fic; slow down
Title: Slow Down
Characters: Sawajiri Erika feat. Nishikido Ryo
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Owned by Johnny's Entertainment and El Extraterrestre. Not mine, just messing with.
Summary: I just keep on moving. I just keep on pushing forward. I’d trade wisdom back in for innocence for just one look through those eyes. Erika’s journey has come to an end.
(This is a pairing I never thought I’d write again. This is for you, no matter where you are, because in the end, they were all for you, and they are for the things that could have been.)
She’s forgotten what she’s looking for, but when she comes across one of his new PVs, the barest hint of a sardonic smile tugs at the right corner of her lips. One for the new (not-so-new) movie, she remembers - Megu’s been surprisingly good at keeping up-to-date about these things, talking about mundane things going on in that world that she’s half-left and half-kept a foot in the door in.
It’s been a while, she thinks to herself, and a lot has happened. 2007 passed in a whirlwind of turmoil, beginning with a desire to search for herself, propelled to run from her box of a life and the place she’d called home for all her twenty-one years. Tsuyoshi lived like a transient bohemian, and she envied that enough to want it for herself, and for a time it had been beautiful, the freedom of it, the feeling of release and pure air entering her lungs as she stepped foot in yet another country and continent. Erika had opened her arms and let the world enter.
2008 had been spent in relative marital bliss as she and Takashiro moved on as before, riding the next high and the next big thing. For him it had been the latest in the latest technology, new art, new methods of living, new thoughts and new experiences. And for her, the her that had been waiting to see the world, it had been everything - people and places and scents and tastes. She had always been a creature built of pure wanton desire, and there was always something new to want in life; I want to eat pasta in Italy, she told her husband. I want to have tea in London. I want to eat curry in India, I want to see the Pantheon in Greece, I want to see the Berlin wall. He indulged her, as she flitted from place to place, like a butterfly exploring new flowers, and when she tired of one there was always another: Thailand, Rio de Janeiro, Russia, South America, Guam. She loved the sea, and he bought her a camera for her birthday. She took pictures of children playing the most -
(But in the end the one she wanted to have children with was not in fact the man she married.)
2009 had it all crashing down around them - she remembers it quite well. They had been in Hong Kong, fighting the crowds at a night market at Lan Kwai Fong. People pushing around them and her own desire to see a necklace up close had her releasing Tsuyoshi’s hand. It had been that single moment of disconnection - like a scene from a movie, she turned, jostled this way and that by tourists and locals alike, as the sounds around her became muted and dull, and the entire world seemed to slow down, but didn’t completely halt. Her husband was nowhere to be found, lost to her somehow, and it all became metaphorical: somewhere in between her lavish wedding and her pursuit of the irresistible unfamiliar she had lost the person she’d convinced herself she loved for the last four or five years or so, and realized that she didn’t actually mind that as much as she minded being unable to see, hear, taste, smell, experience that which she didn’t yet know. She’d blinked, frozen to the spot, as the idea formed in her mind, louder and louder until the whisper she’d been ignoring became a scream - her marriage was a sham, and she was in limbo, not knowing where she wanted to go next, having forgotten what she had been looking for, and unable to return to where she’d been.
Tsuyoshi began spending more and more time away from her - the apartment in Spain grew quiet, her own voice resonating back to her when she tried to speak within its cavernous walls. She studied in the morning and explored the city in the day, as before, clinging on to what she knew, simply because there was naught else to cling onto, and if anyone asked her now she would tell them the same - that she’d tried to save their marriage, he’d tried to save their marriage, but in the end she had been the one who decided that she would marry at 21 and regretted it after. It was a quiet nightmare, but a nightmare just the same, and because stasis never suited her well, she began to make plans.
2010 had her returning home to a different sort of nightmare, but older and that much wiser for it. A girl doesn’t travel the world and remain unchanged - now she knew how to play their game, and so when they met with her again, expecting the bratty attitude she’d gained infamy for, they were met with a very different woman - she spoke in softer tones, formal language, thanked them for their kindness, and answered questions about her personal life with little more than a charming smile. They hounded her, of course, waiting for her to slip up, because, surely it was an act? Of course, she couldn’t have matured so much in three years? Erika thought so, too, but bedamned if she let them realize that. Oh, there was still a lot that she didn’t know. But she wasn’t about to let them gain the upper hand, not this time, and never again.
One other thing she’d learned was how to beat them to the punch; she announced her intent to divorce as soon as the media outlets began to speculate. They hype would die down, and spike back up, and die back down… and then it began to look and feel a lot like 2007, so she pulled back before she repeated the same mistake.
(Smarter now, you see.)
And so in the end she found herself back at the beginning; her mother singing in Arabic as she made dinner, her brother joking around as he clobbered her at Tekken. Pochi had died when she was away, and then Michael had been bought and it felt like it was the same all over again. Or almost the same: she was missing something, missing him.
Don’t think that she never thought about it - picking up the phone and dialing the number. If he’d changed it in those three years, it would have been easy enough to reacquire. But Erika likes to think that in her life she’s gained balance somehow. A vertical line and a horizontal line, a circle right in the center; not too much selfishness, and not too much selflessness, or else all thoughts become crazy. She’s not one for repeating vicious cycles, and Ryo had been one in a perpetual time loop, an endless wash sequence, rinse, hang and repeat. He loved her and she loved him and in their love they destroyed each other, only to pick each other back up and mend, and that had been the purpose all along - that they break each other in order to have to fix each other, and without it there was nothingness.
She avoids it, actively. Erika knows that his face is all over central Tokyo, on the sides of buildings, on posters at the train stations, on trucks that advertise their new single, on television, on the radio. He’s on Google, on Youtube, on Yahoo, on Oricon. He’s in dramas, music shows, he’s out on the town with Akanishi Jin and his posse, he’s … he’s everywhere, and she learns quickly to close her eyes.
(She’s everywhere, too, though, and then she wonders if he closes his eyes, just as she does.)
And now, there is this. It’s called Monologue, and it’s not about her, she knows. But still she finds herself wanting to believe it - like Stereo, like Code, like Half-Down. He always writes such beautiful things, she thinks, even if they’re clumsy and raw - she had liked that about him, likes that about him, that he isn’t afraid to be imperfect. It’s the first time in a while that she watches him, even if it’s just here on her laptop screen - for every other opportunity, she has turned away.
Erika is proud of how he’s done for himself so far, really. It’s inevitable in this industry not to hear even the tiniest bits and pieces - a few singles, albums, a DVD, a feature film. They all did very well, but then, she wouldn’t have expected anything less from Johnny’s Jimusho.
She realizes that she’s deviating from her real thoughts again, building up a wall against nothing. Three years is enough of a period to move on, she thinks, and she’s sure that he has. Erika sets the wine glass down and rests her chin on her hand as she plays the last few seconds again.
He throws the Ace of Clubs cards away with a defiant look, as if it had been a love letter that he no longer wanted to read, a piece of something he no longer had use for.
Erika remembers calling him Ace once. It’s amazing how life turns out that way. She remembers falling in love for the first time -
I’d trade wisdom back in for innocence, to get away from getting by.
He’s not singing to her anymore, she knows. But when his song asks, “What are you searching for? What are you seeking?” - she can’t stop herself from replying.
“I don’t know, Nishikido,” she tells the him onscreen. “I don’t know yet anymore.”
Characters: Sawajiri Erika feat. Nishikido Ryo
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Owned by Johnny's Entertainment and El Extraterrestre. Not mine, just messing with.
Summary: I just keep on moving. I just keep on pushing forward. I’d trade wisdom back in for innocence for just one look through those eyes. Erika’s journey has come to an end.
(This is a pairing I never thought I’d write again. This is for you, no matter where you are, because in the end, they were all for you, and they are for the things that could have been.)
Click to viewShe’s forgotten what she’s looking for, but when she comes across one of his new PVs, the barest hint of a sardonic smile tugs at the right corner of her lips. One for the new (not-so-new) movie, she remembers - Megu’s been surprisingly good at keeping up-to-date about these things, talking about mundane things going on in that world that she’s half-left and half-kept a foot in the door in.
It’s been a while, she thinks to herself, and a lot has happened. 2007 passed in a whirlwind of turmoil, beginning with a desire to search for herself, propelled to run from her box of a life and the place she’d called home for all her twenty-one years. Tsuyoshi lived like a transient bohemian, and she envied that enough to want it for herself, and for a time it had been beautiful, the freedom of it, the feeling of release and pure air entering her lungs as she stepped foot in yet another country and continent. Erika had opened her arms and let the world enter.
2008 had been spent in relative marital bliss as she and Takashiro moved on as before, riding the next high and the next big thing. For him it had been the latest in the latest technology, new art, new methods of living, new thoughts and new experiences. And for her, the her that had been waiting to see the world, it had been everything - people and places and scents and tastes. She had always been a creature built of pure wanton desire, and there was always something new to want in life; I want to eat pasta in Italy, she told her husband. I want to have tea in London. I want to eat curry in India, I want to see the Pantheon in Greece, I want to see the Berlin wall. He indulged her, as she flitted from place to place, like a butterfly exploring new flowers, and when she tired of one there was always another: Thailand, Rio de Janeiro, Russia, South America, Guam. She loved the sea, and he bought her a camera for her birthday. She took pictures of children playing the most -
(But in the end the one she wanted to have children with was not in fact the man she married.)
2009 had it all crashing down around them - she remembers it quite well. They had been in Hong Kong, fighting the crowds at a night market at Lan Kwai Fong. People pushing around them and her own desire to see a necklace up close had her releasing Tsuyoshi’s hand. It had been that single moment of disconnection - like a scene from a movie, she turned, jostled this way and that by tourists and locals alike, as the sounds around her became muted and dull, and the entire world seemed to slow down, but didn’t completely halt. Her husband was nowhere to be found, lost to her somehow, and it all became metaphorical: somewhere in between her lavish wedding and her pursuit of the irresistible unfamiliar she had lost the person she’d convinced herself she loved for the last four or five years or so, and realized that she didn’t actually mind that as much as she minded being unable to see, hear, taste, smell, experience that which she didn’t yet know. She’d blinked, frozen to the spot, as the idea formed in her mind, louder and louder until the whisper she’d been ignoring became a scream - her marriage was a sham, and she was in limbo, not knowing where she wanted to go next, having forgotten what she had been looking for, and unable to return to where she’d been.
Tsuyoshi began spending more and more time away from her - the apartment in Spain grew quiet, her own voice resonating back to her when she tried to speak within its cavernous walls. She studied in the morning and explored the city in the day, as before, clinging on to what she knew, simply because there was naught else to cling onto, and if anyone asked her now she would tell them the same - that she’d tried to save their marriage, he’d tried to save their marriage, but in the end she had been the one who decided that she would marry at 21 and regretted it after. It was a quiet nightmare, but a nightmare just the same, and because stasis never suited her well, she began to make plans.
2010 had her returning home to a different sort of nightmare, but older and that much wiser for it. A girl doesn’t travel the world and remain unchanged - now she knew how to play their game, and so when they met with her again, expecting the bratty attitude she’d gained infamy for, they were met with a very different woman - she spoke in softer tones, formal language, thanked them for their kindness, and answered questions about her personal life with little more than a charming smile. They hounded her, of course, waiting for her to slip up, because, surely it was an act? Of course, she couldn’t have matured so much in three years? Erika thought so, too, but bedamned if she let them realize that. Oh, there was still a lot that she didn’t know. But she wasn’t about to let them gain the upper hand, not this time, and never again.
One other thing she’d learned was how to beat them to the punch; she announced her intent to divorce as soon as the media outlets began to speculate. They hype would die down, and spike back up, and die back down… and then it began to look and feel a lot like 2007, so she pulled back before she repeated the same mistake.
(Smarter now, you see.)
And so in the end she found herself back at the beginning; her mother singing in Arabic as she made dinner, her brother joking around as he clobbered her at Tekken. Pochi had died when she was away, and then Michael had been bought and it felt like it was the same all over again. Or almost the same: she was missing something, missing him.
Don’t think that she never thought about it - picking up the phone and dialing the number. If he’d changed it in those three years, it would have been easy enough to reacquire. But Erika likes to think that in her life she’s gained balance somehow. A vertical line and a horizontal line, a circle right in the center; not too much selfishness, and not too much selflessness, or else all thoughts become crazy. She’s not one for repeating vicious cycles, and Ryo had been one in a perpetual time loop, an endless wash sequence, rinse, hang and repeat. He loved her and she loved him and in their love they destroyed each other, only to pick each other back up and mend, and that had been the purpose all along - that they break each other in order to have to fix each other, and without it there was nothingness.
She avoids it, actively. Erika knows that his face is all over central Tokyo, on the sides of buildings, on posters at the train stations, on trucks that advertise their new single, on television, on the radio. He’s on Google, on Youtube, on Yahoo, on Oricon. He’s in dramas, music shows, he’s out on the town with Akanishi Jin and his posse, he’s … he’s everywhere, and she learns quickly to close her eyes.
(She’s everywhere, too, though, and then she wonders if he closes his eyes, just as she does.)
And now, there is this. It’s called Monologue, and it’s not about her, she knows. But still she finds herself wanting to believe it - like Stereo, like Code, like Half-Down. He always writes such beautiful things, she thinks, even if they’re clumsy and raw - she had liked that about him, likes that about him, that he isn’t afraid to be imperfect. It’s the first time in a while that she watches him, even if it’s just here on her laptop screen - for every other opportunity, she has turned away.
Erika is proud of how he’s done for himself so far, really. It’s inevitable in this industry not to hear even the tiniest bits and pieces - a few singles, albums, a DVD, a feature film. They all did very well, but then, she wouldn’t have expected anything less from Johnny’s Jimusho.
She realizes that she’s deviating from her real thoughts again, building up a wall against nothing. Three years is enough of a period to move on, she thinks, and she’s sure that he has. Erika sets the wine glass down and rests her chin on her hand as she plays the last few seconds again.
He throws the Ace of Clubs cards away with a defiant look, as if it had been a love letter that he no longer wanted to read, a piece of something he no longer had use for.
Erika remembers calling him Ace once. It’s amazing how life turns out that way. She remembers falling in love for the first time -
I’d trade wisdom back in for innocence, to get away from getting by.
He’s not singing to her anymore, she knows. But when his song asks, “What are you searching for? What are you seeking?” - she can’t stop herself from replying.
“I don’t know, Nishikido,” she tells the him onscreen. “I don’t know yet anymore.”