dvd commentary: rewind to glory, tomorrow never ends
DVD commentary
He moved in, more or less officially, on a Thursday.
No there is no real meaning on it being a Thursday. I admit I use days of the week as a sort of signifier-something is happening in the present on a day that will be remembered in the future, but who ever remembers the day of the week it happened on? That sort of thing. The day of the week is almost always forgotten.
Ueda’s pretty much been slowly moving his stuff to Junno’s place. He tossed the rest of his stuff by the way-except for a few things he just left at Nakamaru’s place because he didn’t feel like bringing it with him…like clothes.
The sun was just rising, when Taguchi locked the door behind him.
When I set out writing this (aka the first hmm 3k or so) I really thought this would finish in ~18k, which is why the first fight or w/e happens so soon in. Although, I guess it doesn’t ruin the pacing too much…either way, I was too lazy (tired, exhausted, fml when will I be done this thing) to change it.
The bullet points for the scene w Kame/next scenes were
1) scene w/ kame-ueda’s files (aside: where would paper case files be kept??? Would they keep juvie files???? Literally went FUCK IT I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT POLICE FORCES IM GONNA MAKE SHIT UP if it’s not easily google-able no one will know either so I’m good.)
2) comes home to find ueda outside, “they tore it down” “nothing’s the same” (also I copy-pasted the wording from the last scene in red light flash back, if that sounds familiar, haha.)
3) “why is sex always the answer/what our relationship is based off of” / “because it’s simple. Because we’re afraid.”
The details filled themselves in as I was writing. Honestly, this was supposed to be a pretty pivotal point but I think it got lost in the rest of the fic. The original plan was (this was the ~1/3rd point) after this, a few happy scenes, then the scene where Ueda gets beat up, slow/frustrated recovery, and then last scene. Obviously didn’t quite work that way.
Mornings crossed the line from cool to cold in the space of a week and Ueda could clearly see his breath as he jogged through the grey haze of sunrise.
Ueda’s pov! This wasn’t in the original plan. Actually, I had no clue what went between scene above and “lol let’s have sex again”. That’s not entirely true. I did know that at some point, I wanted to have him work at the konbini for two reasons: 1) god why do none of them interact w other ppl this isn’t right 2) I want someone who knew the two of them from before. I kind of ended up dropping this storyline (as well as some others) though. That said, bullet points for this scene was ‘you used to live here, didn’t you’ and ‘I did, end up in jail for a bit, I mean.’
As for the cat…the cat was always there. The cat dying was also always there. Sorry about the cat. I guess the cat is a metaphor for Uepi. You can tame a cat, but in the end, the cat will always be free. Well, and then losing the cat right before losing Uepi-kind of a “if only I’d seen it coming” thing… Haha, it’s kind of heavy handed, isn’t it?
Speaking of the “tying up” scene for this section…man I was fighting so hard to get to this point so I could write this sex scene, then I got to it and was so burnt out I went ‘fuck it’. I know I lost some important information by skipping it…but it’s been so long I can’t remember what. Ah well. I wanted to write it later as a sort of “outtake” (I skipped a couple scenes in the end) but…I don’t think I have the time/energy anymore T_T
As for the name thing…Names are important, I think. Taguchi calls him Uepi because that’s what he remembers him as. Ueda calls him Taguchi because that’s what he remembers him as. The thing is, they’re virtual strangers living with each other. In a way they’re close, but in truth they’re not-they don’t know each other at all. Haha, this interview came long after I’d written this but “At the time, I was deciding between ‘Uepi’ and ‘Uepu’, and ended up calling him Uepi. Well, I’m the only one who called him that.” Or something. I’d like to think that this happened in the fic world too haha. As for ‘Tatsuya’-that’s Taguchi in the present. For him, calling Ueda by his first name here is another sign of familiarity, of need, really. For Ueda, the only person who’s really called him Tatsuya was his dad…so the name doesn’t have many good memories for him. So when he tells him that he doesn’t mind if he calls him Tatsuya-in a way, that’s Ueda’s way of acknowledging that this is a new page. It’s also a way of saying “I trust you”.
Also yes, Uebo my tsun wriggly child. I mean, Junnosuke isn’t that long lmfao but he’s not going to acknowledge their closeness in that way. He’s okay with Junno doing it! But hell if he’s gonna do it…or something like that.
(Actually, something else I wanted to note re: language. English doesn’t really have a formal/informal level…but at the same time, I wanted to denote Ueda’s language being a lot rougher than Junno’s. Kind of like “a habit that was never fixed”. Well, Uepi’s language really is rough haha-but here I’d imagine it to be rougher. Hence the probably overuse of profanity…because I didn’t know how else to do it. The moments when Junno slips into that too is when he’s kind of ‘going back to his old self’. And I wanted, as the story went on, for Ueda’s language to ‘smooth out’ a little. Well, I don’t know if I managed or not, but that’s what I wanted!)
I ended up dropping the sexual assault storyline too. That one was on purpose-I felt a little strange writing it, but at the same time, I didn’t know how to completely excise it because it’d been part of the story from the beginning? (Even from red light flash back.) I mean, the big ‘theme’/driving force of the story is guilt and shame…but it felt really crass in a way? I say that, but I put it in anyway… (this may or may not have been inspired by a mix of wild adapter and bi no kyojin)
Yes I named the twins after Samurai Drive hahahahhahahahahahahaha IN MY DEFENSE I was trying to think of paired sibling names and was basically going through random name lists and I saw Haruki and thought ‘wait this is perfect’. Sorry Shanna. JK I’m never sorry.
It wasn’t, in the end, quite a fresh start; as Taguchi had said, life just didn’t work that way.
Okay this overly self indulgent fucking pretentious bullshit is because I was reading Pink and Gay (shige’s manga)-oh wait Pink and Gray-and if Shige can be pretentious then I can too!!!!! Me, sitting in my Intro to GR class, going ‘what the fuck is the Schwarzschild metric what the fuck is this contravariant derivative shit’, still crying over P&G…and doodling fic on the side.
Ah, as to why it’s laundry and groceries and beer…? Well, those are my essentials… You mean there’s anything else to life?
I originally wanted the whole “Hi, I’m ___” part and the “tell me about you” part to be longer, but then I went ‘fuck this’.
And yes, naming the cat Hime was a reference to Uebo-hime n___n To me, adopting a (stray?) cat together is important in a relationship! Yeah…I’ve used this in a few fics…haha…
Boxing! I like to think that Ueda did it a little in high school which is when he got interested. He picked it up again, after his kind of…aimless years. (After he gets out of jail, basically.) This entire scene, really, is a ‘things begin to settle into his old normal’ for Ueda, but also a ‘new’ normal, if that makes sense. As for Riko…I really like her! I’m sad I lost her storyline string too.
October ended and most of November swept by
The next…oh my god 10k words (wtf) were literally “idk some happy shit, winter fluff, skating, Christmas crap, new years hakama, more winter fluff”. GOD I HATE EVERYTHING. This was also the point where I went “fuck, this is way over 18k fuck me can I finish by 30k please let me finish by 30k.” That said, a lot of important points ended up in these 10k, so I guess I’ll do that in detail too.
Birthday-me: “oh my god how much time has passed does this work crap when did red light flash back happen help WHAT IS THE PASSAGE OF TIME-wait if I can’t figure it out idt anyone else will notice NO I STILL NEED TO KNOW HELP DAMMIT IS UEDA’S BIRTHDAY OVER fuck it I’ll just do Junno’s birthday”. Yeah. Haha that line where Riko says “good men are always taken” and Ueda going ‘…’ was something else I wanted to expand on but didn’t T_T Also: ‘fuck does Taguchi have friends what does he usually do for his birthday-oh fuck this he can blow them off.’
(Actually, there’s a bit more to that… the thing is, he’s been carrying that guilt for over ten years-13? Years? Idk how to do math-and it’s something he feels like he’s never been able to atone for, he feels like he doesn’t ‘deserve’ it? Or rather he keeps people at arms length because at the end of the day, he feels ‘I did this, but they don’t know that, if they knew that, they wouldn’t want to know me’ sort of thing. Part of why all his past relationships have failed too haha.)
Also I was seriously reaching for shitty jokes/puns, it’s not in character if I don’t include any! You know it’s bad when you post on facebook asking for shitty puns. Anyway, the strawberries only got added to the cake to have the berry agrapeable pun make sense…
--“It’s not like we’re never do this again.” You know when you write something and then can’t stop laughing because you KNOW they’re never going to do this again because you’re about to ruin their lives? Yeah, that was me.
“But even to have someone to give this to- For a little while, I was worried I’d never have a chance to give this to Uepi, you know? So I really am very thankful." -see…above? Part of the reason why I wrote the post-fight scene from Ueda’s POV is bc I wasn’t sure if I could capture just how much it devastated Taguchi. He genuinely thought that it might be over, that Ueda was going to up and leave, that he was going to be left alone again. That didn’t mean he didn’t hope.
Mmm other than that…Taguchi saying how he’s never celebrated his birthday like this? Well, a lot of it is tied to above re: friendship/relationships. At first, in university and in his last years of high school, I think his blood relations (I don’t want to use the word ‘family’ I guess) and his sister would’ve held some sort of celebration, and his university classmates-but he’s cold with the former, except for his sister-although that was a relationship that was extremely strained as well in those first years, but’s improved dramatically with time and distance (now that I think about it…his sister probably at least texts him…oops…) -and with the latter, like above, he kept his distance, so to him, it was going through the motions. But this time, because it’s Ueda, who might not know but who Taguchi trusts (and has never quite fallen out of love with), it’s a happiness that goes to his heart? I’m sure he’s been given really fancy presents before, but it’s not the object, it’s the emotions behind it.
As to the watch…me: what the fuck do you get people as birthday presents.
As to the necklace… me, upon shanna posting a picture pointing out uepi’s necklaces: hysterical laughter because it’s a fucking feather. Anyway, I just thought a feather would look good on him. I didn’t realize it was /actually/ his rebound necklace.
The first snow of the year fell soon after that.
Snow… (Speaking of weather/seasonal themes, I wanted to write a scene about cherry blossoms but forgot…) Snow is transient. It melts easily. But a ‘first snow’ also has feelings of purity and new beginnings? Or rather, because it turns everything white, it covers dirt, covers everything…Something like that. Also it’s fun :D
Anyway, this was just “cute fluffy winter shit”
And then it felt natural for Junno to get sick, and then natural for Kame to show up. The story kind of changed dramatically here in a way from what I planned, because Kame wasn’t supposed to have much of a role, other than, at the end, seeing Ueda in the last scene and going “mmmmm.” This is where he took on a much larger role. But it felt right, because he’s such a Good Person™ . So in the end, in this unplanned scene, I got to a) plant suspicion in Kame’s mind, b) Kame is a Good Person, c) Uepi calls himself Taguchi’s boyfriend and I guess most importantly, d) plant worry in Taguchi’s mind.
I got too lazy to write a full skating scene.
Christmas! Major things…? Uepi not comfortable w being close not near home-but conversely, Uepi being extremely comfortable near home, and the fact that he truly treats it as home. [“ A light snow had begun to fall, the flakes melting as soon as they hit their skin, their bare hands“ ]← the transience I was talking about. Snow melts, disappears-this was never meant to be permanent. Haha, I was wondering if I was being too obvious, because these are ‘themes’/’signals’ I use a lot…
The year was almost over - that’s how it always was, after Christmas.
To be honest, I don’t remember anymore why I ended up writing the scene where his sister calls. At this point, the part with the ocean, with them planning on moving away-I hadn’t come up with any of that yet. His sister didn’t have any real role. That said, this was a reminder of ‘family’ for Junno-the juxtaposition of a family that’s supposed to be his and a family he rejects, next to the small ‘family’ he’s made with Ueda. The other thing is that this is the first time Junno takes the initiative to tell someone about Ueda-to say that ‘we’re together, there’s someone who’s with me.’ His sister is going to know their history-not that they ever uh, banged at Junno’s place, but it would’ve been obvious to his sister, who knew junno well, what his feelings for Ueda were. But this is important because Junno is acknowledging it to the outside world? I guess it’s something like ‘speaking it makes it true’.
(And…yes, he knows his family is perfectly capable of keeping tabs on him. Hence ‘she could know without him telling her.’)
Hmmm, what else-oh, ‘he stood and checked his watch’. Putting away the phone that he’d just used to talk about family with, replacing it with something important Ueda had given him.
Okay, I was trying to come up with puns with ‘otters’ and ‘snails’. I admit it.
Other than that-I feel like Taguchi is the type of person who’s always smiling, always laughing-always a sun for other people, but who hides everything else inside. Well, I say that…and, well. But living with him, you can’t not pick up on it? And it’s extremely frustrating when you know something’s wrong but can’t figure out what and the other person always pretends like nothing is wrong. And Ueda also knows he can’t do anything about whatever’s bothering Taguchi, so he’s frustrated about that too. Not that Ueda reciprocates either. I guess what I’m getting at is, this is a microsm (?) of things they’re both hiding from each other.
Uh, New Years. Important points:
1) wouldn’t they look sooooooo cute all dressed up n___n
2) “drawing fortunes and ueda gets a curse but when junno asks about it he just says “secret” but super joking/teasingly”
Haha this was also foreshadowing a little…it’s not good to carry a curse with you, right? Ah, I forgot about this…but he also doesn’t really throw it out, it just ends up balled up in his pocket. I was going to have him pull it out at a later time, but forgot about it =_=
And New Year = start of new things obviously.
Like kittens.
Ok I realized I’d kind of forgotten to talk about Hime for a while. So I came up with a reason. Also, who doesn’t want kittens. But I admit it’s because I forgot about here. Got caught up in the person instead of the cat.
Life went back to normal. New Year’s was over, and work settled back into to its usual rhythm.
“Do you want to build a snowman?” (No.)
This short scene was really just to demarcate the passing of time. Also, because Uepi w/ an apron and glasses uhuhuhu.
What Taguchi had told Ueda had been true - he didn’t see much of his old coworkers since he’d transferred divisions. But what he’d left out was that he had no inclination to see them either.
So this scene w/ Kame
a) DAMMIT I REALLY WANTED TO DO A ‘WRONG YAMASHITA’ LINE. Anyway, did you know Shoon and Shige are basically the same age because I totally didn’t realize.
b) Kame asking how long they’ve been together, Junno saying “about a year” without thinking
c) “I see,” Kamenashi said. He took a thoughtful pause. “You know, Taguchi, I don’t understand you." / “I’ve always felt this - but you have a strong sense of justice, don’t you?"
I also wanted to talk a little about the ~special task force~ …the empty desks/sub teams were pin btw.
. A small moment of relief. He unlocked the door, and quickly locked it behind him. Ueda walked out from the kitchen as Taguchi came in. He was frowning.
The next scene. Me, earlier: “ok tlist what other fluffy winter shit is there”. Tlist: “hot chocolate”. So hot chocolate it is.
Uh, yeah there’s plot stuff too I guess. But really, hot chocolate. Oh that’s right-I was watching Runaway and going “wtf Ueda’s a host in this IM GLAD THAT THE DRAMA SCRIPT WRITERS AND I HAVE THE SAME IDEAS :D” And then sex happened. And then the cat happened because I had no fucking clue how to end the scene. It’s like the sex version of “rocks fall everyone dies”.
Night poured over him in a deluge, swallowing him in darkness.
Mmm, Junno’s nightmare. He’s running from himself/his guilt and in a way, chasing the object of his guilt in the same way. But really, from the start, I kept trying to figure out where to put in the scene where he’s beating someone up and enjoying it. Mmmm maybe it’s my own projection, but past!Taguchi was pretty mild, didn’t really pick fights (rly doesn’t need to bc tsun uepi) but that time, he totally snapped. Hurt the people he cares about, and he’ll snap. I think lots of us are the same.
Also: [“Uepi…do you ever think about the past?”
“No,” he lies. “You always were too soft." ] Truthfully, Uepi can’t shake off the past either, but his guilt isn’t as heavy. Actually, he doesn’t have any guilt. The source of the reason why he feels like he’s not worthy of other people isn’t due to guilt. The other part, Ueda calling him soft-he obviously doesn’t know about Taguchi snapping, but even if he did, I think he still would. By ‘soft’ I mean…kind? Allowing emotions to affect him? Although, really, Ueda’s the same-he just doesn’t admit it, even to himself.
Oh, cigarette, also a cue about the past.
“Hey, Taguchi, do you have a moment?"
Hmmmm I need to get Ueda beaten up how am I going to write this scene. Honestly, this was the scene (series of 2? Scenes) that I had the most trouble with and was least happy with. (Still not happy with it but I’ll deal.) It’s easier to say “junno sees ueda get taken away by two men, ueda gets beaten up bc of [blank], junno can’t call police, is at his wits end, ueda eventually stumbles home and tells junno to call nakamaru” than to…actually…write it…
As for the actual scene…I don’t even know how many times I rewrote it. (tbh idk what to talk about in regards to this scene. It was a hard scene to write? Although this is where I asked “so how are you with non-con” but ended up not going through with that entire story line so, it’s just awkwardly there =_=) Also, I need to hurt him but I also can’t hurt him too badly because I need him to be relatively physically okay by the last scene!!!!
It was nearly midnight. Taguchi sank down to the floor, just inside the door.
Kame is… Well, he’s responsible, but I think he’s also someone who’s Good, and he genuinely cares. By this point he’s put most of the pieces together. Especially the one where Taguchi’s in something a bit deeper than he can handle, judging from the earlier phone call, and the fact that everything obviously isn’t okay. I guess what it boils down to is that he’s going to consider the person and the situation, rather than objective facts?
Nakamaru’s a loser, but he’s an oddly competent loser, don’t you think? Hahahaha.
I guess Taguchi being angry as fuck here is also a ‘reminder’. He seems like one of those people who’s cheerful and a mediator until you push him really too far, and then he’ll snap, doesn’t he? And this is definitely a situation to make anyone snap. Although, I guess most people wouldn’t necessarily react with anger-maybe I was projecting a little again.
I’m really…really…squeamish, by the way. In a competition between me and Nakamaru about who’s a bigger wuss…it’s hard to say who’d win… So you can imagine how googling ‘dislocated elbow recovery’ ‘fractured leg recovery’ ‘setting dislocated elbow’ would make me feel T_T
The next few days passed in a blur.
The ‘bullet points’ for the next scene was:
blah blah blah next few days are a blur. nakamaru comes to check on him a few times, after work. taguchi calls in to take care of “a sick family member” and ends up admitting to kame that the whole thing had been re; ueda, but only says that it’s bc they-uh, ueda-had a rough upbringing. he also honestly doesn’t know who it was bc ueda wouldn’t tell him
slow recovery, idk more sex, frustration on both ends. taguchi wishing that they’d had a different past so everything could be different now,
If only ‘blah blah blah’ was an acceptable substitute for a couple thousand words.
Alright I guess I should talk a little about Ueda here. Originally, I thought about writing this in Ueda’s POV. Actually, I originally thought to not include the scene where he’s getting beat-up at all-so it’d be Taguchi seeing him get taken away, then Ueda somehow stumbling back home-and do it as a recollection over the days or so after. I didn’t, because it was hard. I still think it’d work better, but it’s hard T_T How would he be feeling? What would he be thinking? Which parts would he remember and which parts would he forget? Would he be thinking about it at all? But I guess it’s difficult because it’s something I’ve never remotely experienced-worry, anger, those things I have a baseline for, but not the other end. But what I do know is that there is one point where, to himself, he goes ‘snap out of it’. That said, some painkillers really put you out of it, so he really would’ve just spent the first few days pretty much unconscious.
Lying in bed with jackshit to do is so. Fucking. Boring. There’s a limit to how long you can sleep. And I’m not nearly as restless and wriggly as Uepi is.
“I could read you a book?” Taguchi offered, a little doubtfully. Ueda had side eyed him.
Ahhh the Little Prince. It’s a book I love, and a book that, every time I read again, it’s like I’m reading a different book. On one hand, I chose it because it’s one of my favourites, on the other, I chose it because it fit. If you haven’t read it before, please read it-I think if you read it, you’ll know what I mean. I thought about copying the longer version of the fox quote here…but it’s pretty much the entire chapter. But:
"Come and play with me," proposed the little prince. "I am so unhappy."
"I cannot play with you," the fox said. "I am not tamed."
"Ah! Please excuse me," said the little prince.
[…]
"No," said the little prince. "I am looking for friends. What does that mean-- 'tame'?"
"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. It means to establish ties."
"'To establish ties'?"
"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world...
[…] "Please-- tame me!" he said.
[…]
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..."
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"Then it has done you no good at all!"
"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added:
"Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret."
[…]
"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose..."
"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
As for the sunsets:
"One day," you said to me, "I saw the sunset forty-four times!"
And a little later you added:
"You know-- one loves the sunset, when one is so sad..."
"Were you so sad, then?" I asked, "on the day of the forty-four sunsets?"
But the little prince made no reply.
As for me, I’m also fond of sunsets and sunrise…in case you couldn’t tell.
Time may not heal all wounds, but they did soften them. Nakamaru visited one night to take out the stitches-Ueda demanded that he bring him crutches.
Can I just say that “slow recovery, idk more sex, frustration on both ends” is really easier said than done? I still think this line was a stroke of genius tho: “I am not going to talk to him about you sucking my dick,” Ueda said flatly. “I am not going to talk to him about sex, period."
"I'm not a kid, I know," Ueda said. He sighed, shook his head. He wasn't a kid-it was true. He was exhausted, if not physically, then in every other way.
Taguchi suggesting for Ueda to stay with Nakamaru for a change of scenery and to go somewhere people wouldn’t recognize him. Ueda’s refusal obviously isn’t because ‘he doesn’t like sleeping in strange places’. There’s two main parts to this. 1) he really does need Taguchi right now. Being with him, being near him. He also has a misplaced sense of ‘if I leave, what if I never come back, what if I never see you again’-Taguchi’s afraid of losing Ueda, but Ueda’s just as afraid of losing Taguchi. 2) this is home for him. What he misses isn’t going outside, it’s going outside to somewhere familiar. I guess, when somewhere is ‘home’-what really is home isn’t just the bedroom or the kitchen or the apartment, but it’s everything around it. The store, the bench, the streets, the signs. The people.
Ueda did get better, with time.
From here the plot’s obviously picked up a lot. At this point, I was just following pretty detailed bullet points, shaping it around the dialogue. Most of the dialogue was sketched out in September, early October, so it’s been a while. Not too much to say here.
(January edit: I’m trying to remember exactly what my purpose was for each of these scenes. I think an obvious one would be “this is their backstory.” I mean, I started writing t his because I think red light flash back had an interesting backstory…I can’t not put it in!
The other part is that it’s a verbal acknowledgement between the two of them of the past. They haven’t really talked about it, even though it’s been…well it was near the start of the fic that Uepi first asks “tell me about you”, wasn’t it? This is why Taguchi didn’t…but here, he does. Of course, it is kind of spur of the moment and out of heightened emotions, but if it had been back then, I don’t think he would’ve, heightened emotions or no. )
Ueda was clipping the new collar he'd bought around Hime's neck, when he heard the jangle of keys. Right on cue, Hime dashed off, as Ueda stood.
Beach trip!
→ How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh? Ten- Tickles (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜)
Thanks reddit. Can’t write a Taguchi fic without shitty jokes, right? Anyway, the bullet point of this section was:
→ one more moment of happiness, they drive to the coast or something. eat fresh octopus bc ueda’s an octopus nerd and taguchi remembers his promise. they watch the sunset together, the stars, and the sunrise.
Honestly I just wanted to write a cute roadtrip section (and Ueda forgetting that he should totally know that Junno can drive-by the way, Ueda doesn’t have a driver’s license |D) but somehow the roadtrip part got lost. This scene was a bit of a last minute addition. Or the details, at least. “ as in....im gonna make u think that the worst is over 2/3rds of the way in and there's gonna be a happy ending and then I’m going to tear it all down ☺” quote verbatim from a conversation w/ a friend on Nov 16. And I wanted it placed so that not just they truly think they have a shot at a happy ending-but for the reader to think they have a shot at a happy ending, judging from the scroll bar. Sorry, I’m a dick. Nah, I’m not sorry, I’m never sorry.
Again, the conversation was written…well, clearly it was written by nov 16, at least. The part with the house was a truly last minute addition-I didn’t even know what purpose it’d serve until I got to the part where Taguchi tells Ueda that it’s somewhere he can stay if their plan goes to shit. It’s lucky for Taguchi that Ueda doesn’t wake up when they arrive, because that’s when Taguchi moves all the things from the car into the house-mostly more clothes, food that’ll keep, that sort of stuff. He wasn’t really sure how he’d do it, but it worked out.
Ueda had only said he'd think about it-but for Taguchi, the decision had already been made.
Ok I can’t do commentary on the rest of this bc a) hahahaha slightly drunk but mostly sleep deprived writing, b) wtf I just read this and now I’m really upset wtf self WHAT THE FUCK
(January update:
Hello it’s January and I’ve had a lot of distance. Read: I remember even less, but let’s see what I can glean from myself.
First…I did want to have kind of a “sleepy sex” scene. Incidentally, my non fandom friend read this and her comment was “why do they keep having sex”. Oops. Anyway, the point was they’re super comfortable with each other now. They’re at the point where they honestly could continue indefinitely in their relationship. I wanted to get that sort of…casual comfort? In red light flash back there were a few lines that I hoped to convey that in high school, they were friends but as for their relationship…they really took it more as ‘friends with benefits’ and with a pretty big imbalance of power (from the outside)
Old habits died hard. Ten years was not enough for old habits to die. Taguchi snapped to obey, as if ten years hadn't passed, fingers fumbling at his belt, comprehension not quite understanding what his body already did.
Taguchi fucking Junnosuke. In other words, the boy who he'd spent half his high school life fucking. Life was a bitch.
Whether or not there were deeper feelings (there definitely were on Junno’s part) their relationship was very physical. So that’s the way it started, that’s the way it restarted, and throughout the story I wanted that to morph into…more, and this was kind of a ‘culmination’. I guess. Sucks for them it didn’t last.
It was a Tuesday when Taguchi found Ueda crouched down over something by the side of the road.
Sorry about the cat.
So…writing this entire story, this was the only scene that I cried writing. (That said, I’d cried for nine fucking hours on and off the day before writing this scene and it was probably 2 or 3 am by the time I was here…so…
Also, by this point I’d based many of Hime’s mannerisms on my own cat, so I was seriously devastated by killing her off. Even if she was meant to die like this. Incidentally, this was kind of an echo of a scene in volume one of Wild Adapter…
But good things came to those who wait-or something like that.
lol or do they. Gotta give y’all hope then take it away. Honestly, I was pretty heavy handed by this point. I think I was hitting 4 am here.
Ueda jammed his hands in his pockets as he headed home.
Ah…the final scene.
In the end, I’ll leave it like this after all. There’s too much I want to say, and I guess I just hope I managed to say it alright already.
I will say that I struggled so much with the last line of both Junno’s scene and Uepi’s scene. I wanted it to have a sense of finality but also of the vague future. But an independent future.
The snow melted as soon as it touched his palm.
The epilogue.
I knew from the start that even if I did repeat the sunset/sunrise theme, it wouldn’t be the main theme. The cycle of the sun for me is one that’s…a cycle. As in, even if you can consider a sunset as something ending, you know that the sun’s going to rise again. Every day has a new morn, after all. And this was truly an end.
I went with snow again because winter is a time for endings, and snow when it melts is gone.
As for the rest…I did struggle a lot with the epilogue as well, because I knew I needed one but couldn’t quite get it right. My first few tries were a lot more dense, a lot more things happening, of what happened afterwards. About Junno in the hospital, about Shoon visiting, about Kame basically feeling weirdly responsible for it all and overprotective… About Uepi being the scapegoat. Was that Nakamaru or Ueda? Hm. Who knows. But yes, either way, Ueda’s alive. I wanted that for sure. Death is too final.
As for Ueda…?
Well, Nakamaru definitely called in a few favours. He’s a weirdly competent loser, but in this case, he also has some, um, connections. But like Junno he doesn’t like using them. Anyway, he’s got Uepi ferreted away somewhere he can recover, and they’ll figure out what happens next when it comes to it. Besides, Nakamaru’s not gonna ditch the person who helped him build up that nest egg.
Original A/N:
i'll come back to do this properly but i feel like i can't post this without acknowledging the announcement that happened partway through writing this. spent nine hours crying on and off, then came home, sat down to finally finish this, only to see the bullet point is "somehow taguchi ends up under the table and sucking him off". i honestly didn't know whether to laugh or cry. to be honest, i really wanted to change some things, when the news came out... i usually write the dialogue in bullet points for big scenes first, so i was reading through them, crying bc of the irony. well, i didn't change anything in the end, because fic!taguchi and rl!taguchi aren't the same person at all.
i started writing this in september. i was reading red light flash back and thinking "ah, there's that one line ueda says and taguchi reacts to, that's where the real story is." it'd be short, i figured, 18k or so. and then 24k? 30k? 40k? at that point i went fuck it, it's gonna be at least 50k. hello, longest thing i've ever written. i thought: ahh, it'd be nice if i could finish this by his birthday, i'm so tired of this fic, i bet everyone's tired of me whining about this fic.
(also now that i think about it...birthday fic is supposed to be cute stuff, right? not "happy birthday i just fucked up your life in this fic oops")
evidently, i did end up finishing by his birthday, but not in the way i wanted, or for the reason i wanted. to be honest, i don't like the ending very much as it is, right now. there's a little bit more, but i'm too emotionally drained to finish it properly/i need to turn my emotions back on before i do. so please check back in a week or so! (i hope).
thank you for reading 60k words of trash (シ_ _)シ
He moved in, more or less officially, on a Thursday.
No there is no real meaning on it being a Thursday. I admit I use days of the week as a sort of signifier-something is happening in the present on a day that will be remembered in the future, but who ever remembers the day of the week it happened on? That sort of thing. The day of the week is almost always forgotten.
Ueda’s pretty much been slowly moving his stuff to Junno’s place. He tossed the rest of his stuff by the way-except for a few things he just left at Nakamaru’s place because he didn’t feel like bringing it with him…like clothes.
The sun was just rising, when Taguchi locked the door behind him.
When I set out writing this (aka the first hmm 3k or so) I really thought this would finish in ~18k, which is why the first fight or w/e happens so soon in. Although, I guess it doesn’t ruin the pacing too much…either way, I was too lazy (tired, exhausted, fml when will I be done this thing) to change it.
The bullet points for the scene w Kame/next scenes were
1) scene w/ kame-ueda’s files (aside: where would paper case files be kept??? Would they keep juvie files???? Literally went FUCK IT I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT POLICE FORCES IM GONNA MAKE SHIT UP if it’s not easily google-able no one will know either so I’m good.)
2) comes home to find ueda outside, “they tore it down” “nothing’s the same” (also I copy-pasted the wording from the last scene in red light flash back, if that sounds familiar, haha.)
3) “why is sex always the answer/what our relationship is based off of” / “because it’s simple. Because we’re afraid.”
The details filled themselves in as I was writing. Honestly, this was supposed to be a pretty pivotal point but I think it got lost in the rest of the fic. The original plan was (this was the ~1/3rd point) after this, a few happy scenes, then the scene where Ueda gets beat up, slow/frustrated recovery, and then last scene. Obviously didn’t quite work that way.
Mornings crossed the line from cool to cold in the space of a week and Ueda could clearly see his breath as he jogged through the grey haze of sunrise.
Ueda’s pov! This wasn’t in the original plan. Actually, I had no clue what went between scene above and “lol let’s have sex again”. That’s not entirely true. I did know that at some point, I wanted to have him work at the konbini for two reasons: 1) god why do none of them interact w other ppl this isn’t right 2) I want someone who knew the two of them from before. I kind of ended up dropping this storyline (as well as some others) though. That said, bullet points for this scene was ‘you used to live here, didn’t you’ and ‘I did, end up in jail for a bit, I mean.’
As for the cat…the cat was always there. The cat dying was also always there. Sorry about the cat. I guess the cat is a metaphor for Uepi. You can tame a cat, but in the end, the cat will always be free. Well, and then losing the cat right before losing Uepi-kind of a “if only I’d seen it coming” thing… Haha, it’s kind of heavy handed, isn’t it?
Speaking of the “tying up” scene for this section…man I was fighting so hard to get to this point so I could write this sex scene, then I got to it and was so burnt out I went ‘fuck it’. I know I lost some important information by skipping it…but it’s been so long I can’t remember what. Ah well. I wanted to write it later as a sort of “outtake” (I skipped a couple scenes in the end) but…I don’t think I have the time/energy anymore T_T
As for the name thing…Names are important, I think. Taguchi calls him Uepi because that’s what he remembers him as. Ueda calls him Taguchi because that’s what he remembers him as. The thing is, they’re virtual strangers living with each other. In a way they’re close, but in truth they’re not-they don’t know each other at all. Haha, this interview came long after I’d written this but “At the time, I was deciding between ‘Uepi’ and ‘Uepu’, and ended up calling him Uepi. Well, I’m the only one who called him that.” Or something. I’d like to think that this happened in the fic world too haha. As for ‘Tatsuya’-that’s Taguchi in the present. For him, calling Ueda by his first name here is another sign of familiarity, of need, really. For Ueda, the only person who’s really called him Tatsuya was his dad…so the name doesn’t have many good memories for him. So when he tells him that he doesn’t mind if he calls him Tatsuya-in a way, that’s Ueda’s way of acknowledging that this is a new page. It’s also a way of saying “I trust you”.
Also yes, Uebo my tsun wriggly child. I mean, Junnosuke isn’t that long lmfao but he’s not going to acknowledge their closeness in that way. He’s okay with Junno doing it! But hell if he’s gonna do it…or something like that.
(Actually, something else I wanted to note re: language. English doesn’t really have a formal/informal level…but at the same time, I wanted to denote Ueda’s language being a lot rougher than Junno’s. Kind of like “a habit that was never fixed”. Well, Uepi’s language really is rough haha-but here I’d imagine it to be rougher. Hence the probably overuse of profanity…because I didn’t know how else to do it. The moments when Junno slips into that too is when he’s kind of ‘going back to his old self’. And I wanted, as the story went on, for Ueda’s language to ‘smooth out’ a little. Well, I don’t know if I managed or not, but that’s what I wanted!)
I ended up dropping the sexual assault storyline too. That one was on purpose-I felt a little strange writing it, but at the same time, I didn’t know how to completely excise it because it’d been part of the story from the beginning? (Even from red light flash back.) I mean, the big ‘theme’/driving force of the story is guilt and shame…but it felt really crass in a way? I say that, but I put it in anyway… (this may or may not have been inspired by a mix of wild adapter and bi no kyojin)
Yes I named the twins after Samurai Drive hahahahhahahahahahahaha IN MY DEFENSE I was trying to think of paired sibling names and was basically going through random name lists and I saw Haruki and thought ‘wait this is perfect’. Sorry Shanna. JK I’m never sorry.
It wasn’t, in the end, quite a fresh start; as Taguchi had said, life just didn’t work that way.
Okay this overly self indulgent fucking pretentious bullshit is because I was reading Pink and Gay (shige’s manga)-oh wait Pink and Gray-and if Shige can be pretentious then I can too!!!!! Me, sitting in my Intro to GR class, going ‘what the fuck is the Schwarzschild metric what the fuck is this contravariant derivative shit’, still crying over P&G…and doodling fic on the side.
Ah, as to why it’s laundry and groceries and beer…? Well, those are my essentials… You mean there’s anything else to life?
I originally wanted the whole “Hi, I’m ___” part and the “tell me about you” part to be longer, but then I went ‘fuck this’.
And yes, naming the cat Hime was a reference to Uebo-hime n___n To me, adopting a (stray?) cat together is important in a relationship! Yeah…I’ve used this in a few fics…haha…
Boxing! I like to think that Ueda did it a little in high school which is when he got interested. He picked it up again, after his kind of…aimless years. (After he gets out of jail, basically.) This entire scene, really, is a ‘things begin to settle into his old normal’ for Ueda, but also a ‘new’ normal, if that makes sense. As for Riko…I really like her! I’m sad I lost her storyline string too.
October ended and most of November swept by
The next…oh my god 10k words (wtf) were literally “idk some happy shit, winter fluff, skating, Christmas crap, new years hakama, more winter fluff”. GOD I HATE EVERYTHING. This was also the point where I went “fuck, this is way over 18k fuck me can I finish by 30k please let me finish by 30k.” That said, a lot of important points ended up in these 10k, so I guess I’ll do that in detail too.
Birthday-me: “oh my god how much time has passed does this work crap when did red light flash back happen help WHAT IS THE PASSAGE OF TIME-wait if I can’t figure it out idt anyone else will notice NO I STILL NEED TO KNOW HELP DAMMIT IS UEDA’S BIRTHDAY OVER fuck it I’ll just do Junno’s birthday”. Yeah. Haha that line where Riko says “good men are always taken” and Ueda going ‘…’ was something else I wanted to expand on but didn’t T_T Also: ‘fuck does Taguchi have friends what does he usually do for his birthday-oh fuck this he can blow them off.’
(Actually, there’s a bit more to that… the thing is, he’s been carrying that guilt for over ten years-13? Years? Idk how to do math-and it’s something he feels like he’s never been able to atone for, he feels like he doesn’t ‘deserve’ it? Or rather he keeps people at arms length because at the end of the day, he feels ‘I did this, but they don’t know that, if they knew that, they wouldn’t want to know me’ sort of thing. Part of why all his past relationships have failed too haha.)
Also I was seriously reaching for shitty jokes/puns, it’s not in character if I don’t include any! You know it’s bad when you post on facebook asking for shitty puns. Anyway, the strawberries only got added to the cake to have the berry agrapeable pun make sense…
--“It’s not like we’re never do this again.” You know when you write something and then can’t stop laughing because you KNOW they’re never going to do this again because you’re about to ruin their lives? Yeah, that was me.
“But even to have someone to give this to- For a little while, I was worried I’d never have a chance to give this to Uepi, you know? So I really am very thankful." -see…above? Part of the reason why I wrote the post-fight scene from Ueda’s POV is bc I wasn’t sure if I could capture just how much it devastated Taguchi. He genuinely thought that it might be over, that Ueda was going to up and leave, that he was going to be left alone again. That didn’t mean he didn’t hope.
Mmm other than that…Taguchi saying how he’s never celebrated his birthday like this? Well, a lot of it is tied to above re: friendship/relationships. At first, in university and in his last years of high school, I think his blood relations (I don’t want to use the word ‘family’ I guess) and his sister would’ve held some sort of celebration, and his university classmates-but he’s cold with the former, except for his sister-although that was a relationship that was extremely strained as well in those first years, but’s improved dramatically with time and distance (now that I think about it…his sister probably at least texts him…oops…) -and with the latter, like above, he kept his distance, so to him, it was going through the motions. But this time, because it’s Ueda, who might not know but who Taguchi trusts (and has never quite fallen out of love with), it’s a happiness that goes to his heart? I’m sure he’s been given really fancy presents before, but it’s not the object, it’s the emotions behind it.
As to the watch…me: what the fuck do you get people as birthday presents.
As to the necklace… me, upon shanna posting a picture pointing out uepi’s necklaces: hysterical laughter because it’s a fucking feather. Anyway, I just thought a feather would look good on him. I didn’t realize it was /actually/ his rebound necklace.
The first snow of the year fell soon after that.
Snow… (Speaking of weather/seasonal themes, I wanted to write a scene about cherry blossoms but forgot…) Snow is transient. It melts easily. But a ‘first snow’ also has feelings of purity and new beginnings? Or rather, because it turns everything white, it covers dirt, covers everything…Something like that. Also it’s fun :D
Anyway, this was just “cute fluffy winter shit”
And then it felt natural for Junno to get sick, and then natural for Kame to show up. The story kind of changed dramatically here in a way from what I planned, because Kame wasn’t supposed to have much of a role, other than, at the end, seeing Ueda in the last scene and going “mmmmm.” This is where he took on a much larger role. But it felt right, because he’s such a Good Person™ . So in the end, in this unplanned scene, I got to a) plant suspicion in Kame’s mind, b) Kame is a Good Person, c) Uepi calls himself Taguchi’s boyfriend and I guess most importantly, d) plant worry in Taguchi’s mind.
I got too lazy to write a full skating scene.
Christmas! Major things…? Uepi not comfortable w being close not near home-but conversely, Uepi being extremely comfortable near home, and the fact that he truly treats it as home. [“ A light snow had begun to fall, the flakes melting as soon as they hit their skin, their bare hands“ ]← the transience I was talking about. Snow melts, disappears-this was never meant to be permanent. Haha, I was wondering if I was being too obvious, because these are ‘themes’/’signals’ I use a lot…
The year was almost over - that’s how it always was, after Christmas.
To be honest, I don’t remember anymore why I ended up writing the scene where his sister calls. At this point, the part with the ocean, with them planning on moving away-I hadn’t come up with any of that yet. His sister didn’t have any real role. That said, this was a reminder of ‘family’ for Junno-the juxtaposition of a family that’s supposed to be his and a family he rejects, next to the small ‘family’ he’s made with Ueda. The other thing is that this is the first time Junno takes the initiative to tell someone about Ueda-to say that ‘we’re together, there’s someone who’s with me.’ His sister is going to know their history-not that they ever uh, banged at Junno’s place, but it would’ve been obvious to his sister, who knew junno well, what his feelings for Ueda were. But this is important because Junno is acknowledging it to the outside world? I guess it’s something like ‘speaking it makes it true’.
(And…yes, he knows his family is perfectly capable of keeping tabs on him. Hence ‘she could know without him telling her.’)
Hmmm, what else-oh, ‘he stood and checked his watch’. Putting away the phone that he’d just used to talk about family with, replacing it with something important Ueda had given him.
Okay, I was trying to come up with puns with ‘otters’ and ‘snails’. I admit it.
Other than that-I feel like Taguchi is the type of person who’s always smiling, always laughing-always a sun for other people, but who hides everything else inside. Well, I say that…and, well. But living with him, you can’t not pick up on it? And it’s extremely frustrating when you know something’s wrong but can’t figure out what and the other person always pretends like nothing is wrong. And Ueda also knows he can’t do anything about whatever’s bothering Taguchi, so he’s frustrated about that too. Not that Ueda reciprocates either. I guess what I’m getting at is, this is a microsm (?) of things they’re both hiding from each other.
Uh, New Years. Important points:
1) wouldn’t they look sooooooo cute all dressed up n___n
2) “drawing fortunes and ueda gets a curse but when junno asks about it he just says “secret” but super joking/teasingly”
Haha this was also foreshadowing a little…it’s not good to carry a curse with you, right? Ah, I forgot about this…but he also doesn’t really throw it out, it just ends up balled up in his pocket. I was going to have him pull it out at a later time, but forgot about it =_=
And New Year = start of new things obviously.
Like kittens.
Ok I realized I’d kind of forgotten to talk about Hime for a while. So I came up with a reason. Also, who doesn’t want kittens. But I admit it’s because I forgot about here. Got caught up in the person instead of the cat.
Life went back to normal. New Year’s was over, and work settled back into to its usual rhythm.
“Do you want to build a snowman?” (No.)
This short scene was really just to demarcate the passing of time. Also, because Uepi w/ an apron and glasses uhuhuhu.
What Taguchi had told Ueda had been true - he didn’t see much of his old coworkers since he’d transferred divisions. But what he’d left out was that he had no inclination to see them either.
So this scene w/ Kame
a) DAMMIT I REALLY WANTED TO DO A ‘WRONG YAMASHITA’ LINE. Anyway, did you know Shoon and Shige are basically the same age because I totally didn’t realize.
b) Kame asking how long they’ve been together, Junno saying “about a year” without thinking
c) “I see,” Kamenashi said. He took a thoughtful pause. “You know, Taguchi, I don’t understand you." / “I’ve always felt this - but you have a strong sense of justice, don’t you?"
I also wanted to talk a little about the ~special task force~ …the empty desks/sub teams were pin btw.
. A small moment of relief. He unlocked the door, and quickly locked it behind him. Ueda walked out from the kitchen as Taguchi came in. He was frowning.
The next scene. Me, earlier: “ok tlist what other fluffy winter shit is there”. Tlist: “hot chocolate”. So hot chocolate it is.
Uh, yeah there’s plot stuff too I guess. But really, hot chocolate. Oh that’s right-I was watching Runaway and going “wtf Ueda’s a host in this IM GLAD THAT THE DRAMA SCRIPT WRITERS AND I HAVE THE SAME IDEAS :D” And then sex happened. And then the cat happened because I had no fucking clue how to end the scene. It’s like the sex version of “rocks fall everyone dies”.
Night poured over him in a deluge, swallowing him in darkness.
Mmm, Junno’s nightmare. He’s running from himself/his guilt and in a way, chasing the object of his guilt in the same way. But really, from the start, I kept trying to figure out where to put in the scene where he’s beating someone up and enjoying it. Mmmm maybe it’s my own projection, but past!Taguchi was pretty mild, didn’t really pick fights (rly doesn’t need to bc tsun uepi) but that time, he totally snapped. Hurt the people he cares about, and he’ll snap. I think lots of us are the same.
Also: [“Uepi…do you ever think about the past?”
“No,” he lies. “You always were too soft." ] Truthfully, Uepi can’t shake off the past either, but his guilt isn’t as heavy. Actually, he doesn’t have any guilt. The source of the reason why he feels like he’s not worthy of other people isn’t due to guilt. The other part, Ueda calling him soft-he obviously doesn’t know about Taguchi snapping, but even if he did, I think he still would. By ‘soft’ I mean…kind? Allowing emotions to affect him? Although, really, Ueda’s the same-he just doesn’t admit it, even to himself.
Oh, cigarette, also a cue about the past.
“Hey, Taguchi, do you have a moment?"
Hmmmm I need to get Ueda beaten up how am I going to write this scene. Honestly, this was the scene (series of 2? Scenes) that I had the most trouble with and was least happy with. (Still not happy with it but I’ll deal.) It’s easier to say “junno sees ueda get taken away by two men, ueda gets beaten up bc of [blank], junno can’t call police, is at his wits end, ueda eventually stumbles home and tells junno to call nakamaru” than to…actually…write it…
As for the actual scene…I don’t even know how many times I rewrote it. (tbh idk what to talk about in regards to this scene. It was a hard scene to write? Although this is where I asked “so how are you with non-con” but ended up not going through with that entire story line so, it’s just awkwardly there =_=) Also, I need to hurt him but I also can’t hurt him too badly because I need him to be relatively physically okay by the last scene!!!!
It was nearly midnight. Taguchi sank down to the floor, just inside the door.
Kame is… Well, he’s responsible, but I think he’s also someone who’s Good, and he genuinely cares. By this point he’s put most of the pieces together. Especially the one where Taguchi’s in something a bit deeper than he can handle, judging from the earlier phone call, and the fact that everything obviously isn’t okay. I guess what it boils down to is that he’s going to consider the person and the situation, rather than objective facts?
Nakamaru’s a loser, but he’s an oddly competent loser, don’t you think? Hahahaha.
I guess Taguchi being angry as fuck here is also a ‘reminder’. He seems like one of those people who’s cheerful and a mediator until you push him really too far, and then he’ll snap, doesn’t he? And this is definitely a situation to make anyone snap. Although, I guess most people wouldn’t necessarily react with anger-maybe I was projecting a little again.
I’m really…really…squeamish, by the way. In a competition between me and Nakamaru about who’s a bigger wuss…it’s hard to say who’d win… So you can imagine how googling ‘dislocated elbow recovery’ ‘fractured leg recovery’ ‘setting dislocated elbow’ would make me feel T_T
The next few days passed in a blur.
The ‘bullet points’ for the next scene was:
blah blah blah next few days are a blur. nakamaru comes to check on him a few times, after work. taguchi calls in to take care of “a sick family member” and ends up admitting to kame that the whole thing had been re; ueda, but only says that it’s bc they-uh, ueda-had a rough upbringing. he also honestly doesn’t know who it was bc ueda wouldn’t tell him
slow recovery, idk more sex, frustration on both ends. taguchi wishing that they’d had a different past so everything could be different now,
If only ‘blah blah blah’ was an acceptable substitute for a couple thousand words.
Alright I guess I should talk a little about Ueda here. Originally, I thought about writing this in Ueda’s POV. Actually, I originally thought to not include the scene where he’s getting beat-up at all-so it’d be Taguchi seeing him get taken away, then Ueda somehow stumbling back home-and do it as a recollection over the days or so after. I didn’t, because it was hard. I still think it’d work better, but it’s hard T_T How would he be feeling? What would he be thinking? Which parts would he remember and which parts would he forget? Would he be thinking about it at all? But I guess it’s difficult because it’s something I’ve never remotely experienced-worry, anger, those things I have a baseline for, but not the other end. But what I do know is that there is one point where, to himself, he goes ‘snap out of it’. That said, some painkillers really put you out of it, so he really would’ve just spent the first few days pretty much unconscious.
Lying in bed with jackshit to do is so. Fucking. Boring. There’s a limit to how long you can sleep. And I’m not nearly as restless and wriggly as Uepi is.
“I could read you a book?” Taguchi offered, a little doubtfully. Ueda had side eyed him.
Ahhh the Little Prince. It’s a book I love, and a book that, every time I read again, it’s like I’m reading a different book. On one hand, I chose it because it’s one of my favourites, on the other, I chose it because it fit. If you haven’t read it before, please read it-I think if you read it, you’ll know what I mean. I thought about copying the longer version of the fox quote here…but it’s pretty much the entire chapter. But:
"Come and play with me," proposed the little prince. "I am so unhappy."
"I cannot play with you," the fox said. "I am not tamed."
"Ah! Please excuse me," said the little prince.
[…]
"No," said the little prince. "I am looking for friends. What does that mean-- 'tame'?"
"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. It means to establish ties."
"'To establish ties'?"
"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world...
[…] "Please-- tame me!" he said.
[…]
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..."
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"Then it has done you no good at all!"
"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added:
"Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret."
[…]
"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose..."
"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
As for the sunsets:
"One day," you said to me, "I saw the sunset forty-four times!"
And a little later you added:
"You know-- one loves the sunset, when one is so sad..."
"Were you so sad, then?" I asked, "on the day of the forty-four sunsets?"
But the little prince made no reply.
As for me, I’m also fond of sunsets and sunrise…in case you couldn’t tell.
Time may not heal all wounds, but they did soften them. Nakamaru visited one night to take out the stitches-Ueda demanded that he bring him crutches.
Can I just say that “slow recovery, idk more sex, frustration on both ends” is really easier said than done? I still think this line was a stroke of genius tho: “I am not going to talk to him about you sucking my dick,” Ueda said flatly. “I am not going to talk to him about sex, period."
"I'm not a kid, I know," Ueda said. He sighed, shook his head. He wasn't a kid-it was true. He was exhausted, if not physically, then in every other way.
Taguchi suggesting for Ueda to stay with Nakamaru for a change of scenery and to go somewhere people wouldn’t recognize him. Ueda’s refusal obviously isn’t because ‘he doesn’t like sleeping in strange places’. There’s two main parts to this. 1) he really does need Taguchi right now. Being with him, being near him. He also has a misplaced sense of ‘if I leave, what if I never come back, what if I never see you again’-Taguchi’s afraid of losing Ueda, but Ueda’s just as afraid of losing Taguchi. 2) this is home for him. What he misses isn’t going outside, it’s going outside to somewhere familiar. I guess, when somewhere is ‘home’-what really is home isn’t just the bedroom or the kitchen or the apartment, but it’s everything around it. The store, the bench, the streets, the signs. The people.
Ueda did get better, with time.
From here the plot’s obviously picked up a lot. At this point, I was just following pretty detailed bullet points, shaping it around the dialogue. Most of the dialogue was sketched out in September, early October, so it’s been a while. Not too much to say here.
(January edit: I’m trying to remember exactly what my purpose was for each of these scenes. I think an obvious one would be “this is their backstory.” I mean, I started writing t his because I think red light flash back had an interesting backstory…I can’t not put it in!
The other part is that it’s a verbal acknowledgement between the two of them of the past. They haven’t really talked about it, even though it’s been…well it was near the start of the fic that Uepi first asks “tell me about you”, wasn’t it? This is why Taguchi didn’t…but here, he does. Of course, it is kind of spur of the moment and out of heightened emotions, but if it had been back then, I don’t think he would’ve, heightened emotions or no. )
Ueda was clipping the new collar he'd bought around Hime's neck, when he heard the jangle of keys. Right on cue, Hime dashed off, as Ueda stood.
Beach trip!
→ How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh? Ten- Tickles (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜)
Thanks reddit. Can’t write a Taguchi fic without shitty jokes, right? Anyway, the bullet point of this section was:
→ one more moment of happiness, they drive to the coast or something. eat fresh octopus bc ueda’s an octopus nerd and taguchi remembers his promise. they watch the sunset together, the stars, and the sunrise.
Honestly I just wanted to write a cute roadtrip section (and Ueda forgetting that he should totally know that Junno can drive-by the way, Ueda doesn’t have a driver’s license |D) but somehow the roadtrip part got lost. This scene was a bit of a last minute addition. Or the details, at least. “ as in....im gonna make u think that the worst is over 2/3rds of the way in and there's gonna be a happy ending and then I’m going to tear it all down ☺” quote verbatim from a conversation w/ a friend on Nov 16. And I wanted it placed so that not just they truly think they have a shot at a happy ending-but for the reader to think they have a shot at a happy ending, judging from the scroll bar. Sorry, I’m a dick. Nah, I’m not sorry, I’m never sorry.
Again, the conversation was written…well, clearly it was written by nov 16, at least. The part with the house was a truly last minute addition-I didn’t even know what purpose it’d serve until I got to the part where Taguchi tells Ueda that it’s somewhere he can stay if their plan goes to shit. It’s lucky for Taguchi that Ueda doesn’t wake up when they arrive, because that’s when Taguchi moves all the things from the car into the house-mostly more clothes, food that’ll keep, that sort of stuff. He wasn’t really sure how he’d do it, but it worked out.
Ueda had only said he'd think about it-but for Taguchi, the decision had already been made.
Ok I can’t do commentary on the rest of this bc a) hahahaha slightly drunk but mostly sleep deprived writing, b) wtf I just read this and now I’m really upset wtf self WHAT THE FUCK
(January update:
Hello it’s January and I’ve had a lot of distance. Read: I remember even less, but let’s see what I can glean from myself.
First…I did want to have kind of a “sleepy sex” scene. Incidentally, my non fandom friend read this and her comment was “why do they keep having sex”. Oops. Anyway, the point was they’re super comfortable with each other now. They’re at the point where they honestly could continue indefinitely in their relationship. I wanted to get that sort of…casual comfort? In red light flash back there were a few lines that I hoped to convey that in high school, they were friends but as for their relationship…they really took it more as ‘friends with benefits’ and with a pretty big imbalance of power (from the outside)
Old habits died hard. Ten years was not enough for old habits to die. Taguchi snapped to obey, as if ten years hadn't passed, fingers fumbling at his belt, comprehension not quite understanding what his body already did.
Taguchi fucking Junnosuke. In other words, the boy who he'd spent half his high school life fucking. Life was a bitch.
Whether or not there were deeper feelings (there definitely were on Junno’s part) their relationship was very physical. So that’s the way it started, that’s the way it restarted, and throughout the story I wanted that to morph into…more, and this was kind of a ‘culmination’. I guess. Sucks for them it didn’t last.
It was a Tuesday when Taguchi found Ueda crouched down over something by the side of the road.
Sorry about the cat.
So…writing this entire story, this was the only scene that I cried writing. (That said, I’d cried for nine fucking hours on and off the day before writing this scene and it was probably 2 or 3 am by the time I was here…so…
Also, by this point I’d based many of Hime’s mannerisms on my own cat, so I was seriously devastated by killing her off. Even if she was meant to die like this. Incidentally, this was kind of an echo of a scene in volume one of Wild Adapter…
But good things came to those who wait-or something like that.
lol or do they. Gotta give y’all hope then take it away. Honestly, I was pretty heavy handed by this point. I think I was hitting 4 am here.
Ueda jammed his hands in his pockets as he headed home.
Ah…the final scene.
In the end, I’ll leave it like this after all. There’s too much I want to say, and I guess I just hope I managed to say it alright already.
I will say that I struggled so much with the last line of both Junno’s scene and Uepi’s scene. I wanted it to have a sense of finality but also of the vague future. But an independent future.
The snow melted as soon as it touched his palm.
The epilogue.
I knew from the start that even if I did repeat the sunset/sunrise theme, it wouldn’t be the main theme. The cycle of the sun for me is one that’s…a cycle. As in, even if you can consider a sunset as something ending, you know that the sun’s going to rise again. Every day has a new morn, after all. And this was truly an end.
I went with snow again because winter is a time for endings, and snow when it melts is gone.
As for the rest…I did struggle a lot with the epilogue as well, because I knew I needed one but couldn’t quite get it right. My first few tries were a lot more dense, a lot more things happening, of what happened afterwards. About Junno in the hospital, about Shoon visiting, about Kame basically feeling weirdly responsible for it all and overprotective… About Uepi being the scapegoat. Was that Nakamaru or Ueda? Hm. Who knows. But yes, either way, Ueda’s alive. I wanted that for sure. Death is too final.
As for Ueda…?
Well, Nakamaru definitely called in a few favours. He’s a weirdly competent loser, but in this case, he also has some, um, connections. But like Junno he doesn’t like using them. Anyway, he’s got Uepi ferreted away somewhere he can recover, and they’ll figure out what happens next when it comes to it. Besides, Nakamaru’s not gonna ditch the person who helped him build up that nest egg.
Original A/N:
i'll come back to do this properly but i feel like i can't post this without acknowledging the announcement that happened partway through writing this. spent nine hours crying on and off, then came home, sat down to finally finish this, only to see the bullet point is "somehow taguchi ends up under the table and sucking him off". i honestly didn't know whether to laugh or cry. to be honest, i really wanted to change some things, when the news came out... i usually write the dialogue in bullet points for big scenes first, so i was reading through them, crying bc of the irony. well, i didn't change anything in the end, because fic!taguchi and rl!taguchi aren't the same person at all.
i started writing this in september. i was reading red light flash back and thinking "ah, there's that one line ueda says and taguchi reacts to, that's where the real story is." it'd be short, i figured, 18k or so. and then 24k? 30k? 40k? at that point i went fuck it, it's gonna be at least 50k. hello, longest thing i've ever written. i thought: ahh, it'd be nice if i could finish this by his birthday, i'm so tired of this fic, i bet everyone's tired of me whining about this fic.
(also now that i think about it...birthday fic is supposed to be cute stuff, right? not "happy birthday i just fucked up your life in this fic oops")
evidently, i did end up finishing by his birthday, but not in the way i wanted, or for the reason i wanted. to be honest, i don't like the ending very much as it is, right now. there's a little bit more, but i'm too emotionally drained to finish it properly/i need to turn my emotions back on before i do. so please check back in a week or so! (i hope).
thank you for reading 60k words of trash (シ_ _)シ