Gift Fic for sashjun
To: sashjun
From: m_nemonica
SEASON'S GREETINGS!
Title: Keep talking while I show you a bad interpretation of how it feels to hang your heart on the ceiling and love somebody until it begins to melt down the walls
Pairing/Group: Ryo/Ueda [kanjani8/kattun], some mentions of kattun ensemble (including Koki)
Rating: pg
Warnings: messy feelings and rambly purple prose, nonchronological storyline
Notes: hi there sashjun! the premise of this story is pretty formulaic and some parts should definitely be read with a grain of salt, but i hope you like it despite all of that. happy holidays :) thanks to C for the quick beta.
Summary: Nishikido isn't the type to go back for seconds.
~
+30
Ueda hits thirty with less fanfare than his manager can be thankful for and more of a punchline than he initially anticipates. Nakamaru calls him up on Friday to sheepishly deliver an early birthday message as well as an apology for being unable to hang out in the afternoon, and throughout the rest of the evening people whom Ueda has spoken maybe two words to all year flood his mail inbox with a colorful collection of saccharine wishes, if only to prove to Ueda that there are still people out there who consider themselves to be his friend. His birthday is on a Saturday this year, conveniently sandwiched between a cigarette break and two reasons to buy himself dinner in the afternoon before going out for a drink by himself, and by the end of the day he commits fully to the thought of doing something fun. He's thirty, after all, and you only turn thirty once in your life.
It's a nice idea, while it lasts.
Sometime before 5 am on Sunday, and after having sufficiently exhausted his web browser's incognito mode for its intended purpose, he makes himself coffee and sits down in front of the coffee table. He thinks about finding a girlfriend this year. It isn't too late to, never too late in this industry, plus he's more or less ripened to a stage in his idol career when fangirls are less inclined to be envious of any actress he's dating and more worried that he hasn't found somebody to go steady and attain uncertain happiness with, lest he die old and lonely and miserable. Which seems to be the likelier possibility at this point.
He sips his coffee and stares at his fingers for a while. His hands are currently very dry and rather alien-looking, one of his nails is chipped and his index finger is involuntarily tapping along to some kind of rhythm that he doesn't remember ever writing down. He considers this rhythm for a while, finger continues to tap while his thoughts ping-pong around the walls of the apartment, concludes that it's probably from a song that he'd dreamed about, back when he still dreamed about songs. The very sentiment and inelegance of this situation makes him sad for a couple minutes.
He fishes a sheet of music out from the pile on the table. This one's almost finished, only the last few bars still unestablished and melody perched on a thin wire, notes wobbly against the dregs of his musical ingenuity. His time signature's kind of wonky and he should probably fix that. He wants it to be a ballad, that much he's sure of. Maybe this one was worth showing to someone else, and with that in mind he thinks he'll probably try to record a demo tape tomorrow and bring it in to work on the day after the next. For now, he wants to stay bored for a while longer.
It starts raining outside when he falls asleep that night.
"The premise is good," Hiura-san tells him when he shows up at the office with his song. "You'll have to fix your time signature, and maybe not do the fade-away after the riff. That's a bit antiquated, don't you think? Nobody really goes for the fade-aways anymore."
"I was feeling a little nostalgic." Ueda feels the need to explain.
"Yes, well," says Hiura, and coughs. "Perhaps we can stick it on a B-side somewhere if your duet with Nakamaru-san doesn't work out, maybe a digital teaser through the video channel. Make sure you mention it the next time you're on a show, 'Oh, I'm in the middle of writing a new ballad', something like that. What do you think, Ueda-san? People like ballads. Your fans like your ballads."
"I should hope so," says Ueda, and leaves it at that.
He bumps into someone's shoulder on the way out from his agent's office, and he's all but ready to duck his head and mumble a quick apology when the other person reaches out and grabs his shoulder, wheeling him around.
"It was your birthday on Saturday, wasn't it?" says Ryo, and offers Ueda a can of oolong tea. "Happy birthday, Ueda."
"Thanks," says Ueda, and after a pause he accepts the drink. "Thank you, Nishikido-san."
They share a cigarette behind the jimusho building. Backs pressed against the cement wall, Ryo with his hands in his pockets to warm his fingers and Ueda with his thoughts still wet from having forgotten to wipe them off from the night before, when it started to rain. The air behind the building here is thick, kind of gloomy and kind of happy but certainly not at all fitting for a birthday celebration. The tip of the cigarette glows orange against Ryo's fingers.
"So what'd you do for your birthday?"
"Stayed home and fapped," says Ueda, and although he doesn't mean for it to come out that way, he probably sounds terribly sarcastic.
Ryo laughs. His laughter depresses Ueda, a touch of cold disbelief and a little on the raspier side, lower than normal and sincere as Nishikido could ever be toward him. Ueda likes this laugh of Ryo's very much. It could be possible that he even misses it. "So much for being a fucking pop star, am I right?"
"Shut up, you fucking pop star," Ueda grunts, snatching the smoke away from Ryo and sucking it between his lips for as long as he can before releasing another soggy thought into the sky. "You really think this is funny, don't you? Next year this is gonna be you. Wait for it. You're gonna be the loser turning thirty while I laugh at you, in this very spot."
"When I turn thirty," Ryo repeats after him, and snickers. "Nah, I'm pretty sure I won't be sitting here all forlorn and coming into work without a dignified hangover of some sort."
"I prefer to keep my hangovers at home," says Ueda stiffly. "Where they belong. And you know what, I've changed my mind. I won't even make fun of you on your birthday next year. Some of us mature when we age."
"That's silly," says Ryo, in between laughs, "you only turn thirty once in your life. And I only get to make fun of somebody like this once in their life."
"Now that's just untrue," Ueda says, keeping his voice light. "Because you've made fun of me every single day for the last ten years, Nishikido-san."
Ryo's laughter stops just as abruptly as it began. "Hey."
"Hey, what?"
"Is that what you really think, Ueda?"
"I don't think anything much."
"..."
Ryo drops the subject. "Hiura-san's in a rut right now, isn't he? Seemed a little agitated back there, I have to say."
"It's because they're pulling all of Koki's stuff from the next two releases," Ueda says, somewhat regretful. To be perfectly honest he isn't sure how he wants to feel about the whole thing yet, so it's probably just best to be as frank about it as he could manage. Even if it pains him inside. "They're giving us one week to prepare something to say about it. I've never been good with this sort of thing, you know, stuff like this really makes me wish I had a Twitter account or something."
"Guess that's one thing Tanaka Koki has going for him," says Ryo. "A goddamn Twitter account."
"First world problems," Ueda offers, lighting another cigarette. "But mostly just the same old agency conspiracies. They really like casting deep shit on our contracts. Makes me wonder if it's OK to admire somebody for having the ability to break out of it so quickly and so sharply."
"Tell me about it," Ryo sighs.
"I'd rather not," says Ueda dryly. "And really, I've said enough."
"I've overstepped my bounds again, haven't I."
"You totally did."
"..."
Ryo drops the subject again. "Say, why don't you try to make the tabloids some more this year? Maybe date a girl who's less gloomier than Aida-san? It's almost like nothing's happened to you since Kobayashi-san."
Ueda turns his head around sharply, blinks once before looking down to fumble for another cigarette. It's slightly surprising that Ryo's aware of who he's been dating all of last year, but maybe news travels around like that. You can't ever be sure if somebody is paying special attention to your affairs, or if they'd just heard something in the passing, on the private line behind closed doors in the back of a limousine. What a weird kind of paranoia to develop in the heart, at any rate. But then again--"You wonder if I'll fall in love again," he says absently, more to himself than to Ryo or anybody else.
"In love again," says Ryo. "I never said anything about an 'again', did I? Besides, you aren't going to."
"Challenge accepted," Ueda retorts.
"You aren't going to," Ryo repeats. His fingers are cold when he reaches for Ueda's newly-lit cigarette. "You probably haven't been in love since you were 18."
"How the hell would you even know that?" says Ueda, and then, "oh."
Ryo kisses him then.
+0
The funny thing is, this isn't the first cigarette that they've shared. Even funnier, it probably won't be the last.
+18
Ryo rejects him when they are seventeen and eighteen, respectively, on a similar occasion. Only this time there is none of the disrespect and too much love to cup between eighteen-year-old-fingers, whilst in the process of leaving his thoughts out to dry at the door and being told explicitly not to make a Twitter account, to keep his hair dyed a specific shade of brown and let his melodies perch on a thin wire.
"It was your birthday yesterday, wasn't it," Ryo says to him in passing after practice, two-thirds of it irritable and the rest of it as sincere as he could ever be toward Ueda. "Happy birthday."
"Thank you," says Ueda.
"I'd offer you this can of tea," says Ryo, "but I've already opened it and taken a drink. So consider it as if I owe you a drink."
It takes all of Ueda's courage to invite Nishikido-kun out for a smoke behind the building, and then some.
For him it's a first. First shared smoke outside the jimusho building, first half-boiled confession, first stutter between his lips, first burn mark on his finger from fumbling with the lighter. And Ryo is probably only there because he's pissed as all hell for being made earlier in the day to wear that shitastic spandex suit with the scratchy acrylic feathers, subsequently told to grind his hips against Ikuta Toma in such a way that the quills of the feathers continuously dig hard into his crotch. He has the intelligence not to make any faces or complain about it in front of the staff, but now that he's alone (figurative, seeing that he's actually with Ueda sharing a smoke in the back of the jimusho building), he's openly complaining. There are some things you just don't bitch about to your friends.
"And of course Ikuta's a complete moron who doesn't feel responsible enough to move his ass a little bit off my dick, you know, it's seriously the wors--"
"I like you," Ueda blurts out, at that moment. "I like you, Nishikido-kun, I might even be in love with you." And then, "I'm probably sorry, too."
"...What." Ryo stops talking for just a minute. "What did you just say?" He looks at Ueda, then down at the cigarette in his hand, and then back at Ueda. Without warning, he tugs Ueda's chin forward and kisses him, lightly on the lips. Their first shared kiss tastes like their first shared cigarette, not unexpected but certainly not very appetizing. Ueda's cheeks are bright red when Ryo pulls away. A small wisp of smoke curls away from the corner of Ryo's mouth.
"Hey, Ueda. You know I like girls, right? That kiss just now tasted gross to me."
Ueda bites his lip. "I guess that's a no."
"Heh."
"Never mind then, pretend I said nothing."
"It's fine," says Ryo, and in all respects he almost appears charitable. "You don't want this spread around, do you? It's OK. I won't tell anybody."
Ueda nods. He's thankful.
+0
Ideally, this should be the first and last time that Nishikido Ryo is ever nice to him again.
+30
In the end Ueda remembers giving up on Ryo just as easily, mostly because it's hard to be in love with a co-worker and keep a job at the jimusho at the same time, but also because it's harder still to keep your eyes on your feet and forget to turn off the lights before soaking the walls with your tears. It's been a decade since he's first fallen in love and the real misconception here is that, although he misses it, he can certainly do without it as well. He wakes up and showers and brushes his teeth each morning and tells himself how much of an applicator of suave emotion he has become, how his current temperament certainly reflects that of a successful person who has learnt to cope with excessive amounts of emotion, how easy (really!) it is to fall out of love if you try hard enough, how his fingers will tremble but he'll be damned if Nishikido Ryo ever gets to see any of this. Nakamaru is probably the only one who notices any of it, but Nakamaru has his own code of honor to uphold and complaints to report and love songs to write. Nakamaru also turns thirty before Ueda, so there you are. Maybe some people do mature when they age.
For a while, Ueda really does stop believing that he can fall in love. He is the resilient type, after all. Doesn't even need a Twitter account to prove himself.
"Why did you do that just now, Nishikido=san?"
"Why? What do you mean, can't I just kiss you because I want to?"
"Don't lie to me."
"I'm not lying."
"It's been five years since you've tried this shit, you're relapsing, Ryo, don't fuck with me."
"Are you calling me Ryo now? Does that mean there's some of you that still cares about me?"
"I've always loved you," says Ueda, "but that's not the point."
"Then what's the point?"
"The point is," Ueda says, and stops himself. The point is, he has long since realized that the Ryo he's loved all along might not have been there to begin with, if at all.
+21
Ryo loves him for a full minute when they are twenty and twenty-one, respectively, what appears at surface value to be a similar occasion but is actually both entirely different, and entirely not. The premise is skewed and the forefront of emotion is bared out for most of the general populace to witness, Nishikido Ryo is a deranged bully and Ueda Tatsuya takes it without hesitation, purely on the grounds that he hasn't prepared to be insulted like this by Ryo in the first place. What's done is done, but Kame makes a big fuss over Ueda anyway, tells Ryo to censor his fat mouth for maybe just a few seconds, scolds Jin for not standing up for his groupmate, big fucking use he is despite being a buddy of Ryo's.
The rest of the story, via Yamapi: Ryo-chan's girlfriend of two years and five months broke up with him over the phone last week, you see, shit's really difficult for him right now, he doesn't want to talk, he feels bad for treating you like shit, he doesn't mean it, he's banging his head against the wall right now, sorry that me and Jin are of absolute no fucking use at all.
The end result is that nobody cares enough about it anyway and nobody is told to care more about it. Ueda and Ryo share another smoke behind the jimusho building.
"About that thing you asked me," Nishikido starts, and if the Ueda at twenty-one years old had been any measurable amount of self-aware at this point he would have immediately noticed the warning bells going off in front of him, big neon signs pointing to Nishikido's big fucking shit-eating face telling Ueda to leave this place before Nishikido burns the fucking building down with his pathetic attempts at rekindling relationships that are too tired to think. "About the...uh, proposition you made to me, a few years ago. You can't have forgotten about it, right? Jin tells me that you didn't."
Ueda stares at Ryo for a really, really long time. "You did not," he says finally, "just call it a 'proposition'." And then he lifts himself off the wall and leaves Ryo there to ruin the rest of his birthday.
I'm sorry.
no youre not
I am actually am though.
It's my fault, I was wrong, I deserve every kind of shitty punishiment that you can think of.
I still owe you a can of tea, don't I?
ha ha ha ryo just fuck off
+0
"Serves you right," is what Kame tells Ueda. Junno agrees, Maru doesn't, Koki tweets about a pair of hightops he bought in Ebisu.
+30
But maybe it means something, all of it. Maybe the song he taps in his fingers is actually a distant memory from a cloudy day when it didn't rain and Ryo didn't kiss him and tell him how disgusting it was after. Maybe he's not alone on his thirtieth birthday, maybe Nakamaru is actually buying him a cake from a shop and planning a party for him on the rooftop, maybe the stars are falling out of the sky, maybe the constellations can only be described in 140 characters or less, maybe cigarette breaks behind the jimusho building are a chance to inform somebody that he's the only one you'll ever want to share a smoke with.
What an idea.
"I want to try now, Ueda," says Ryo. "There's nothing behind me this time, I swear."
+25
Ryo is in love with someone. Anybody can take one look at him and tear his swollen sentiment apart at its seams. When somebody is in love, it is reflected in every single action that they take, declaration of devotion that they make, drama that they film, can of oolong tea that they drink. A person in love will embody an upright emotion that nobody else can imitate and nobody else can fully interpret, save for the person who is being loved. But that's the difficult part, really, telling someone to fall back in love when they've neither the heart for it nor the aptitude to relearn the motions of hanging their thoughts outside to dry. It's unfortunate, really, that's all it is. It is also an odd occurrence, a blind emotion, two-thirds of it irritable and the rest of it as sincere as it gets. Make no mistake--the Nishikido at twenty-four years old knows that Ueda has discarded most of his feelings. The Nishikido at twenty-four decides to chase after them anyway.
The acting awards that he receives in 2008 are simply a bonus. He continues to love so hard that he can't even breathe.
"It was your birthday on Sunday, wasn't it?" says Ryo, to his apartment wall. "Happy birthday, Ueda. I still owe you that drink, don't I?"
In their third cigarette break, Ryo smokes alone.
+26
"You still think that kiss was gross?"
+27
"I don't think that kiss was gross. I want to kiss you again."
+28
"Did your girlfriend of three years and eight months break up with you this time?"
+29
"I haven't dated a girl in four years, you know that."
+30
"So why do you love me back, Ryo, why now?"
"I don't know. I think it might have been when I kissed you, after all. I felt like kissing you when I was seventeen, I still feel like kissing you now."
"...Took you a while, didn't it?"
"Some of us age first and mature later, I guess."
-THE END-
From: m_nemonica
SEASON'S GREETINGS!
Title: Keep talking while I show you a bad interpretation of how it feels to hang your heart on the ceiling and love somebody until it begins to melt down the walls
Pairing/Group: Ryo/Ueda [kanjani8/kattun], some mentions of kattun ensemble (including Koki)
Rating: pg
Warnings: messy feelings and rambly purple prose, nonchronological storyline
Notes: hi there sashjun! the premise of this story is pretty formulaic and some parts should definitely be read with a grain of salt, but i hope you like it despite all of that. happy holidays :) thanks to C for the quick beta.
Summary: Nishikido isn't the type to go back for seconds.
~
+30
Ueda hits thirty with less fanfare than his manager can be thankful for and more of a punchline than he initially anticipates. Nakamaru calls him up on Friday to sheepishly deliver an early birthday message as well as an apology for being unable to hang out in the afternoon, and throughout the rest of the evening people whom Ueda has spoken maybe two words to all year flood his mail inbox with a colorful collection of saccharine wishes, if only to prove to Ueda that there are still people out there who consider themselves to be his friend. His birthday is on a Saturday this year, conveniently sandwiched between a cigarette break and two reasons to buy himself dinner in the afternoon before going out for a drink by himself, and by the end of the day he commits fully to the thought of doing something fun. He's thirty, after all, and you only turn thirty once in your life.
It's a nice idea, while it lasts.
Sometime before 5 am on Sunday, and after having sufficiently exhausted his web browser's incognito mode for its intended purpose, he makes himself coffee and sits down in front of the coffee table. He thinks about finding a girlfriend this year. It isn't too late to, never too late in this industry, plus he's more or less ripened to a stage in his idol career when fangirls are less inclined to be envious of any actress he's dating and more worried that he hasn't found somebody to go steady and attain uncertain happiness with, lest he die old and lonely and miserable. Which seems to be the likelier possibility at this point.
He sips his coffee and stares at his fingers for a while. His hands are currently very dry and rather alien-looking, one of his nails is chipped and his index finger is involuntarily tapping along to some kind of rhythm that he doesn't remember ever writing down. He considers this rhythm for a while, finger continues to tap while his thoughts ping-pong around the walls of the apartment, concludes that it's probably from a song that he'd dreamed about, back when he still dreamed about songs. The very sentiment and inelegance of this situation makes him sad for a couple minutes.
He fishes a sheet of music out from the pile on the table. This one's almost finished, only the last few bars still unestablished and melody perched on a thin wire, notes wobbly against the dregs of his musical ingenuity. His time signature's kind of wonky and he should probably fix that. He wants it to be a ballad, that much he's sure of. Maybe this one was worth showing to someone else, and with that in mind he thinks he'll probably try to record a demo tape tomorrow and bring it in to work on the day after the next. For now, he wants to stay bored for a while longer.
It starts raining outside when he falls asleep that night.
"The premise is good," Hiura-san tells him when he shows up at the office with his song. "You'll have to fix your time signature, and maybe not do the fade-away after the riff. That's a bit antiquated, don't you think? Nobody really goes for the fade-aways anymore."
"I was feeling a little nostalgic." Ueda feels the need to explain.
"Yes, well," says Hiura, and coughs. "Perhaps we can stick it on a B-side somewhere if your duet with Nakamaru-san doesn't work out, maybe a digital teaser through the video channel. Make sure you mention it the next time you're on a show, 'Oh, I'm in the middle of writing a new ballad', something like that. What do you think, Ueda-san? People like ballads. Your fans like your ballads."
"I should hope so," says Ueda, and leaves it at that.
He bumps into someone's shoulder on the way out from his agent's office, and he's all but ready to duck his head and mumble a quick apology when the other person reaches out and grabs his shoulder, wheeling him around.
"It was your birthday on Saturday, wasn't it?" says Ryo, and offers Ueda a can of oolong tea. "Happy birthday, Ueda."
"Thanks," says Ueda, and after a pause he accepts the drink. "Thank you, Nishikido-san."
They share a cigarette behind the jimusho building. Backs pressed against the cement wall, Ryo with his hands in his pockets to warm his fingers and Ueda with his thoughts still wet from having forgotten to wipe them off from the night before, when it started to rain. The air behind the building here is thick, kind of gloomy and kind of happy but certainly not at all fitting for a birthday celebration. The tip of the cigarette glows orange against Ryo's fingers.
"So what'd you do for your birthday?"
"Stayed home and fapped," says Ueda, and although he doesn't mean for it to come out that way, he probably sounds terribly sarcastic.
Ryo laughs. His laughter depresses Ueda, a touch of cold disbelief and a little on the raspier side, lower than normal and sincere as Nishikido could ever be toward him. Ueda likes this laugh of Ryo's very much. It could be possible that he even misses it. "So much for being a fucking pop star, am I right?"
"Shut up, you fucking pop star," Ueda grunts, snatching the smoke away from Ryo and sucking it between his lips for as long as he can before releasing another soggy thought into the sky. "You really think this is funny, don't you? Next year this is gonna be you. Wait for it. You're gonna be the loser turning thirty while I laugh at you, in this very spot."
"When I turn thirty," Ryo repeats after him, and snickers. "Nah, I'm pretty sure I won't be sitting here all forlorn and coming into work without a dignified hangover of some sort."
"I prefer to keep my hangovers at home," says Ueda stiffly. "Where they belong. And you know what, I've changed my mind. I won't even make fun of you on your birthday next year. Some of us mature when we age."
"That's silly," says Ryo, in between laughs, "you only turn thirty once in your life. And I only get to make fun of somebody like this once in their life."
"Now that's just untrue," Ueda says, keeping his voice light. "Because you've made fun of me every single day for the last ten years, Nishikido-san."
Ryo's laughter stops just as abruptly as it began. "Hey."
"Hey, what?"
"Is that what you really think, Ueda?"
"I don't think anything much."
"..."
Ryo drops the subject. "Hiura-san's in a rut right now, isn't he? Seemed a little agitated back there, I have to say."
"It's because they're pulling all of Koki's stuff from the next two releases," Ueda says, somewhat regretful. To be perfectly honest he isn't sure how he wants to feel about the whole thing yet, so it's probably just best to be as frank about it as he could manage. Even if it pains him inside. "They're giving us one week to prepare something to say about it. I've never been good with this sort of thing, you know, stuff like this really makes me wish I had a Twitter account or something."
"Guess that's one thing Tanaka Koki has going for him," says Ryo. "A goddamn Twitter account."
"First world problems," Ueda offers, lighting another cigarette. "But mostly just the same old agency conspiracies. They really like casting deep shit on our contracts. Makes me wonder if it's OK to admire somebody for having the ability to break out of it so quickly and so sharply."
"Tell me about it," Ryo sighs.
"I'd rather not," says Ueda dryly. "And really, I've said enough."
"I've overstepped my bounds again, haven't I."
"You totally did."
"..."
Ryo drops the subject again. "Say, why don't you try to make the tabloids some more this year? Maybe date a girl who's less gloomier than Aida-san? It's almost like nothing's happened to you since Kobayashi-san."
Ueda turns his head around sharply, blinks once before looking down to fumble for another cigarette. It's slightly surprising that Ryo's aware of who he's been dating all of last year, but maybe news travels around like that. You can't ever be sure if somebody is paying special attention to your affairs, or if they'd just heard something in the passing, on the private line behind closed doors in the back of a limousine. What a weird kind of paranoia to develop in the heart, at any rate. But then again--"You wonder if I'll fall in love again," he says absently, more to himself than to Ryo or anybody else.
"In love again," says Ryo. "I never said anything about an 'again', did I? Besides, you aren't going to."
"Challenge accepted," Ueda retorts.
"You aren't going to," Ryo repeats. His fingers are cold when he reaches for Ueda's newly-lit cigarette. "You probably haven't been in love since you were 18."
"How the hell would you even know that?" says Ueda, and then, "oh."
Ryo kisses him then.
+0
The funny thing is, this isn't the first cigarette that they've shared. Even funnier, it probably won't be the last.
+18
Ryo rejects him when they are seventeen and eighteen, respectively, on a similar occasion. Only this time there is none of the disrespect and too much love to cup between eighteen-year-old-fingers, whilst in the process of leaving his thoughts out to dry at the door and being told explicitly not to make a Twitter account, to keep his hair dyed a specific shade of brown and let his melodies perch on a thin wire.
"It was your birthday yesterday, wasn't it," Ryo says to him in passing after practice, two-thirds of it irritable and the rest of it as sincere as he could ever be toward Ueda. "Happy birthday."
"Thank you," says Ueda.
"I'd offer you this can of tea," says Ryo, "but I've already opened it and taken a drink. So consider it as if I owe you a drink."
It takes all of Ueda's courage to invite Nishikido-kun out for a smoke behind the building, and then some.
For him it's a first. First shared smoke outside the jimusho building, first half-boiled confession, first stutter between his lips, first burn mark on his finger from fumbling with the lighter. And Ryo is probably only there because he's pissed as all hell for being made earlier in the day to wear that shitastic spandex suit with the scratchy acrylic feathers, subsequently told to grind his hips against Ikuta Toma in such a way that the quills of the feathers continuously dig hard into his crotch. He has the intelligence not to make any faces or complain about it in front of the staff, but now that he's alone (figurative, seeing that he's actually with Ueda sharing a smoke in the back of the jimusho building), he's openly complaining. There are some things you just don't bitch about to your friends.
"And of course Ikuta's a complete moron who doesn't feel responsible enough to move his ass a little bit off my dick, you know, it's seriously the wors--"
"I like you," Ueda blurts out, at that moment. "I like you, Nishikido-kun, I might even be in love with you." And then, "I'm probably sorry, too."
"...What." Ryo stops talking for just a minute. "What did you just say?" He looks at Ueda, then down at the cigarette in his hand, and then back at Ueda. Without warning, he tugs Ueda's chin forward and kisses him, lightly on the lips. Their first shared kiss tastes like their first shared cigarette, not unexpected but certainly not very appetizing. Ueda's cheeks are bright red when Ryo pulls away. A small wisp of smoke curls away from the corner of Ryo's mouth.
"Hey, Ueda. You know I like girls, right? That kiss just now tasted gross to me."
Ueda bites his lip. "I guess that's a no."
"Heh."
"Never mind then, pretend I said nothing."
"It's fine," says Ryo, and in all respects he almost appears charitable. "You don't want this spread around, do you? It's OK. I won't tell anybody."
Ueda nods. He's thankful.
+0
Ideally, this should be the first and last time that Nishikido Ryo is ever nice to him again.
+30
In the end Ueda remembers giving up on Ryo just as easily, mostly because it's hard to be in love with a co-worker and keep a job at the jimusho at the same time, but also because it's harder still to keep your eyes on your feet and forget to turn off the lights before soaking the walls with your tears. It's been a decade since he's first fallen in love and the real misconception here is that, although he misses it, he can certainly do without it as well. He wakes up and showers and brushes his teeth each morning and tells himself how much of an applicator of suave emotion he has become, how his current temperament certainly reflects that of a successful person who has learnt to cope with excessive amounts of emotion, how easy (really!) it is to fall out of love if you try hard enough, how his fingers will tremble but he'll be damned if Nishikido Ryo ever gets to see any of this. Nakamaru is probably the only one who notices any of it, but Nakamaru has his own code of honor to uphold and complaints to report and love songs to write. Nakamaru also turns thirty before Ueda, so there you are. Maybe some people do mature when they age.
For a while, Ueda really does stop believing that he can fall in love. He is the resilient type, after all. Doesn't even need a Twitter account to prove himself.
"Why did you do that just now, Nishikido=san?"
"Why? What do you mean, can't I just kiss you because I want to?"
"Don't lie to me."
"I'm not lying."
"It's been five years since you've tried this shit, you're relapsing, Ryo, don't fuck with me."
"Are you calling me Ryo now? Does that mean there's some of you that still cares about me?"
"I've always loved you," says Ueda, "but that's not the point."
"Then what's the point?"
"The point is," Ueda says, and stops himself. The point is, he has long since realized that the Ryo he's loved all along might not have been there to begin with, if at all.
+21
Ryo loves him for a full minute when they are twenty and twenty-one, respectively, what appears at surface value to be a similar occasion but is actually both entirely different, and entirely not. The premise is skewed and the forefront of emotion is bared out for most of the general populace to witness, Nishikido Ryo is a deranged bully and Ueda Tatsuya takes it without hesitation, purely on the grounds that he hasn't prepared to be insulted like this by Ryo in the first place. What's done is done, but Kame makes a big fuss over Ueda anyway, tells Ryo to censor his fat mouth for maybe just a few seconds, scolds Jin for not standing up for his groupmate, big fucking use he is despite being a buddy of Ryo's.
The rest of the story, via Yamapi: Ryo-chan's girlfriend of two years and five months broke up with him over the phone last week, you see, shit's really difficult for him right now, he doesn't want to talk, he feels bad for treating you like shit, he doesn't mean it, he's banging his head against the wall right now, sorry that me and Jin are of absolute no fucking use at all.
The end result is that nobody cares enough about it anyway and nobody is told to care more about it. Ueda and Ryo share another smoke behind the jimusho building.
"About that thing you asked me," Nishikido starts, and if the Ueda at twenty-one years old had been any measurable amount of self-aware at this point he would have immediately noticed the warning bells going off in front of him, big neon signs pointing to Nishikido's big fucking shit-eating face telling Ueda to leave this place before Nishikido burns the fucking building down with his pathetic attempts at rekindling relationships that are too tired to think. "About the...uh, proposition you made to me, a few years ago. You can't have forgotten about it, right? Jin tells me that you didn't."
Ueda stares at Ryo for a really, really long time. "You did not," he says finally, "just call it a 'proposition'." And then he lifts himself off the wall and leaves Ryo there to ruin the rest of his birthday.
I'm sorry.
no youre not
I am actually am though.
It's my fault, I was wrong, I deserve every kind of shitty punishiment that you can think of.
I still owe you a can of tea, don't I?
ha ha ha ryo just fuck off
+0
"Serves you right," is what Kame tells Ueda. Junno agrees, Maru doesn't, Koki tweets about a pair of hightops he bought in Ebisu.
+30
But maybe it means something, all of it. Maybe the song he taps in his fingers is actually a distant memory from a cloudy day when it didn't rain and Ryo didn't kiss him and tell him how disgusting it was after. Maybe he's not alone on his thirtieth birthday, maybe Nakamaru is actually buying him a cake from a shop and planning a party for him on the rooftop, maybe the stars are falling out of the sky, maybe the constellations can only be described in 140 characters or less, maybe cigarette breaks behind the jimusho building are a chance to inform somebody that he's the only one you'll ever want to share a smoke with.
What an idea.
"I want to try now, Ueda," says Ryo. "There's nothing behind me this time, I swear."
+25
Ryo is in love with someone. Anybody can take one look at him and tear his swollen sentiment apart at its seams. When somebody is in love, it is reflected in every single action that they take, declaration of devotion that they make, drama that they film, can of oolong tea that they drink. A person in love will embody an upright emotion that nobody else can imitate and nobody else can fully interpret, save for the person who is being loved. But that's the difficult part, really, telling someone to fall back in love when they've neither the heart for it nor the aptitude to relearn the motions of hanging their thoughts outside to dry. It's unfortunate, really, that's all it is. It is also an odd occurrence, a blind emotion, two-thirds of it irritable and the rest of it as sincere as it gets. Make no mistake--the Nishikido at twenty-four years old knows that Ueda has discarded most of his feelings. The Nishikido at twenty-four decides to chase after them anyway.
The acting awards that he receives in 2008 are simply a bonus. He continues to love so hard that he can't even breathe.
"It was your birthday on Sunday, wasn't it?" says Ryo, to his apartment wall. "Happy birthday, Ueda. I still owe you that drink, don't I?"
In their third cigarette break, Ryo smokes alone.
+26
"You still think that kiss was gross?"
+27
"I don't think that kiss was gross. I want to kiss you again."
+28
"Did your girlfriend of three years and eight months break up with you this time?"
+29
"I haven't dated a girl in four years, you know that."
+30
"So why do you love me back, Ryo, why now?"
"I don't know. I think it might have been when I kissed you, after all. I felt like kissing you when I was seventeen, I still feel like kissing you now."
"...Took you a while, didn't it?"
"Some of us age first and mature later, I guess."
-THE END-