Yuto x Yamada; if i never knew you part i
Title: if i never knew you
Pairing: Nakajima Yuto x Yamada Ryosuke
Rating: PG
Warnings: What would happen if Yuto just randomly dropped off the face of the planet and everyone forgot about him? YAMADA WOULD GO CRAZY. I don't even know how to describe this. I can't remember the name for the genre it would be.
Notes: Yamada takes things for granted and doesn’t realize it until they are gone. See this post for original notes and reviews.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Written: May 12- May 18
if i never knew you- i
It had seemed like a normal day.
He woke up at six thirty. He bathed. He dressed. He gathered his things, and then he ate breakfast. He put on his shoes, and then waited. And waited. He had waited for thirty minutes when his mother came to him and asked, “What are you waiting for, Ryosuke, you’re going to be late!”
Yamada didn’t like being annoyed this early in the morning. “Yuto-kun. He didn’t say anything about being late…” Yuto always, always, always walked with him to work, even when he didn’t want him to.
He should have known something was wrong when his mother asked confusedly, “Who’s Yuto?”
His mother spent ten minutes swearing to him that she knew no one by the name of Yuto, and another five drilling him on any secret friends he might have. Something was clearly Very Wrong he thought as he finally and reluctantly left the house by himself- his mother knew Yuto just as well as Yuto’s mother did, it seemed sometimes.
Yamada walked to the jimusho in perplexed and lonesome silence, an eerie feeling settling on him like he was in some twilight zone. There had been days when they hadn’t walked together, of course, but none of them had started like this.
It would get better when he got to the jimusho, he told himself as he stepped off the bus. His mother was probably just playing with him.
He was wrong. It got weirder and worse.
“So… there’s no one named Nakajima Yuto here?” Yamada asked Yabu slowly as they dressed for their performance.
Yabu sighed in annoyance. “For the tenth time, no one that I know of.”
“But… he was in our group. He was 7’s leader!” Yamada insisted, looking helplessly at Chinen and Morimoto. They sent him blank looks. “He was… he was my best friend.” Yamada tried to ignore the way his voice choked and cracked, and the feeling of despair building up in him.
No one was quite sure what to say. “Maybe it was just a dream,” Inoo offered gently, gripping his shoulder sympathetically.
“No… no! I can’t just dream up three years of my life!” Yamada shouted, realizing how desperate he sounded and not caring. “No… no… s-something’s wrong. K-koyama-senpai!” Koyama paused and sent the group a concerned look as Yamada ran up to him. “Koyama-senpai, please, you know where Yuto is, right?”
Yamada was looking at him with such a hopeful face that Koyama felt guilty for saying, “W-who’s Yuto?”
Who’s Yuto?
Who’s Yuto.
“You’re not joking,” Yamada suddenly murmured. “You really don’t know who I’m talking about.”
“Do you want to lie down, Yama-chan?” Daiki asked worriedly, “We don’t go on for another couple of hours.”
“No, I’m…” Yamada looked around at the concerned faces of Hey! Say! JUMP and felt sick when he realized that there were still only 8 of them. He swallowed. “M-maybe that’s a good idea.”
When Yamada got home after filming (thank god he didn’t have any solos, he wasn’t sure how he got through their performance to begin with. Especially when he learned that, even without Yuto, Hey! Say! JUMP was still a ten member group, the tenth member being Hashimoto Ryosuke.), he tore his room apart.
He went through magazines, through photo books, through old videos and CD singles. Nothing- no Johnny’s merchandise showed him even a hint that Yuto existed. Next came the personal things, the photo albums he tore through desperately and the gifts that he had collected from him. He even went through his phone, message by message, clinging to the hope that he would spot the familiar cheerful and silly messages Yuto sent him every five minutes.
Nothing.
Yamada felt like he couldn’t breathe.
It was so creepy and eerie. Like someone had come in and erased a huge chunk of his life. Because really, without the manga and the toys and gifts that Yuto showered him with, without the pictures and the articles, everything seemed so empty. So plain. So lonely.
“Yuto…” Yamada whispered. “Yuto. Yuto, Yuto, Yuto…”
Maybe if he kept saying his name over and over Yuto would come back. Or at least, then he would know that he had existed, that he hadn’t been Yamada’s imagination.
Yamada sank down onto his bed, ignoring the crunch of the glossy magazine pages he ended up sitting on (his room was a mess, he realized dumbly, with paper and CD’s and everything everywhere.)
“The… the internet,” he croaked, staring at a broken picture frame on the floor that had held one of his first pictures of him and Yuto together and was now sporting the grinning face of him and him alone. “I’ll search his name, find his fanpages. And… and I’ll ask the girls at school. Haruna-chan had a huge crush on him, she’ll know. And…”
Even as he talked, Yamada couldn’t convince himself. The truth settled on him heavily, crushing the air out of his lungs and his heart.
Yuto was gone. No, apparently, Yuto had never even been there.
“Yuto…”
Over and over Yamada muttered his name- this time, so he wouldn’t forget.
It didn’t take long for Yamada to realize that he would never get used to this. He had known from the start- who could get used to an entire chunk of their life suddenly disappearing?
Every night he dreamt of him, his image fading a little each time, and every morning he woke up half thinking that the dream was over, that Yuto would appear on his doorstep like every other morning, smiling in that annoyingly too-bright-for-morning way and dragging him to the station. After a week it became so maddening that Yamada became afraid to go to sleep (but he had to, how else was he going to remember the way Yuto smiled, his laugh, his voice?)
The walks to and from the jimusho were just as maddening. Without Yuto there to talk his ear off, it was so quiet. Everything reminded Yamada of him- the curb that he tripped on and skinned his knee once, the ice cream place he loved so much, even the bugs on the sidewalk.
Work was the worst. Yamada didn’t even want to think about work. How was it possible to be surrounded by nine other boys and still be so lonely.
Lonely. Yamada mused over this and played with the apple in his hands. I’m lonely without him.
… but why?
Yuto was his best friend, of course he would miss him. But as best friends went, they hadn’t been living up to that status lately. There were dozens of reasons why- They were busy with group activities, Yamada was busy with dramas, Yamada was busy with Chinen, Yuto was busy with school, Yamada was busy with Morimoto, Yamada was busy with home, Yamada was busy being busy. When was the last time they had hung out, he pondered, sighing when he couldn’t remember it.
So, logically speaking, Yamada should have missed him a long time ago, whenever it was that they had stopped hanging out. But he didn’t. He hadn’t even noticed, not until now.
When Yuto was gone.
Yamada frowned when this… realization opened a whole new slew of thoughts to rush on him, trying to push them away. It hurt his head to think about it too much.
Life went on. Life was going on, whether or not Yamada liked it. As much as he wanted it to wait for Yuto to come back and join him, he didn’t know how long that would take… or if it even happened. And no one else cared.
Yamada couldn’t afford to wait for Yuto, to cling on to a thin string of hope that he would come around the corner and smile that big smile for him.
So Yamada had to go on.
And he did. At least on the outside. After two weeks his incident involving some nonexistent boy named Yuto was all but forgotten by the rest of Hey! Say! JUMP, who treated him like a delicate porcelain flower that was about to break for two weeks until they were sure he was okay. And it looked like he was. He smiled and laughed and joked and shone brighter than ever on stage.
And at night, he rested his head on his pillow and closed his eyes, tears running down his cheeks as he whispered over and over in his sleep, “Yuto, Yuto…”
Yamada was an idol. He couldn’t let everyone know he was breaking on the inside.
A month passed. Things went on, continued to happen. Hey! Say! JUMP made music appearances, did photo shoots, worked on their latest single. It was nice, perfect for the summer time. They even filmed their third promotional video, at a carnival. Yamada got another drama role. It was all very nice.
And then it was August 10.
“He’s 15 today…” Yamada murmured to himself as he slipped on his jacket.
“Is it someone’s birthday?” Inoo asked kindly, smiling at him.
Yamada smiled back and shook his head. “No, it’s nothing. I was just talking to myself. See you tomorrow, Inoo-chan!”
“Take care, Yama-chan,” Inoo said back, I mean it. There was something about Yamada that had been off for the past month, and Inoo couldn’t quite place what it was.
It was a nice day, which was good because Yuto liked nice days, and would worry for days about how the weather would be on his birthday. It had rained last year, he remembered- Yamada felt that it was very fitting for it to be so nice when Yuto wasn’t around to enjoy it.
Yamada didn’t go home right away. It would be too much of an insult to ignore Yuto’s birthday like that- even when Yuto was here, Yamada wouldn’t have ignored it like that. Yamada always made sure to get Yuto a gift, one he knew the other would love and that no one else could have possibly gotten him. Even when their friendship was rocky, Yamada would make sure Yuto had a good birthday.
He couldn’t exactly do that when he wasn’t here. But he could still celebrate it.
Yamada dropped by a bakery that Yuto had loved and bought a couple of cupcakes, and then stopped at the store to buy candles and matches. He walked to a park that Yuto had loved and sat around a fountain, staring into the trickling water, lost in his thoughts.
With a sigh, Yamada brought out one of the cupcakes and stuck a candle in the middle. After it was lit he guarded the weak, sputtering flame with his hand against the cool breeze, as if it was his last hope at bringing Yuto back.
“Happy Birthday to you,” he sang softly, ignoring the way his eyes welled up and stung. “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Yuto… Happy Birthday to you…”
Yamada made a wish- not for Yuto, but for himself. Come back, come back to me, and he blew the candle out, sealing his wish and extinguishing his hope.
Unpeeling the wrapper away from the cake, Yamada whispered a glum, “Happy Birthday, Yuto,” and bit into it. The sweetness exploded in his mouth and left a bitter after taste, but Yamada took another bite and another, stuffing it into his mouth and making a mess.
His eyes absently went to the plate of cupcakes he had, wondering what to do with them. He couldn’t finish them, and their friends wouldn’t want to celebrate a birthday for someone they never knew (though he was sure Chinen and Ryutaro would have snatched up the sweets anyway). He would give them to the children playing around him, perhaps. Yuto would have done something like that. Yuto would have been loud and obnoxious and happy, so happy to celebrate his birthday with his best friend.
Yamada realized suddenly that he was stupid to think he could go on like this. Yamada couldn’t go on like this, not if he wanted to remain sane. He needed to let go of Yuto, to forget, to stop clinging to his memory…
He needed Yuto back.
Yamada stared at the half-eaten cupcake in his hands, feeling sick and nauseous- he stared until his eyes began to burn, to give himself an excuse for why his eyes were filling up with tears. He hiccupped and wiped at them, but didn’t bother the second time, until they were rolling down his cheeks thickly and mixing with the moist cupcake and creating a mess.
“Yu-yuto,” he whispered, feeling the world crumble around him and his insides twist and break. “Yuto…!”
“Are you okay?”
Everything came to a screeching stop, including his heart. He was almost scared to lift his eyes up to meet the warm, familiar ones he knew, or he thought he knew, so well.
“Yuto…”
Nakajima Yuto smiled brightly at him and held out his handkerchief, oblivious to the heartache he had just put the boy through for the past month.
… to be continued
NEXT PART
Pairing: Nakajima Yuto x Yamada Ryosuke
Rating: PG
Warnings: What would happen if Yuto just randomly dropped off the face of the planet and everyone forgot about him? YAMADA WOULD GO CRAZY. I don't even know how to describe this. I can't remember the name for the genre it would be.
Notes: Yamada takes things for granted and doesn’t realize it until they are gone. See this post for original notes and reviews.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Written: May 12- May 18
if i never knew you- i
It had seemed like a normal day.
He woke up at six thirty. He bathed. He dressed. He gathered his things, and then he ate breakfast. He put on his shoes, and then waited. And waited. He had waited for thirty minutes when his mother came to him and asked, “What are you waiting for, Ryosuke, you’re going to be late!”
Yamada didn’t like being annoyed this early in the morning. “Yuto-kun. He didn’t say anything about being late…” Yuto always, always, always walked with him to work, even when he didn’t want him to.
He should have known something was wrong when his mother asked confusedly, “Who’s Yuto?”
His mother spent ten minutes swearing to him that she knew no one by the name of Yuto, and another five drilling him on any secret friends he might have. Something was clearly Very Wrong he thought as he finally and reluctantly left the house by himself- his mother knew Yuto just as well as Yuto’s mother did, it seemed sometimes.
Yamada walked to the jimusho in perplexed and lonesome silence, an eerie feeling settling on him like he was in some twilight zone. There had been days when they hadn’t walked together, of course, but none of them had started like this.
It would get better when he got to the jimusho, he told himself as he stepped off the bus. His mother was probably just playing with him.
He was wrong. It got weirder and worse.
“So… there’s no one named Nakajima Yuto here?” Yamada asked Yabu slowly as they dressed for their performance.
Yabu sighed in annoyance. “For the tenth time, no one that I know of.”
“But… he was in our group. He was 7’s leader!” Yamada insisted, looking helplessly at Chinen and Morimoto. They sent him blank looks. “He was… he was my best friend.” Yamada tried to ignore the way his voice choked and cracked, and the feeling of despair building up in him.
No one was quite sure what to say. “Maybe it was just a dream,” Inoo offered gently, gripping his shoulder sympathetically.
“No… no! I can’t just dream up three years of my life!” Yamada shouted, realizing how desperate he sounded and not caring. “No… no… s-something’s wrong. K-koyama-senpai!” Koyama paused and sent the group a concerned look as Yamada ran up to him. “Koyama-senpai, please, you know where Yuto is, right?”
Yamada was looking at him with such a hopeful face that Koyama felt guilty for saying, “W-who’s Yuto?”
Who’s Yuto?
Who’s Yuto.
“You’re not joking,” Yamada suddenly murmured. “You really don’t know who I’m talking about.”
“Do you want to lie down, Yama-chan?” Daiki asked worriedly, “We don’t go on for another couple of hours.”
“No, I’m…” Yamada looked around at the concerned faces of Hey! Say! JUMP and felt sick when he realized that there were still only 8 of them. He swallowed. “M-maybe that’s a good idea.”
When Yamada got home after filming (thank god he didn’t have any solos, he wasn’t sure how he got through their performance to begin with. Especially when he learned that, even without Yuto, Hey! Say! JUMP was still a ten member group, the tenth member being Hashimoto Ryosuke.), he tore his room apart.
He went through magazines, through photo books, through old videos and CD singles. Nothing- no Johnny’s merchandise showed him even a hint that Yuto existed. Next came the personal things, the photo albums he tore through desperately and the gifts that he had collected from him. He even went through his phone, message by message, clinging to the hope that he would spot the familiar cheerful and silly messages Yuto sent him every five minutes.
Nothing.
Yamada felt like he couldn’t breathe.
It was so creepy and eerie. Like someone had come in and erased a huge chunk of his life. Because really, without the manga and the toys and gifts that Yuto showered him with, without the pictures and the articles, everything seemed so empty. So plain. So lonely.
“Yuto…” Yamada whispered. “Yuto. Yuto, Yuto, Yuto…”
Maybe if he kept saying his name over and over Yuto would come back. Or at least, then he would know that he had existed, that he hadn’t been Yamada’s imagination.
Yamada sank down onto his bed, ignoring the crunch of the glossy magazine pages he ended up sitting on (his room was a mess, he realized dumbly, with paper and CD’s and everything everywhere.)
“The… the internet,” he croaked, staring at a broken picture frame on the floor that had held one of his first pictures of him and Yuto together and was now sporting the grinning face of him and him alone. “I’ll search his name, find his fanpages. And… and I’ll ask the girls at school. Haruna-chan had a huge crush on him, she’ll know. And…”
Even as he talked, Yamada couldn’t convince himself. The truth settled on him heavily, crushing the air out of his lungs and his heart.
Yuto was gone. No, apparently, Yuto had never even been there.
“Yuto…”
Over and over Yamada muttered his name- this time, so he wouldn’t forget.
It didn’t take long for Yamada to realize that he would never get used to this. He had known from the start- who could get used to an entire chunk of their life suddenly disappearing?
Every night he dreamt of him, his image fading a little each time, and every morning he woke up half thinking that the dream was over, that Yuto would appear on his doorstep like every other morning, smiling in that annoyingly too-bright-for-morning way and dragging him to the station. After a week it became so maddening that Yamada became afraid to go to sleep (but he had to, how else was he going to remember the way Yuto smiled, his laugh, his voice?)
The walks to and from the jimusho were just as maddening. Without Yuto there to talk his ear off, it was so quiet. Everything reminded Yamada of him- the curb that he tripped on and skinned his knee once, the ice cream place he loved so much, even the bugs on the sidewalk.
Work was the worst. Yamada didn’t even want to think about work. How was it possible to be surrounded by nine other boys and still be so lonely.
Lonely. Yamada mused over this and played with the apple in his hands. I’m lonely without him.
… but why?
Yuto was his best friend, of course he would miss him. But as best friends went, they hadn’t been living up to that status lately. There were dozens of reasons why- They were busy with group activities, Yamada was busy with dramas, Yamada was busy with Chinen, Yuto was busy with school, Yamada was busy with Morimoto, Yamada was busy with home, Yamada was busy being busy. When was the last time they had hung out, he pondered, sighing when he couldn’t remember it.
So, logically speaking, Yamada should have missed him a long time ago, whenever it was that they had stopped hanging out. But he didn’t. He hadn’t even noticed, not until now.
When Yuto was gone.
Yamada frowned when this… realization opened a whole new slew of thoughts to rush on him, trying to push them away. It hurt his head to think about it too much.
Life went on. Life was going on, whether or not Yamada liked it. As much as he wanted it to wait for Yuto to come back and join him, he didn’t know how long that would take… or if it even happened. And no one else cared.
Yamada couldn’t afford to wait for Yuto, to cling on to a thin string of hope that he would come around the corner and smile that big smile for him.
So Yamada had to go on.
And he did. At least on the outside. After two weeks his incident involving some nonexistent boy named Yuto was all but forgotten by the rest of Hey! Say! JUMP, who treated him like a delicate porcelain flower that was about to break for two weeks until they were sure he was okay. And it looked like he was. He smiled and laughed and joked and shone brighter than ever on stage.
And at night, he rested his head on his pillow and closed his eyes, tears running down his cheeks as he whispered over and over in his sleep, “Yuto, Yuto…”
Yamada was an idol. He couldn’t let everyone know he was breaking on the inside.
A month passed. Things went on, continued to happen. Hey! Say! JUMP made music appearances, did photo shoots, worked on their latest single. It was nice, perfect for the summer time. They even filmed their third promotional video, at a carnival. Yamada got another drama role. It was all very nice.
And then it was August 10.
“He’s 15 today…” Yamada murmured to himself as he slipped on his jacket.
“Is it someone’s birthday?” Inoo asked kindly, smiling at him.
Yamada smiled back and shook his head. “No, it’s nothing. I was just talking to myself. See you tomorrow, Inoo-chan!”
“Take care, Yama-chan,” Inoo said back, I mean it. There was something about Yamada that had been off for the past month, and Inoo couldn’t quite place what it was.
It was a nice day, which was good because Yuto liked nice days, and would worry for days about how the weather would be on his birthday. It had rained last year, he remembered- Yamada felt that it was very fitting for it to be so nice when Yuto wasn’t around to enjoy it.
Yamada didn’t go home right away. It would be too much of an insult to ignore Yuto’s birthday like that- even when Yuto was here, Yamada wouldn’t have ignored it like that. Yamada always made sure to get Yuto a gift, one he knew the other would love and that no one else could have possibly gotten him. Even when their friendship was rocky, Yamada would make sure Yuto had a good birthday.
He couldn’t exactly do that when he wasn’t here. But he could still celebrate it.
Yamada dropped by a bakery that Yuto had loved and bought a couple of cupcakes, and then stopped at the store to buy candles and matches. He walked to a park that Yuto had loved and sat around a fountain, staring into the trickling water, lost in his thoughts.
With a sigh, Yamada brought out one of the cupcakes and stuck a candle in the middle. After it was lit he guarded the weak, sputtering flame with his hand against the cool breeze, as if it was his last hope at bringing Yuto back.
“Happy Birthday to you,” he sang softly, ignoring the way his eyes welled up and stung. “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Yuto… Happy Birthday to you…”
Yamada made a wish- not for Yuto, but for himself. Come back, come back to me, and he blew the candle out, sealing his wish and extinguishing his hope.
Unpeeling the wrapper away from the cake, Yamada whispered a glum, “Happy Birthday, Yuto,” and bit into it. The sweetness exploded in his mouth and left a bitter after taste, but Yamada took another bite and another, stuffing it into his mouth and making a mess.
His eyes absently went to the plate of cupcakes he had, wondering what to do with them. He couldn’t finish them, and their friends wouldn’t want to celebrate a birthday for someone they never knew (though he was sure Chinen and Ryutaro would have snatched up the sweets anyway). He would give them to the children playing around him, perhaps. Yuto would have done something like that. Yuto would have been loud and obnoxious and happy, so happy to celebrate his birthday with his best friend.
Yamada realized suddenly that he was stupid to think he could go on like this. Yamada couldn’t go on like this, not if he wanted to remain sane. He needed to let go of Yuto, to forget, to stop clinging to his memory…
He needed Yuto back.
Yamada stared at the half-eaten cupcake in his hands, feeling sick and nauseous- he stared until his eyes began to burn, to give himself an excuse for why his eyes were filling up with tears. He hiccupped and wiped at them, but didn’t bother the second time, until they were rolling down his cheeks thickly and mixing with the moist cupcake and creating a mess.
“Yu-yuto,” he whispered, feeling the world crumble around him and his insides twist and break. “Yuto…!”
“Are you okay?”
Everything came to a screeching stop, including his heart. He was almost scared to lift his eyes up to meet the warm, familiar ones he knew, or he thought he knew, so well.
“Yuto…”
Nakajima Yuto smiled brightly at him and held out his handkerchief, oblivious to the heartache he had just put the boy through for the past month.
… to be continued
NEXT PART