling.)






***

Music is a lot like life, for Ryo.

Both are things Ryo approaches the same way. Recklessly.

When Ryo sings, it’s not just about the notes. It’s about yelling until his throat is raw, it’s about giving all that he can give, saying all he can say; the rapport between him and the audience.

Sometimes he makes mistakes. Sometimes his voice cracks on the words, or the notes come out a little flat.

Ryo’s life’s kind of like that, too.

The flat notes don’t come as often as the clear ones perfectly in tune. But they’re sticky in his memory, and sometimes, when Ryo closes his eyes, it’s the flat notes he hears echoing in his dreams.


***


Ryo’s shaving when his phone rings. He fumbles for it in his pocket, letting his shaver rest beside the sink bowl as he pulls it out of his pocket. He’s been expecting a call from his manager, and she’ll give him hell if he doesn’t answer in the first few rings, especially since it’s almost noon.

“Hello? Nishikido speaking,” Ryo says, not bothering to look at the name.

“Yo,” says a nasal voice on the other end. “It’s Kamenashi.”

Ryo sighs with relief, and then smiles. “Kame? Did Johnny let you out of your cage to get some sunlight, or what?”

“Hey now, I have some free time, Ryo. Just less than other people do. Besides, you’re one to talk. Or did you not just sigh with relief that I wasn’t your manager?”

“Yeah,” Ryo says. “It’s not that I don’t like my job, but I like getting more than four hours of sleep at night, too.” Ryo scratches at his neck, under his chin, and when he pulls his hand away, there’s shaving cream under his nails. “And Manager-san has been talking about new drama roles.” Ryo studies the drying lather with lazy eyes. “It could be busier, I suppose.”

“Ah,” Kame says. “Well, things should be a little better now, on the sleeping front, since you—“

“Yeah,” Ryo says. “A bit.” There’s an awkward silence, but it’s not that awkward. Talking to Kamenashi is easy, because for all that Kame is smooth in front of the cameras, he’s just as shy and uncomfortable as Ryo is when the camera lights go dim. “What’s up?”

Kame clears his throat. “Well, now I feel bad bringing it up, since we just discussed having no free time,” Kame says. “But I did have a favor to ask of you.”

Ryo raises an eyebrow at himself in the mirror, the phone pressed to the already shaved half of his face. He looks ridiculous, and he kind of wants to take shaving cream and make a faux-hawk out of his crazy hair. “The worst thing I could do is say no,” Ryo says, and Kame’s laugh echoes pleasantly in his ear.

“I’m writing a solo for the concerts in two months,” Kame says. “Something spectacular, I think. I want to do a big performance again, like with 1582.”

“These concerts are going to be ridiculous, aren’t they?” Ryo asks.

“It’s been awhile, you know, since we’ve met our fans. We all want to give them a show to remember.”

“Yeah, of course,” Ryo says. “But what’s this all got to do with me?”

“I’m writing the lyrics, but I’m going to need the music,” Kame replies, and Ryo can hear the smile in his voice. “I’ve already recruited one person to help, but I was thinking that you and I have never really worked together before, and it might be cool.”

Ryo remembers how much fun he’d had working with Jin, doing music stuff; how serious Jin had gotten, and how much it had been awesome to hear things from the both of them fall together into something really cool. Jin and Kame might not have much in common anymore, but in their dedication to music, at least, they are the same.

“It would be cool,” Ryo says. “I think I could find the time to help with something like that.”

“That’s great!” Kame says. “I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing then. I’ll be in touch!”

Ryo fingers the dried shaving cream all along the right side of his face with a frown. “Alright,” he says, and then there’s the dial tone.

It’s only when he’s finished shaving, and debating between two t-shirts that are almost exactly the same while he stands in front of his dresser, that Ryo remembers that he’d never asked who else Kame had sought to help. There’s no point in guessing, Ryo figures, since Kame’s got all these different types of friends from all these different places. For all Ryo knows, his other collaborator is a baseball player from the Tokyo Giants.

Ryo’s phone rings again. “Hello? This is Nishikido.”

“Nishikido, it’s me,” his manager says, and Ryo winces. “You’ve got a new drama role.”

Suddenly, things are looking a lot busier.


***


Ryo’s meeting with his manager goes about as expected. A full schedule lies ahead of him for the month of February, to be sure, but it’s only January now—hopefully Eito won’t be putting out another mini-album until March, and that will give him time to breathe somewhere between appointments and camera takes.

At least his new drama sounds interesting. He’ll be playing a dad again. Ryo likes playing a dad—he likes working with the child actors more than he likes dealing with the adult ones. He thinks the kids bring out the best sides of him, the sides of him that are softer and less nervous. With kids, Ryo’s not so afraid of making a fool of himself or being less cool. He feels like that with Eito as well, sometimes, but it’s harder with the cameras on them. The more popular they get, the more often the cameras are there, too. It’s stifling.

Ryo’s got lot in common with Jin in the incompetent-idol department. Ryo doesn’t know the right things to say, ever, and he looks like an asshole because of it more often than not. He’d asked Pi once, how he always knew what the right thing to say was, and Yamapi had shrugged and said he ‘just did’. Ryo envies that a little, but not really. No one expects him to say the right thing anyway, so maybe there’s less pressure.

After his meeting with his manager, he heads to his next appointment, which is a variety show appearance with Eito. Ryo changes clothes in the back of the car as it’s driving down the road. He’s going to barely make it as it is, and a suit would be all wrong for whatever terrible thing they’ll have to do on TV this time.

After that, he’ll film a commercial, then go to a rehearsal for a performance. Then he’ll go to another meeting about the new drama, and then he’ll collapse boneless into bed and pray Uchi doesn’t call him drunk at three in the morning needing a ride home, or that Jin doesn’t badger him with midget jokes via international texting.

In between everything going on, it’s easy to forget his phone call with Kamenashi that morning. Ryo doesn’t even remember he’d said he’d help until two days later, when Kame sends him a text asking if he’s got any free time the next afternoon.

actually, yeah, Ryo texts to Kame, and Kame’s response is full of emoticons. It makes Ryo laugh. Kame always texts like he’s a fourteen year old high school girl, and it never fails to amuse.

Ryo’d been planning on taking that free afternoon to play billiards with Matsumoto, but, well, Kame rarely asks for favors, and Ryo hates disappointing the people he counts close enough to call his friends. Matsumoto will understand.

Still, it’s kind of lame to roll up to the jimusho owned recording studios on a day off.

Ryo walks in through the front door, nodding at the security guy. He doesn’t need to flash his badge anymore; he guesses that’s one of the perks of having his face on what probably amounts to millions of pieces of paper—calendars, posters, photo books, billboards, CD jackets.

He checks the sign up by the door. There’s a tiny flicker of nostalgia when he sees NEWS scrawled on the sheet for three hours on Thursday. He wonders what they’re recording. He misses them sometimes. He should call more.

But there, in Kame’s neat and stylized handwriting, is Kamenashi Kazuya, scrawled for two in the afternoon.

‘The Black Room’. Of course.

Johnny’s got lots of studio rooms to choose from, but for some reason, KAT-TUN guys always choose this one. Ryo thinks it might be the leather couches; they give off the same ‘badass’ image KAT-TUN tries to sell on a daily basis.

Eito always records in a beat-up looking room at the studios, one that Yoko can’t destroy with his random acts of crazy, and maybe one that it won’t matter if Yasu subconsciously keeps digging his nails into the worn textured sofa until bits of stuffing pop out. It’s also the brightest lit room of them all, so Subaru doesn’t get scared if they stay there late into the night.

NEWS always used to record in one of the back studio rooms, but it was more so Tegoshi’s giggles wouldn’t disturb people in the hallways, and maybe because Yamapi always had a tendency to get to recording sessions first, so he could fool around with the synthesizers and the autotune before anyone else showed up, and he always chose one of the furthest rooms from the entrance.

But KAT-TUN…they’ve got this slick image, and for all the member-ai and the goofing off they do now that they number five instead of six, at the end of the day, they’re all still wearing tight leather pants, eyeliner, and vests and button-downs with clean-cut lines.

Ryo never would have fit in.

He even feels out of place in this particular recording room, with its swanky design and the air turned up too high.

Ueda, though, looks perfectly at home sprawled out on the couch, wearing cropped pants and lace up leather boots, a huge black sweatshirt covering his hands with its long sleeves. The hood is up, but Ryo would recognize Ueda anywhere—he’d spent enough time wringing as many expressions as he could out of those lips to the laughs of a crowd, and enough time ridiculing the way the other man looked to know him on sight.

“It’s winter,” Ryo says. “Why the hell are you wearing shorts?”

“Nice to see you too, Nishikido.” Ueda says, and his face is caught between a smile and a grimace. “Always a pleasure, really.”

“Where’s Kamenashi?” Ryo asks, a sinking feeling in his stomach as he remembers his conversation with Kame on the phone last week.

“He’ll be here soon,” Ueda replies. “Why are you looking for Kame?”

“Oh, good! You’re both here!” Kame says, and he licks his lips. He’s wearing a knit cap pulled low on his brow, hair hanging greasy and stringy to his shoulders, and glasses. Ryo can see the dark circles under his eyes, and feels a tiny rush of empathy. He knows how that feels. “I was hoping you’d both be able to get here on time. This is basically…the only free hour I have for the next week or so.”

Kame’s words sink in, and Ryo’s suspicions are confirmed. “You want me to work with him?” It comes out more harshly than Ryo means it to. That happens a lot, Ryo thinks, and maybe half the problems Ryo has in life are because he doesn’t think before he opens his mouth. He tries to backtrack. “Are you sure it’s okay with Ueda if we work together?”

Ueda snorts. “I am here. In the room. Don’t talk about me like I’m not sitting here, Nishikido. Or do I not even count as a person to you?”

So much for backtracking. “That’s not what I meant,” Ryo grumbles. “I’m just surprised. I don’t like surprises.” Ryo turns back to Ueda, whose ankles are crossed, the stark black of his booths making the skin of his shins look almost ethereally pale. “Do you think you can work with me?”

“I was in a group with Jin for over eight years,” Ueda says, smiling grimly. “You won’t even be a challenge.”

Ryo wants to smile, sort of, because he hasn’t talked to Ueda in years, but it seems like a backbone has grown rigid and strong in the older man. There’s a Japanese proverb, The nail that sticks up gets hammered back down. Johnny’s, Ryo guesses, are the boys who refuse to be hammered back down.

“Alright,” Ryo says, glaring at Kame. “Fine then.” Ryo crosses his arms, raising and eyebrow at Kamenashi. “Next time, don’t tell lies.”

Kame has the grace to look embarrassed. “I didn’t think you would agree,” Kame says. “It wasn’t really a lie. It was more like…I left out some information.”

“A lie of omission is still a lie,” Ryo says, and Ueda snorts again, and it’s sort of annoying now. “Do you have a problem over there, fairy-boy?”

The small smile falls off Ueda’s face. “That’s an old one. I thought you were supposed to be good at this whole mockery thing. Come up with some new insults, Nishikido.”

“Why, when the old ones still work so well?” Ryo asks. Insulting people is his game—he doesn’t like when people step into his ring. “You’re the one who pretended to see magical creatures for a year. Now you’ve got to live with the consequences.”

Ueda stands up, and in his high-heeled boots, he can look down at Ryo. The difference in their heights, Ryo had thought, was only 3 or so centimeters, but now it seems much more vast. “Grow up, Nishikido,” Ueda says, and Ryo wants to shove him back, but he gets distracted by trying to figure out why Ueda feels so intimidating all of a sudden. “Or shut up-- one or the other.” Ueda’s in his personal space, and his body is emanating heat—maybe that’s how he’s getting away with the shorts, if he’s clocking a body temperature hot enough to make Ryo sweat in proximity.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Ryo says, and it echoes something he said years and years ago, and Ueda’s breath is harsh on his face. It smells like candy.

Ryo feels like a kid, all of a sudden. Like he can’t control his impulses. Ueda makes him want to be sharper, to be meaner, and he doesn’t know why. Ueda’s eyes are dark and swimming, and Ryo is barely capable of figuring out his friends’ moods, let alone the mood of someone he’s barely acknowledged existed for the past few years. He narrows his own eyes at Ueda, and it’s like electricity between them.

“Well,” Kame says, and Ryo realizes, suddenly, how close they’re standing to each other, and steps back anxiously. “Glad to see you two getting along.” Kame chuckles nervously, and Ryo looks over to him to see him edging out of the room. “Do you guys think you could…have something ready in a week?”

“A week?” Ryo says dumbly. “Like, just us?” he tries to ask, but Kame is gone, leaving him alone in this black leather-bedecked and darkly lit studio, with no idea what he’s doing and feeling completely out of his element.

There’s Ueda, too, who Ryo hasn’t really thought of in years. Not since he’d reassured the whole of Japan that he and Ueda were cool back in 2004 with an arm slung over hesitant shoulders, a gesture of peace, and figured the whole thing was over with.

Apparently it’s not though, Ryo thinks, with the acid way Ueda is regarding him. It’s a strange expression on his face, from what Ryo can remember. He thinks maybe Ueda might smile more than he frowns. Just. Clearly not at Ryo, is all.

“So,” Ryo says, and Ueda exhales, slowly, like he’s fighting to get to his happy place, plopping back down onto the sofa and reaching for a brown canvas bag that Ryo hadn’t noticed before, pulling out a tablet PC and a notebook with a purple glitter cover.

Ueda tosses the notebook at Ryo, who catches it on reflex before he realizes he even needs to raise his hands. “Those are Kamenashi’s lyrics, so far,” Ueda says, and he’s not looking at Ryo as he speaks. “He says we can change them a little, if we need to, but he wants the spirit of them to stay the same.”

“Yeah,” Ryo says, and Ueda spares him a terse glance.

“Well, let’s get started,” Ueda says roughly. Ueda’s hood casts his face in shadow, and to Ryo, right now he looks a little like one of those kids you see in the park—the kind who play on skateboards and graffiti the walls and think that makes them punks. “You look constipated. I guess the less time you have to spend with me, the happier you’ll be, right?”

Ryo swallows. That’s not it at all, really. It’s not that he has a problem with Ueda. It’s just that right now, his insides are twisting up weirdly, and he doesn’t like not knowing how he feels. Also, Ryo is very aware that there’s a direct correlation between how confused he is and how stupid the things are that come out of his mouth.

“We should exchange numbers,” Ueda says, and Ryo frowns. He doesn’t give out his number just like that—it makes him nervous, when people can find him whenever they want.

“Why?”

“For meetings,” Ueda says, and Ryo supposes that makes sense, but he feels jittery at the thought of seeing Ueda’s name pop up on his mobile like that.

“I’ll send you an email,” Ryo replies. “With my schedule. You don’t need my number.”

“Fine,” Ueda says, with a long-suffering sigh. “Fine.”

Ryo wonders if this week will be the longest week of his life.


***


“What the hell is wrong with you?” Yoko says when Ryo walks into the lounge and collapses spread eagle onto the floor. “You look like you survived a war.”

“I did,” Ryo says, but his words are muffled by the rug that lay atop the linoleum. “I did survive a war.”

“You’re such a drama queen,” Yoko says, walking over and sitting down on Ryo’s back. Ryo can feel Yoko’s weight compressing his lungs, but he’s used to it. “It can’t have been that bad.”

“I’m writing a song with Ueda,” Ryo says, and Yoko laughs.

“Oh man, and you haven’t gotten beaten up yet? He must have the self-restraint of a monk.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ryo grumbles, maneuvering his head so he can at least attempt to garner oxygen despite the pressure on his torso. “I am perfectly charming.”

“Charming like a velociraptor,” Yoko says. “Your cute face and small stature are like a masquerade for your predatory nature. You’ll eat someone alive.”

“Ugh,” Ryo says. “It’s so awkward.”

“You did, you know, torment the guy during one of the most awkward periods of his life, say you hated him on national television, and make fun of him every opportunity you got,” Yoko says matter of factly, and Ryo grunts in acknowledgement.

“Yeah, yeah, and now we’re composing together.” Yoko stand up, and Ryo inhales a blessed lungful of air. “It’s still awkward.”

“Everything you do is awkward,” Subaru informs him from the couch, where he’s sitting and fiddling with his phone. Ryo hadn’t known he was listening.

Hina squats down in front of Ryo, an Ryo looks up at him, crossing his eyes to narrow in on the way Hina’s got his middle finger caught by his thumb, like he’s about to deliver pain to Ryo’s forehead. “You should have been nicer to him. Now he’s a trained boxer, and he’s bigger and stronger than you.”

“It was nine years ago!” Ryo says. “All of it was so long ago. I hadn’t even thought of him since he got his shit together, honestly.”

Yoko sighs, and lays down on his stomach beside Ryo. “You know, it’s never too late to apologize, in my opinion.”

“Why should I apologize?” Ryo says. “We were kids. We’re just going to work together for a week, and then it will be over.”

“This is Johnny’s Entertainment,” Yoko says. “Nothing is ever over.”


***


Ryo has this recurring dream. He’s standing on a stage, one no-color blue light shining down on him, stage center. He’s singing Code—it’s always Code, in this particular dream, and it sounds good, acoustic. Him and his guitar, and two back up bassists are the only source of sound.

Ryo’s mouth is too close to the mic, and the metal of the receiver is brushing across his lips, and he’s screaming out the chorus.

His voice cracks.

Suddenly, all the lights turn on, and the audience is empty. It’s a stadium, one meant to hold 55,000 people, but it’s completely empty. There’s no one there, no one listening.

He turns around, and his two bassists are gone too. It’s just Ryo. Alone.

The gate creeks, toward the back of the stadium, and it’s one of Ryo’s older brothers standing there, hands on his hips. “Are you done pretending, Ryo?” his brother says, and Ryo feels his heart sink to the floor. “There’s no one listening.”

“I’m not pretending!” Ryo always wants to yell across the stadium, up then he’s waking up in a cold sweat.

Ryo’s hands dig into his bedside drawer, pushing aside the foil-wrapped condoms, business cards, and emergency candy that he keeps there, his fingers closing around a photograph.

It’s a backstage photo of himself and Uchi, and Ryo’s wearing a yellow sparkly suit with terrible fringe, and Uchi’s wearing something similar. He runs his fingers over his own face, over the costume and over the obvious television studio equipment.

It’s real. Ryo really is a musician; he’s really an idol. He’s not just a lonely kid playing to an empty stadium.

It’s weird though, Ryo thinks, as he narrows his eyes in on the photograph, examining the details, that he’d never noticed Ueda there, lurking in the background. He’s engaged in conversation with Nakamaru, but his eyes are looking straight at the camera. Straight at Ryo.

Ryo shivers, and pulls his blankets back up to his chest. Sleep, however, remains elusive. It always does after this particular dream.


***


Kame’s song is about being comfortable in your own skin.

Ryo thinks it’s fitting that he’s composing the music for it with a man he used to mock for not being comfortable in his. He thinks it’s even more fitting that the more time they spend together, the less comfortable Ryo feels in his skin.

“This sounds all wrong,” Ryo snaps, as Ueda tries out a new chord. “The progression is really unnatural like that.”

Ueda looks over at him, face unreadable. “Well, what do you suggest then, Nishikido?” Ueda’s hands fall from the strings of his guitar to rest on his knees. “Since you’re the genius in the room, and all.”

Ryo frowns down at the guitar. He can feel Ueda’s glare from across the room. “Something that doesn’t sound like a Gackt reject would be a start,” Ryo replies, and stands.

He sets the guitar down onto the sofa and walks into the recording booth, sitting down at the keyboard that’s set up there. He looks down at his own simple black notebook, at the notes he’s scrawled unevenly along the lines meant for words and not for music, and then he puts his fingers to the keys.

It’s just a bit piece—a simple melody that he thinks might sound nice under a guitar, or something.

He doesn’t realize Ueda’s come into the booth until he feels the other man looming behind him, leaning forward so his chin hovers over Ryo’s right shoulder. “That’s not bad,” Ueda says, and his breath is hot against the shell of Ryo’s ear. Ryo feels uncomfortable—he couldn’t tell you why, really, but it’s like anxiousness is sloshing around in his gut all of a sudden. “But what if we do this?”

Ueda’s sweater-clad arms slide along Ryo’s own, and his hands join Ryo’s along the keys. He repeats the melody, but he adds a few more high notes toward the end of Ryo’s original composition, and it gives the whole thing a lighter, more optimistic sound. Ryo loves it. “It’ll do,” he says, and his voice wavers, slightly.

Ryo’s just too hot in here. That’s all. “You like it,” Ueda says, after a moment, backing up and leaning against the doorway. “Why do you have to be such an asshole about everything?”

“It’s my nature,” Ryo says, and if he were standing, his hands would be shoved into his pockets right now. As it is, they toy with the instrument in front of him.

“You’re going to knock over the keyboard stand, Nishikido,” Ueda says, and Ryo looks over at him.

His hood is up, and it makes Ryo think, for a moment, that Ueda looks dangerous, and it sends a little thrill through him. He can’t explain that either, and he’s going to have to give up on trying to figure out what it is about Ueda that sets him so completely on edge. It’s just a week, he reminds himself. He can handle a week.

“No, I’m not,” Ryo says. His voice sounds even more abrasive than usual. Ryo turns back to his notebook and scribbles Ueda’s changes into it. It even looks better, even without the real music bar behind it.

“You need a real music notebook,” Ueda says. “Yours looks like a kindergartener’s first attempts at drawing the notes.”

“Better than my face looking like a kindergartner’s first time playing with mommy’s make-up,” Ryo says, and Ueda flinches. It’s barely noticeable, but it’s enough to make Ryo feel a tiny tinge of victory. He hates being beaten at his own game.

“Right,” Ueda says. “Let’s just write, then.”

“Fine with me,” Ryo says, and there’s silence.

Ryo’s eyes, though, are inexorably drawn to Ueda’s profile. The upturn of his nose as he fiddles with the guitar, trying tiny things and then scrunching his nose in dissatisfaction—it’s fascinating in unexpected ways. Ryo doesn’t remember Ueda being this interesting, not even when they were younger and Ueda was pretending to see fairies.

“Do you need something?” Ueda asks, finally looking up at Ryo. “You’re staring. It’s rude.” Ueda stops, and then laughs a little. “Not that a silly thing like ‘being rude’ would stop you.”

Ryo clears his throat. “I’m not always rude,” Ryo says.

“So what, I’m special?” Ueda scratches delicately at his jaw. It’s a soft, almost feminine gesture, but then Ueda’s voice comes out a rough tenor. “Lucky me, then, huh?”

Ryo clenches his fingers tighter around his pencil. The plastic casing of it feels like it’ll crack.

Kame’s asked them to work together to write him a song. Kame doesn’t do things for no reason—Kame’s too practical for that. He must want things that neither of them can offer him alone. The thought burns, but at the same time, it steadies him.

“What do you think of this?” Ryo asks, and then he starts humming.


***


Music is a lot like friendship, for Ryo.

There are notes he loves, and notes he’s less fond of; notes that are way harder for him to hit, and notes his voice slides into effortlessly, slick like butter.

Each and every song is composed of both kinds of notes, and Ryo thinks that’s a lot like people.

There are friends like Uchi, who are made up of all kinds of notes right in Ryo’s sweet spot, the Ryo can just get, without effort or premeditation.

There are friends like Yamapi, and Jin, or like Eito, who are like children’s songs—sometimes he hits the right notes and sometimes he doesn’t, but it doesn’t matter in the end, because the song still sounds the same.

There are friends like Kame, who seem like they’re made up entirely of wrong notes, but when you actually open your mouth and belt it out, the whole thing sounds pretty good—nothing if not interesting, and certainly not as cacophonous as had been previously expected.

Ueda’s made up of all the wrong notes, too, but it’s different than with Kame, because Ryo doesn’t even know what key they’re in.


***


“Kame,” Ryo says into the phone receiver. “I can’t do this.”

It’s nine in the evening, and Ryo’s been at the recording studio with Ueda for five hours and forty-seven minutes, in which they’d accomplished nothing beyond pissing each other off and five bars of the intro, the same five bars they’d written together the day before.

So really, they hadn’t even accomplished that. Just the pissing off, then.

Kame sighs, and it’s loud in Ryo’s ear. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s insufferable,” Ryo says. “He’s got a smartass reply to everything I say, and he’s stubborn, and—“

“Ryo-chan, listen to yourself,” Kame says. “Just stop, and listen to yourself.”

Ryo takes a deep breath, and when he exhales, he can hear Kame laughing on the other end of the phone.

“Why are you laughing?!” Ryo says, his volume getting louder. He’s sitting in the parking lot, and it takes most of his effort not to slam his head into the steering wheel in frustration.

“Because,” Kame says slowly, “Smartass reply to everything? Stubborn? None of these adjectives are sounding familiar?”

“He dresses stupid,” Ryo says, after a moment of silence, and Kame laughs even harder.

“You don’t have to like someone’s sartorial choices to, you know, not act like a douchebag,” Kame says, and Ryo makes a face of dismay.

“But that’s my thing,” Ryo replies. “He’s not supposed to do it back.”

Kame’s quiet, like he’s trying to carefully pick his words. “Ueda’s…not the same person he was then,” Kame says finally. “And if you keep expecting him to be, you’re going to keep being surprised.”

“Well, no one stays the same for ten years,” Ryo says defensively. “I’m not stupid.”

“I think you both have a lot to offer as songwriters. I want you to bring out the best in each other, not the worst.” Kame sounds disappointed. “This song is important to me.”

Ryo feels a smidgeon of guilt. “Yeah, yeah, Kamenashi, twist the knife, why don’t you? I’ll try harder. To be…”

“Less of an asshole to Ueda?”

“Yeah. That.”

“Thank you,” Kame says. “No really, thank you for agreeing to work on the song.”

“You’re welcome,” Ryo says, and he thinks about Ueda’s stupid flowery shirt and Ueda’s defiant glare, and he steels himself for battle.

Tomorrow, anyway. Tonight he is calling Yamapi and getting very, very, very drunk.


***


“Ueda is the one I hate the most,” Ryo said, and the MC was surprised that he’d said it so bluntly. There was no apology in his words, no softening of the blow. Ryo wondered if they were going to stop the recording. They didn’t.

“That wasn’t very cool,” Koyama said to him, later. “What’s he ever done to you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ryo said in reply, but he kept thinking of those blue contacts that made Ueda look like he was staring out into space, and his pale, pale skin that made him look like he had washed ashore like a corpse from a river. Insecurity rippled off the other boy in waves, and Ryo hated how vulnerable he looked. “He needs to toughen up.”

“Not everyone can take that sort of thing like you can, Ryo-chan,” Yamapi had said. “You can sit there and have people make fun of your height for days and it just rolls off your back. Ueda isn’t like that.”

The thing is, Ryo wasn’t like that either. He couldn’t change anything about his height, about his whole childhood spent waiting for a growth spurt that seemed like it would never come. Every barb in his direction hurt. Ryo just knew better than to show it—showing weakness to stuff like that made you a bigger target, and made you look like a kid. Ryo didn’t need to look like a kid any more than he already did.

But Ueda… for all that his band was disjointed and lacking in anything resembling cohesion, they coddled him. They let him look out at the world with that wounded pout and that airy, empty expression, and they defended him for it.

Ryo didn’t really like that. He didn’t like that Ueda was allowed to be weak. It bothered him. It made him angry.

“He needs to learn how to take it, if he wants to do this job,” Ryo said gruffly, and Yamapi slapped him upside the head as Koyama frowned.

“Who told you that you had to be the one to teach him that?” Koyama said, and Yamapi nodded.

“You owe him an apology,” Yamapi had said, testing out his ‘leader voice.’

Ryo had apologized, and he had met Ueda’s false-blue eyes, but Ueda had seemed to look through him. That look had shaken Ryo to his bones, and he’d avoided Ueda for the most part after that.


***


It’s not until the third day of working together that Ueda snaps, which Ryo would find kind of impressive if he were on the outside looking in.

Ueda brings out the worst in Ryo, somehow. He always has, Ryo guesses.

“I have drama filming in two hours,” Ryo says, when Ueda shows up an hour late for their meeting.

“Sorry, concert preparation stuff ran over,” Ueda says, and Ryo thinks he looks tired, like he hasn’t slept. There’s a sliver of guilt at his own anger, because he knows how that goes, but Ryo shoves it down.

“My time is valuable. Don’t waste it. You should have called.” Ryo curls his hand too tightly around the neck of his guitar. He has to force himself to relax. It’s cold in the studio room, and Ryo’d turned up the heat but it hadn’t gotten any hotter yet. He can still see his breath, which sucks, because Tokyo winters are just as terrible as Osaka winters, in the end.

Ueda, of course, is wearing those stupid fucking capris that leave two inches of bared skin between his boots and their hem, and doesn’t look the least affected by the cold, and that just makes Ryo more irate.

“Oh yes,” Ueda says. “Called you. With that number I have.” Ueda’s voice is sharp, like he’s cranky. Well, Ryo’s cranky too.

“Oh,” Ryo says, and he holds his cell phone out to Ueda. “Well?”

“Well, what?” Ueda asks suspiciously as he unbuttons his coat. Today he’s wearing some long, flowy, gauzy thing that makes Ryo want to die a little inside, and he’s got a hat pulled over his ears. It shouldn’t be attractive, but it is. It suits him. Ryo doesn’t look anymore.

“Put your phone number in it, then,” Ryo says, and the impatience in his voice is more embarrassment than any kind of hurry.

“I thought we didn’t need each other’s numbers, Nishikido?” Ueda says teasingly, with a bit of bite, and Ryo thinks he’s blushing, because his ears feel hot.

“Shut the fuck up and type in your number, princess.”

Ueda takes the phone from Ryo, and the ghosting of Ueda’s surprisingly rough fingers along his own make him jump. Ueda looks at him, a perfectly manicured brow lifting. “Princess?” Ueda muses. “Haven’t heard that one in a while.”

Ueda tugs off his hat. His hair is starting to grow back, now. Ryo vaguely remembers that Ueda had shaved it for some drama or another. Ryo doesn’t like to watch dramas. They remind him of work, and in his free time, that’s the last thing he wants to think about.

Ueda turns to Ryo, looking at him pointedly. Ryo thinks Ueda is trying to say something, by showing Ryo his hair, but Ryo just wants him to put his goddamned number in the goddamned phone. “Whatever,” Ryo says. “Even with that haircut, you still look like a girl.” He doesn’t, really, Ryo thinks. The fuzzy black hair makes him look more like a young boy than anything else, but if there’s anything Ryo’s good at, it’s finding sore spots to pick at.

“Does anything you say to me have to be offensive?” Ueda asks, and Ryo’s back straightens defiantly. “You don’t need to get so worked up about everything.” His stupid filmy sleeves are riding up his arms as he types his number into Ryo’s phone. He tosses the phone into Ryo’s lap, and Ryo examines his new contact with narrow eyes. Ueda it says, no Tatsuya or any additional information. Good. That’s all he needs.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ryo says, shoving his phone into his pocket. “Four more days and I don’t have to do this anymore, if we can work out Kame’s song.”

“In such a big hurry to be done with me, Nishikido?” Ueda asks, and Ryo thinks he might sound a little hurt. It makes Ryo feel a little bad, because Ueda is clearly tired, and he hasn’t done anything to warrant Ryo’s ire, really.

But he makes Ryo feel so…off-balance.

“Something about you just rubs me the wrong way,” Ryo snarls, and Ueda’s face goes a little dim.

“So it really is just me,” Ueda says. Ryo doesn’t like that look on his face any more than he liked the amused, disdainful one. This one looks like Ueda’s trying to hold something back, and Ryo sucks at dealing with people when they’re feeling things.

“Don’t cry and be such a chick about it. It’s bad enough you look like one, you don’t have to act like one, too.”

Ryo doesn’t see him move, but before Ryo can even blink Ueda’s hand has gripped at the collar of Ryo’s shirt, grabbing a fistful of the soft flannel and using it to hold Ryo close to him. He shoves Ryo backward, until Ryo’s back hits the studio wall. Ryo’s hands grasp for purchase, but there are only knobs and buttons beneath his fingers to the right and empty air to the left. The wall is hard against his shoulder blades, and Ueda’s breath is hot on his cheek. “You talk too much,” Ueda says, and the sound of his voice is raw and rough, and it pulls at Ryo’s belly in unexpected ways; ways that have nothing to do with him looking girlish or young.

Ueda wasn’t holding back tears, it seems. He was holding back rage.

“It’s not my fault you look like a lady,” Ryo gasps, because he doesn’t want to fold just like that, and Ueda’s clenched fist pushes into his clavicle, fabric still caught in his hand.

“It wouldn’t be so bad if everything you said wasn’t so stupid,” Ueda says, and Ryo gulps, because Ueda suddenly…doesn’t look like a girl at all. He certainly doesn’t feel like one either; not with his muscular frame hovering over Ryo, eyes hot and dangerous. Even though Ueda’s hand, knuckles pressed to Ryo’s collarbones, is the only place they touch, Ryo can feel every inch of Ueda, all the strength hidden in that lithe frame that Ryo admits is packed with far more power than his own.

“I say what I want, when I want,” Ryo says, but it doesn’t come out as firmly as he means it. It feels like there isn’t enough air in the room, even though earlier he’d been thinking it was quite cool and refreshing. “Let go of me.”

Ueda grunts, and drops his hand, and Ryo slides down the wall. He feels strange; hot all over, like he could combust or like he could erupt like lava from a volcano out of his own skin.

“I’m a man,” Ueda says. “A grown one. Who does boxing. Don’t you forget it.”

As Ryo’s eyes glance away to the side, hiding from that penetrating gaze, he swallows. Ryo’s tongue peeks out to wet his lips. He thinks about the way Ueda’s body radiates intense heat, and the way his eyes had seemed to look into Ryo, like skin and muscle and bone mean nothing at all. He thinks about the raw strength in Ueda’s arms, hard muscles from boxing twining their way up to Ueda’s fierce shoulders and even fiercer glare.

“Don’t worry,” Ryo says. “I won’t.”


***


The media had made such a big deal about it that even Ryo, who avoided anything related to work like the plague in his off-time was bombarded with the grainy images of Ueda’s shorn head in the newspaper.

Ryo’s first thought had been one of relief that it wasn’t him in that position, and his second thought had been that Ueda’s eyes were very bright.


***


Ryo chugs an icy coffee drink from the vending machine and rubs at his eyes. It’s winter, he knows, but he feels irritatingly hot, and he can feel the coming onset of a headache, too, and caffeine is his best weapon against that right now.

Despite the fact that he and Ueda, until Ryo had finally opened his big mouth too wide, had worked in almost companionable silence, the atmosphere in the studio had been tense. Now, with the shadow of their almost-argument hanging over them both, it feels like an all-out warzone.

Ryo knows, as an adult, he needs to go back in there, apologize, and get things back into motion. Kame is counting on them. Ryo hates to let his friends down, and Kame is a friend who rarely asks for anything, so maybe Ryo wants to try a little harder than usual. Still, Ryo feels like he’d rather hide under a table in the lounge room, like he did when he was still a 146-centimeter-tall junior, than go back in there and face a bristling, riled up Ueda.

Being an adult is hard.

“Nishikido,” Ueda says, and Ryo spins around, almost dropping the empty ice-coffee can in surprise.

Ueda has his arms crossed over his chest, his large black sweatshirt hanging casually low off of one shoulder, and under the fluorescents of the hallway, his jaw looks especially sharp. His features are more striking, without the long dyed hair and the make-up. Ryo can feel that flush again, climbing up his face and threatening to turn him tomato-colored, and he fights it back. “Ahh, yeah?” Ryo says, and his voice cracks, and really, hasn’t there been enough humiliation today without his body trying to forcefully revisit puberty?

“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” Ueda says, and his eyes flicker over to catch Ryo’s. Ryo feels surprise stutter in his chest, and he focuses hard on Ueda’s expression. “But I won’t be talked to like that anymore.”

“I just…” Ryo starts, and then he clears his throat. “I’m just sort of a dick,” Ryo says, and Ueda smiles, a little bit, and his eyes crinkle, and Ryo catches a glimpse of those perfect teeth.

It’s only when Ueda smiles that Ryo thinks he looks pretty, anyway.

“There was a time,” Ueda says, “when the things you said made me question myself.” Ryo remembers the bleached hair and the blue contacts. The insecure smiles and bizarre statements about seeing fairies. “Not that I wasn’t already lost, anyway.” Ryo hardly sees any of that in the strong looking man in front of him, who oozes confidence and stares straight at Ryo, tackling him head-on. “But now, I know exactly who I am, Nishikido. And you won’t change that, no matter how much you don’t like me.”

“I know,” Ryo says. “It’s not…it’s not you, not really. I don’t hate you!” Ryo looks down at the floor, examining the tiles. They’re not interesting to look at, like Ueda, but they’re safer. “I’m just…I’m not good with words, like this.” The words feel thick on his tongue, but he wants to get them out. “I don’t… mean them, you know? I just say things.” Ryo is rambling, and he toys with the can between his hands. “To get a rise out of people. To make people look at me. Or stop looking at me. One of those.”

“It’s all about attention?”

“Yes!” Ryo says. “Or no. I don’t know, okay. I don’t know. It’s easier to be ‘poison tongue’ than it is to try and…” Ryo shrugs. “I don’t know what I’m doing, most of the time.” Ryo exasperatedly rubs at his hair, leaving it in what probably amounts to massive disarray. “I don’t know how to act around you.”

Ueda, when Ryo stops talking and looks up to gauge the response, is grinning at him, like he would grin at a particularly endearing child, and Ryo feels young and stupid, and he can’t stop the baleful glower he directs at the older man. “You’re looking at me like you’re a dog,” Ueda says, and Ryo bristles. “Like a kicked puppy looking for forgiveness, or something.”

“No, I’m just…” the word shy, is there, waiting, but Ryo doesn’t want that one. The word awkward, too. But instead, Ryo just presses his lips together and glares at Ueda, who is unfazed.

“That’s alright,” Ueda says, and Ryo notices that the white tank he’s wearing under his sweatshirt has got pink glittered angel wings. “I really like dogs.”

And damned if Ryo doesn’t feel a strange warmth oozing down his chest and into his belly.


***


Ryo can remember the look on Ueda’s face back in August, 2003. He’d be hard pressed to forget it, the way Ueda’s eyes had clouded and his face had gone dark; the way his shy smile had faltered when Ryo had asked him his question.

The Kansai Juniors can ask the Tokyo Juniors anything they’d like, the MC had said, and the questions—well, they’d been prepared long before the cameras

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Ryo had asked, and he’d grinned cattishly into the microphone as the other Osaka juniors giggled and yelled out “poison tongue” at him.

Kame had jumped out in front of Ueda, and Koki had wrapped an arm about Ueda’s thin frame, and Ryo…Ryo had pretended like he couldn’t see the crushed look on Ueda’s face, because that would mean he’d have to apologize. Ryo hated apologizing, especially since he came with his own warning tag.

Poison tongue.

Backstage, after the medley had finished, and the Tokyo juniors were sweating in their red shiny jackets, Kame and Uchi had exchanged phone numbers while Ryo stood at Uchi’s side, warm arms pressed together. Kame had looked at Ryo, with those open, wide eyes, and smiled softly.

“Ueda’s not… he’s not ready for you, yet,” Kame said. “He doesn’t deserve that.”

There was a gentle chiding in Kame’s voice that made Ryo feel like the younger of them both in that moment, and without any intention to do so, Ryo’s eyes had slid over to Ueda, who sat beside Koki, talking with him in hushed tones that made it look like they were spilling their deepest secrets.

Ryo didn’t know why Ueda made him feel so…disoriented, so nervous. Maybe because in the hunched shape of Ueda’s shoulders, Ryo could see the mirrored reflection of his own insecurities looking back at him.

Ryo looked back at Kame helplessly, and Uchi had squeezed his hand. “I didn’t mean to… They told me to…” He’d been told to tease Ueda, he thinks, but no one had told him to do it quite like that.

Kame had nodded, then, and Ryo had wondered why he felt like he was talking to an adult instead of someone a few years his junior. “It takes some people longer to find themselves,” Kame had said, and he’d looked at Jin then, who was laughing loudly with Yamapi by the water-tank, a triangular cup in his hand and glitter from his own jacket on his fingers. Then Kame had looked back at Ryo. “Shouldn’t you get started, too?”


***


It’s easier to work together, after they fight. Maybe Ryo watches his words a bit more, biting back some of the automatic sarcastic responses to think about what Ueda is saying. Sometimes, he still thinks it’s boring or weird, and he says so, but when it’s a good idea, he says that too. It makes it more comfortable, Ryo thinks, when he gives his real opinions. It feels like now, he and Ueda are finally making music together.

“Piano,” Ryo says, just as Ueda opens his mouth.

“I was going to ask if you thought we should add a piano part,” Ueda says. “I was going to use whole sentences to do so.” Ueda scratches at his bare neck. “But I suppose your way works too.”

Ryo closes his eyes as Ueda tries something, something perfect, and when Ryo opens them again, Ueda is smiling. “You like it, don’t you?”

There’s something magical in the way it feels to have Ueda smile at him. Ryo had never really realized what he’d been missing, before, not having that smile directed in his direction, but it’s… well, Ryo thinks it might be cheesy to say it’s like the sunrise, but that’s exactly what it’s like, in the end.

“I do,” Ryo says, and he scribbles it down in his sheet as Ueda writes it on his own. “Like it, I mean.”

Ryo and Ueda, it turns out, have a lot in common, musically speaking. They find intrigue in the same notes, and when they look at Kame’s lyrics, singing them aloud in a half-hearted duet, they find the same phrasing, somehow, sinking their teeth into the same places along the bridge. It startles them both.

Ryo spends a lot of time trying not to watch Ueda’s hands, the way they flutter effortlessly across the keyboard. Ueda’s hands, for Ryo, are a study in contrast. They’re dark, and bruised, probably from boxing practice, and the little finger on his right hand has been broken, and doesn’t move quite right. But the way those hands delicately press the keys…Ryo is fascinated by it. So strong and so gentle, at the same time. He remembers the graze of those knuckles across his clavicle, and it still—there’s an unsettling jerk in his stomach that he can’t quite fathom.

“What are you staring at?” Ueda asks, and it’s the same question he’d asked days ago, with none of the same intent.

“I’m not sure,” Ryo replies, because he isn’t.

Ueda himself is so full of contradictions that Ryo doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to figure them out. It goes beyond his soft-spoken voice delivering hard barbs, or that pretty face harboring a personality that’s raw and masculine. Ryo thinks he could look at Ueda, talk to Ueda, day after day after day, and he’d still not even begin to scratch the surface. Not even begin to see what kinds of secrets lurk behind that sunrise smile.

The weird thing is, Ryo kind of wants to try.


***


“Ueda and I are writing a song together,” Jin said, and Ryo had looked over at Jin, who was leaning back on Yamapi’s sofa with his expensive headphones around his neck.

“Is he any good?” Ryo said, and something in his tone must have given Jin the hint that Ryo doubted it.

“Better than you,” Jin had said, and there was a warning in Jin’s voice.

Ryo heard it.

Ryo felt like he was missing something about Ueda, maybe.


***


The notes come together one by one, oozing out of Ryo’s mind and into his notebook, which he passes to Ueda. Ueda brings them to life on the keyboard as Ryo sings Kame’s lyrics, and it’s good.

Ueda takes Ryo’s steady, driving chords, and fragile verses, and adds eclectic high notes and frenetic melodies.

It’s interesting, and unique. Ryo never could have written this on his own.

Being comfortable in your own skin.

Maybe Ryo can admit, now, that seeing Ueda in his delicate shirts with his pretty princess face, and his love of basketball and boxing and leather boots, and not really giving a fuck what anyone thinks…Well, maybe Ryo’s got a little further to go than he’d thought.

“Are you paying attention, Nishikido?” Ueda taunts, and Ryo turns to look at him.

“Why should I pay attention to you? You’ll just space out in the middle, anyway.”

“Better than spacing out in the beginning,” Ueda says, and then he leans forward, his chest mashing the keys and making discordant notes in the air. “I’m the brains of this operation, so listen up.”

“What am I, then?” Ryo asks, and he’s not sure how he never manages to keep the upper hand with Ueda, who seems to be full of one-liners these days.

“Grunt labor,” Ueda says. “So do you have any ideas for the end of this thing? I think it’d be nice to put a few harmonies in there.”

“Like?”

“We can layer Kame’s voice, maybe, here—“ and Ueda points to a section in the bridge on the printed out music sheets. “And here.” His finger slides down on the page. “Well?”

“Yeah,” Ryo says, and wets dry lips. Ueda’s shirt today, a fluffy grey sweater with a wide boatneck, slides down his shoulder. There’s a mole there, and Ryo’s eyes keep returning to it against his will. “Yeah, that’s… a good idea.”

“I thought I was supposed to be the one with my head in the clouds?” Ueda says, and his voice is playful. Ryo’s heard him talk like that before, to Kame, but it’s never been directed at Ryo before.

“You still are,” Ryo says gruffly, forcing himself to focus in on the music sheets in front of him. “I was just thinking about my drama.”

“Think about me right now,” Ueda says. “And the song.”

Ryo presses his lips into a thin line. Right now, it feels like he can’t focus on anything else.

Part Two

Comments

[natsukashi-yume.livejournal.com]

T______________T ilu. and this fic. all the music. and ueda with fuzzy hair. ♥

[shy-mizuno.livejournal.com]

As I came to the bottom of the page, in my head I was going 'what? that's it? I was expecting a romance!' and then I see Part Two and I go 'YEY!' This story really has me hooked. Love it!!!~