Gift Fic for kinki4ever39
Title: Something To Remember
Pairing/Group: Yamamoto Ryota/Takahashi Ryu
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Summary: Ryota understands that at Johnnys jimusho, people are always coming and going. He just never expects it'd be one of his groupmates he'd have to say goodbye to.
Note: kinki4ever39, I'm not familiar enough with the older dance boys to feel comfortable writing a story centered on them, but I definitely had been wanting to write something dealing with Ryu leaving JE, so thanks for the opportunity and I hope you like it!
In the days after Ryu officially stops working as a Johnnys, Ryota doesn't hear a word from him. It's not like he and Ryu had mailed each other often before, aside from work-related messages, so it's not like this turn of events is particularly surprising.
It's just that he's a little disappointed.
-
Honestly, Ryota doesn't remember much about the day Ryu tells TheyBudou about his plans to quit Johnnys.
He remembers being happy in the morning on his way to work, admiring the way the sunshine glinted off his newly deco'd iPhone cover and bouncing a little on the balls of his feet while waiting for the light to change at the corner right in front of the jimusho. And then he remembers the rush and roar in his ears when Ryu broke the news to them, remembers looking frantically at Tsuyoshi and Shota to make sure they were hearing the same words he was.
He doesn't remember the things he usually takes note of on days that are important to him, like if he was wearing any of his particularly lucky (or unlucky) clothing or his personal soundtrack for that day. He doesn't remember the exact words Ryu used, and he doesn't remember Ryu pulling him aside to talk privately in the stairwell although Tsuyoshi insists it happened.
"Selective memory," Tsuyoshi tells him, when Ryota wonders at his own lack of memory. "You were always good at blocking out the unpleasant stuff." Tsuyoshi's the only member of They to have gone to college, so Ryota's happy enough to go with that explanation.
-
They're supposed to be professionals, and it's not like they've never had to re-adjust their formation when someone was out sick or had other work before, but it's especially hard this time around to get used to a three-person dance formation. It's the permanence of it all, the fact that they have to recalibrate themselves, feelings and expectations as well as how they move their bodies physically in formation, to work as a trio instead of a quartet.
"It'll be fine as soon as Yara-kun gets here," Shota tells Ryota when he stumbles to a stop during practice for the nth time that day. "Yara-kun will know how to fix things."
But it's even worse when Yara arrives, because Yara just goes on like everything is normal. There's no sympathy, no brotherly advice on how to re-adjust to the big empty Ryu-sized hole in their formation.
"Come on guys," Yara barks at them, "Let's show some more professionalism here! It's not like you've never done this choreography before, and small changes shouldn't take this long to adjust to."
It's not a small change, Ryota sullenly thinks. But already Yara is counting the steps again, and Tsuyoshi and Shota are moving with renewed determination on their faces, so Ryota can't do anything but do his best to keep up. Yara's standards are high and exacting, and he doesn't hold back on the criticism; nobody likes getting yelled at by Yara, least of all Ryota.
The desperate, intense focus they all expend at practice that day works well enough that by the end of the day, they can run through the choreography smoothly without mistakes. If Ryota still feels awkward taking extra steps to cover more distance, well, he doesn't mention it out loud, and neither do the others.
Once they're off the clock, though, the stern look on Yara's face vanishes and he takes them all out to yakiniku. "You all deserve it," he insists.
-
When he has nothing to do on the train, Ryota likes to play with an app on his phone that lets him edit the photos he's taken, with options to add borders and captions and silly decos like crowns and hearts and mustaches. Today, as he's going through the gallery on his phone to find a photo to fix up, he finds an old, old photo from years ago. The picture is of himself and Ryu, grinning like idiots with their arms around each other. They're both wearing concert t-shirts (his is from Playzone and Ryu's is from a KinKi Kids tour) and Ryu's hair is so ugly, starting to crinkle from having dance practice all day. Ryota fingers twitch against his thigh, as though they can feel the soft roughness of Ryu's hair under them even now.
He hits the delete button, then hovers his thumb over "confirm," then "cancel," and then "confirm" again, until suddenly his phone rings, and it's Ryu, as though Ryota thinking about him so hard had summoned his call. He sends the call to voicemail, but keeps the picture.
-
Ryu calls him a lot after that, but Ryota never picks up (even if his heart pounds every time he sees Ryu's name on his phone display). Instead, he hears about what Ryu is up to from some of the guys in MADE who go to visit Ryu at his new dance school one day. They think it's great, with its polished floors and shiny mirrors and and the cute little kids flocking around "Takahashi-sensei" asking him to teach them how to do a backflip.
Frankly, Ryota thinks it all sounds exactly the same as working at Johnny's jimusho.
"It's quieter and probably more stable though," Fukushi reasons, but Ryota's not really interested in reasoning.
"And boring," he spits out, in a tone that sounds so spiteful he even surprises himself. "What happened to the thrill of being onstage and stuff. Performing. Making fans laugh. Having fun with his friends." What happened to doing those things with me. Ryota bites his lips on that thought.
Tomioka shoots Ryota a questioning look. "It's not like he can't make friends with his new co-workers though?"
"What Ryo-chan means," Tsuyoshi interprets with an arm slung over Ryota's shoulders and a shit-eating grin on his face, "is that he misses Ryu. Right, Ryo-chan?"
"No!" Ryota scowls and shrugs off Tsuyoshi's arm. He can feel the others' gazes following him as he stalks over to the back of the room to grab his water bottle, but he does his best to ignore them.
-
"Come on, Ryota," Yara coaxes him patiently, steadily, soberly. "You have to let Ryu do what he wants to with his life."
"He's being selfish!" says Ryota, mouth set in a stubborn line. "His decision isn't any good for Shota and Edacchi and me, we can't be They Budou without a T. And I mean, how stupid does 'Hey Guys' sound?"
"Pretty stupid," Yara agrees with a laugh. This earns him a baleful look from Ryota, but he only laughs again, as indulgent and superior as any real older brother. "But you're being selfish too, you know. If he's decided that he wants to give something else a try in his life, then isn't it selfish of you to hold him back?"
Ryota stews over this for a moment, a frown puckering his lips. "No... Yes. Maybe."
Yara laughs again, and this time reaches over to tousle Ryota's hair. "It's okay to be selfish," he says, "but then you have to allow other people the right to be selfish too."
-
He ignores the harsh buzz of his phone, set to vibrate, against the floor of the dance studio when it goes off right after practice. It's just slightly out of his reach and his muscles are screaming from a whole day's hard practice.
Shota, collapsed on the floor right next to Ryota, is closer. He makes a face at Ryota's laziness, but grabs the phone off the ground for him anyway. Then he sits up straight when he catches a glimpse of the name on the caller ID. "Hey! Hey, it's Ryu!" He moves his thumb over the swipe to accept the call.
Ryota pounces. The scuffle is brief but violent, and Ryota, thanks to sheer desperation, comes out on top. He folds Shota's arms across his chest and then sits on them while he removes the battery from his phone just to be safe.
"Are you really this mad at him for quitting?" Shota asks, smiling crookedly up at him. "You won't be able to ignore him forever, you know."
-
It sucks, but Shota (and Tsuyoshi, and Yara, and all of those jerks) is right.
It's impossible to ignore Ryu, shivering under the street light in front of his house in only a t-shirt, when Ryota gets home one day late at night. The way the street light hits Ryu distends his already long shadow so that it stretches out and out and out in front of him, reaching towards Ryota. Ryota's own shadow stretches and shrinks, shifts and tilts, sometimes even duplicates, as he passes under the row of street lights. In the future, Ryota knows, the thing he'll remember the most about this moment is the play of their shadows on the ground, like a metaphor; he tends to focus on weird things like that.
"Wear a jacket if you're going to be out this late," he says by way of a greeting. He pulls out a hoodie from his duffel bag and shoves it at Ryu.
Ryu looks surprised, though he doesn't refuse the sweater. He puts his arms into the sleeves but doesn't pull the sweater over his head. "Ryota," he mutters, picking at a loose thread. Then he takes a breath and stands up a little taller and gets straight to the point. "Are you really that mad at me?"
"...What do you think?"
"Nobody else is this upset," Ryu points out. "And you didn't get this upset when some of the other guys left before."
"That's... That's different."
"Is it? How?"
Ryota can't look at Ryu. He tries to, but his gaze keeps sliding off Ryu's face to the sky, the houses, their shadows... He thinks about just walking into his house and closing the door in Ryu's face, because how is he supposed to answer this? How can he tell Ryu that he just wants to be with Ryu when Ryu has chosen to leave?
But Ryu presses him for an answer, won't give up, until finally Ryota is exasperated enough with Ryu and himself that he gives in. "Because it's not about work, it's about you and me!" he shouts, louder than he ought to be in the middle of the street.
Ryu gives him a weird look, and then grabs Ryota by the arm and pulls him into the shadows out of the yellow ring of the streetlamp. "Ryota... why are we having this conversation again?"
"What?" In the dark, before his eyes adjust, it's hard to see Ryu's expression. "What do you mean again?" Ryota wonders.
"Again as in again. As in we've already talked about this." Ryu sighs gustily, and Ryota sees the dark shape of his arm coming up to run his fingers through his hair, and he just bets Ryu is rolling his eyes at him by the tone of his voice.
"Did we really? When?"
"You don't remember?!" Ryu yelps, incredulous. "Seriously Ryota, where do you keep your brain? How can you forget a conversation like this?"
"Shut up," Ryota mutters. "Edacchi said it's called 'choosing memories' or something."
"..." Ryu quirks an eyebrow at him. "You mean selective memory?"
"Yeah, that!"
Ryu is quiet long enough that Ryota feels the need to fill the silence. If it weren't so dark, he'd be able to see Ryu's expression, though on second though he doesn't know if he wants to see the drily sarcastic twist of Ryu's lips either. "So uh, what was the conclusion of that conversation?"
"I can't believe you've been ignoring me this entire time because you forgot like the most important conversation we've ever had," Ryu says, not answering the question at all. "Can you really call yourself a person?"
"Hey-!"
"No wonder literally everyone was telling me to just meet you-"
"Everyone? What do you mean by everyone-"
"I thought you were - oh, I don't know, having second thoughts or something, so I was worried, but no you were just being an airhead like usual-"
"I am not-"
It's actually kind of cute how Ryu keeps complaining, Ryota thinks, because there's a giddy quality to it, like he's secretly really relieved and happy. Being insulted isn't so nice, of course, but Ryota knows how to handle that. He counts, and when Ryu gets up to five insults, he stands up on tiptoe and kisses Ryu.
When they pull apart, Ryu clears his throat awkwardly. "So... you won't forget anymore, right?"
"Forget what?" Ryota laughs. "I might need you to remind me again."