Iridescence PART 1
and the first fic is up! bwahahaha (OP if there are formatting issues let me know)
posting will occur once every two days; anon commenting is on
Title: Iridescence
Pairing: Ryo/Shige
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It’s a strange reality to wake up to, having close to no memories of your past, and the person who is supposed to help you recover starts to feature prominently in your wet dreams. What is your world worth when you can’t remember it?
Notes: 10358 words. AU. Lots of love and thanks to T for all of your help and the wonderful beta. <3
Ryo's gaze pans across the room in fuzzy lines, comes into focus on Kato who has stilled with his pen poised over the notebook. “Go on,” he says, the corner of his mouth quirked up in the tiniest encouraging smile, and Ryo swallows. He's already forgot what he was talking about. He looks away, eyes fixing on the meaningless picture of a tree frog on the wall.
“Sometimes I get this feeling, you know,” he says, staring into the expressionless red eyes of the frog while a strange sort of thickness seems to press down over his chest.
Kato's voice. “What kind of feeling?”
The truth isn't always a good answer. “The feeling that I'm missing something important.”
The quick scrawl of pen sliding against paper. Kato's voice. “Well, maybe you are.”
“Yeah,” Ryo agrees. Then softer. “Yeah.”
-
Even his face is different. Older. More tanned. The short scar glazed over his cheekbone unfamiliar. He can't help but wonder how he got here, what he has been through. It's like a forced innosence, a reality that his body knows, but not his mind. He remembers some things, but even that is vague, lost in a haze of childhood and summer dreams. The image of running barefoot through grass in sunshine, his mother's red-painted smile beneath the shadowing brim of her sunhat, the rush of adrenaline through his veins.
There is an empty space where reality should be, a space filled only with baseless fiction and unanswered questions. Kato says he has to want to remember without pushing himself, but one of the very few things Ryo knows about himself is that his want is impatient, spikes in his veins for instant gratification and burns when it is witheld. Sometimes Kato's secretive half-expressions piss him off, but when Kato grins bright and wide Ryo's heart thumps, and he forgets even the fact that he can't remember.
He stays at some kind of rehabilitation facility on a floor with other amnesiacs. He keeps to himself mostly. The other patients have it far worse - the kind of amnesiacs who forget new things an hour or two after learning them. It’s hard to make any friends that way, hard to talk to someone about the difficulties and frustrations. Each day feels worse than the day before, and Ryo starts to truly hate life and everything about it. He wants to remember, to fill that black void he can feel inside of him. Something is missing, something big, and it’s driving him insane, not knowing what it is.
Ryo starts to talk a bit with some of the workers. A bright, smiling male nurse named Taguchi is the most friendly of the bunch. Ryo can’t help but like him, despite the fact that he makes really bad jokes.
Ryo tells Kato a joke at one of their sessions but forgets the punch-line halfway through.
“It’s okay,” Kato assures him, jots something down onto his notepad.
“It was a stupid joke anyway,” Ryo feels the need to say, but hates himself a little, even though he doesn’t have that kind of amnesia, because now he can’t even hold onto the memory of a damn joke.
-
He dreams. Of places he’s never been - or never remembers being. Of faces that feel familiar but names that sound foreign. Of abilities he never thought possible.
Kato gives him a leather bound journal. “Write down everything you see in your dreams when you wake up,” he says.
Ryo takes the journal, fingers the blank, smooth pages.
“We’ll go over them in your next session.” Kato smiles and Ryo clutches the journal tight in his fingers .
-
A warm, sleek body presses against his own and hands slide along his back, up over his shoulders. Ryo leans forward, touches mouths with the other, a heated, molten kiss that rocks his heart. He pulls back, glances down into the beautiful eyes that are so familiar, so -
Ryo wakes with a start, blood rushing too fast, a cold sweat breaking out along his neck. He can’t tell if that was a dream or a memory - it felt so familiar, comfortable, nothing he hadn’t done before. But then, the eyes, and that face…
He leaves the dream out of his journal. The last thing he wants to tell his therapist is how he dreams about sleeping with him.
-
“Is that everything?” Kato says, flipping through Ryo’s journal.
Ryo nods. “Yes.” He stares hard at the floor.
Kato glances at him with sad, disappointed eyes, and says, “Okay. Keep it up.” He hands the journal back.
Ryo squeezes his fingers over the edges. He glances up. “How do I know if something is a memory or a dream?”
Kato looks at him sharply, the pencil in his hand suspended in midair. “Why? Is there something you remember?”
Ryo quickly shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says.
Kato sets his pencil down, the look in his eyes now hopeful. “If there’s anything, you should tell me.”
“There’s nothing,” Ryo insists.
Kato nods slowly, his lips in a tight frown, and leans back in his chair. “I suspect, if you remember something, it should feel familiar, like you’ve experienced it before.” He pauses. “Does that make sense?”
Ryo nods, grips his journal tighter. “Yeah. It makes perfect sense.”
-
The void keeps getting bigger. Day by day, he grows more impatient, more angry. There’s nothing for him to do - the only constant event on his agenda are his meetings with Kato and those have proved to be a waste of his time. Kato has no answers, he continues to tell Ryo that the answers will come to him, that there’s no forcing the memories back into his brain. They will come back. Or they will not. He has nothing to do but wait.
And Ryo hates that. Waiting. So he lays in bed with his eyes clenched as tight as they can and searches. Thinks. Tries to remember something. Goes over and over the faces and the places and the sounds and words that come up in his dreams, those flashes of a life he doesn’t remember. But the dreams change too - more faces and more places. People with long hair, some with short, black and brown and blonde. Some women, mostly men. Smiling at him, teasing him - friends, maybe? He can’t remember. And the places change more than the people. Different cities and buildings; schools and airports, train stations and crowded streets.
There is only one thing that seems to stay the same: Kato. He’s always there - the only face Ryo can recognize by name, the only person that he actually knows. Kato, by his side, smiling, holding hands, leaning in and kissing him, fingers in his hair, breath warm against his jaw. The scenes are endless and Ryo doesn’t know what to think. Did Kato know him before his accident? Or is he only in his dreams because he is the only person Ryo knows in his life right now?
He doesn’t know which to believe. And he never tells Kato about it. Any dream, any memory, any whatever-it-is that involves Kato Ryo leaves out of his journal. He doesn’t understand why even that makes him feel all the more empty.
-
“Anything new happen lately?” Kato asks him.
Ryo shakes his head. “Nothing different than usual.”
“How are you feeling?”
Ryo shrugs noncommitally and doesn’t answer. Kato waits patiently for a few minutes before he says kindly, “Nishikido-kun, if you don’t talk to me, then nothing will ever change.”
Ryo snaps his head up to glare at him. “Nothing is changing! Everything’s the same as it was yesterday, as it was the day before that! I’m sick of sitting around and waiting for something to happen!”
“Why didn’t you just say that in the beginning?” Kato questions, not perturbed in the slightest by Ryo’s outburst, which only makes Ryo all the more annoyed. “It’s normal to feel frustrated.”
“Well, I’m tired of it,” Ryo says grumpily, crossing his arms and slouching in his chair. “I just want to do something. Anything.”
Kato taps the pen against his chin. “The problem with your memory loss is that several years are missing. If it had only been one isolated incident, for instance, then we could have tried to trigger your memory by recreating the situation.”
“Can’t we do that anyway?” Ryo wonders, a faint glimmer of hope rushing through him.
Kato shakes his head, grimacing slightly. “There is no base memory to use as a trigger. If you could remember something in your dreams then maybe we could use that, but as of right now there is nothing to go on.”
Ryo slumps bonelessly in the chair and sighs.
-
Kato comes to visit one day - the first time he’s ever done so. Ryo just sits in his bed, arms crossed, uninterested.
“How are you today?” Kato asks, looking around Ryo’s empty room with more interest than it needs.
“Fine,” Ryo mutters grumpily.
Kato turns to him, smiles softly, and says, “Sorry for barging in without notifying you, but I thought you’d like some company during the day.”
Despite himself, Ryo turns to look at him. He doesn’t say anything, but Kato seems to understand, smiling even more brightly and continuing, “It gets boring in here, doesn’t it? And the other patients on this floor are hardly the kind to keep a good conversation with, right?”
He looks at Ryo expectantly and grins when Ryo just rolls his eyes. “Okay, okay,” he says. “Enough with that, I get it.” He purses his lips thoughtfully, glancing at Ryo’s bed and then the chair in the corner. He pulls the chair up closer to the side of the bed and then sits down. “So, what should we do?”
“You came here without thinking about that first?” Ryo asks, slightly annoyed.
“No, I have thought about it, but I wanted to see if you had any ideas first.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“All right. Then, we could get a game from the closet, and play something, or watch a movie. We could just talk, if you want.”
“We talk all the time during our sessions,” Ryo points out.
“You’re right, we do. But I meant talking without me analyzing everything you say,” Kato explains.
Ryo eyes him warily. “Can you really do that?”
Kato laughs and Ryo realizes it’s the first time he’s ever heard him laugh, seen him laugh, for that matter. He can’t be sure why but he feels his stomach flutter, can’t get himself to look away, and he’s horribly reminded of the Kato that haunts his dreams - the vibrant, spirited man who is always by his side. As his mind fills with flashes of images of Kato from his dreams his heart spreads warmth through his chest.
-
It’s silent in the hallway, moonlight from the windows casting rectangles of silver over the dark floor. The fabric of his pyjamas whispers as he moves through the darkness, sheet bunched up in his hands. It’s a stupid, stupid idea, but Ryo can’t sleep, and anyway, it’s not as though they don’t think he’s messed up already. Besides, he isn’t planning on getting caught.
The door to the common room slides open with a slight creak, which sounds too loud in the night, and Ryo winces as he sneaks into the room. It is a minute’s work for him to slip the sheet over one of the tables, pull the chairs away, and crawl under the table. He remembers having done this as a child, hiding from... He can’t remember what. It is a stupid idea, grappling for straws, and Kato is probably right - it won’t work - but Ryo is tired of not doing anything. He curls up, crossing his arms over his knees and leaning his head against them.
He is nodding off by the time the low taps of footsteps can be heard, and it’s not until the door creaks open again that he shakes himself out of his light doze. He wonders if trying to sneak away is an option, then quickly dispels the idea. He’s already caught anyway if his sheet is still missing in the morning. A few more footsteps and a bit of the sheet is lifted up. Kato peers in at him, a peculiarly amused expression on his face. “Nishikido-kun,” he says quite evenly, “What are you doing?”
Ryo scowls. “Trying to remember.” He feels stupid now, even more ridiculous than he thought he’d feel. He looks away from Kato awkwardly.
“I see,” Kato says softly, a Ryo’s stomach jolts with shame and he closes his eyes. There is the rustle of fabric, a hand slapping lightly against the floor, and then Kato’s voice just a little distance away. “I might as well help you then,” Kato says, and when Ryo opens his eyes in surprise he can see him smiling slightly in the near darkness under the table.
They’re silent for a while; then Ryo says, “I used to do this when I was little.” His gaze flitters up at Kato, “I don’t know why though,” he adds.
Kato scoots around, comes to sit leaned against the wall next to Ryo, mirroring his position. “It’s kind of nice,” he observes casually, “Like a hidden place for all your secrets.” His shoulder presses against Ryo’s lightly, and Ryo smiles. It is nice to be sitting with Kato under a sheet-covered table in the common room in the middle of the night. He feels oddly brave - it’s so different from their therapy sessions, Kato’s voice even softer than usual, the comfort of Kato’s warmth so close next to him - and for some unfathomable reason he grabs Kato’s hand, slides their fingers together. Kato doesn’t comment, and Ryo doesn’t look up at his face, but after a moment Kato’s fingers curl around his and Ryo breathes out.
“Tell me a story,” he says.
Kato looks surprised. “What kind of a story?”
Ryo grins. “A scary one.”
It’s probably the lamest scary story Ryo has ever been told, but Kato’s hand is a little clammy against Ryo’s, and he even lets Ryo lean his head against his shoulder. It’s the best night Ryo has had since he remembers.
-
He sees himself doing things he doesn’t remember learning, things he thought only ever happened in novels or in the movies. It all feels like a completely different life, yet so familiar at the same time. Nothing is concrete, though. Just glimpses of these places and faces, a mesh of memories forgotten.
Yesterday he was dressed in a high school uniform, tailored perfectly for his size. He knows he’s not a high schooler, so he doesn’t understand why he’s wearing the uniform. Someone - he doesn’t remember the name, can barely recognize the face - comments how he suits it - being short and all, he’d fit right in. Ryo laughs, he knows it’s a joke. How he knows, he’s not really sure.
Today he is on the train, a cap pulled over his head, and his eyes are trained on the middle-aged salary man on the other side. He’s not sure who it is at all, but knows he’s supposed to watch him, keep an eye on him. A few feet over, standing and holding onto one of the metal polls, is a familiar face - friend? colleague? - who nods in Ryo’s direction when the train pulls to a stop.
It only confuses him even more. These different scenes, these different versions of himself. Which one is real? Which one is the life he led before his accident?
-
“You know, don’t you?”
“Know what?”
“What my life was like before this!” Ryo exclaims. “What I did, where I lived, who my friends were, whether I had a family, who…” He glances up to meet Kato’s eyes before continuing, “who I was with.”
Kato leans back in his chair, does nothing except offer Ryo a mysterious smile. “Maybe,” he says a few moments later.
“And you can’t tell me?” Ryo asks. He knows the answer but he still sounds hopeful.
“No,” Kato says with a shake of his head. “I can’t tell you.”
-
Ryo gasps as he wakes up, his heart thumping heavily in his chest, the 2 AM silence settling around him as his breathing slows. Vague images shimmer in his mind, half vaporizing now that he is awake, but he can still almost feel the sensation of Kato’s skin beneath his palms, his scent, the sound of his moans. Ryo closes his eyes, squeezes the bridge of his nose with his fingers for a moment, trying to dispel his arousal , then shoves away the comforter and sighs.
This has happened so many times now that he knows it is useless to try to go back to sleep. Instead he has taken to walking around the building, slinking between the shadows almost soundlessly, his thoughts swirling aimlessly around his dreams. It feels familiar to sneak around dark corridors, his body moving in fluid motions that strike him as practiced, but he has no recollection of when he would have learned to move like that.
There is no practical purpose for it though, the skulking and hiding, for if anybody was to find him all they’d do would be to send him back to his room. He learned that after boredom made him restless in the night, and he started breaking the curfew. The tranquility of it calmed him, and nobody he met seemed to be terribly upset. Taguchi even lets him keep at it the few nights they bump into each other, just flashes him a grin and walks away without saying anything. “It’s so I can say I haven’t spoken to you if someone asks if I’ve seen you,” he shrugs one day when Ryo follows him to the laundry room, sitting on a pile of wrung sheets while Taguchi sorts out laundry and loads a machine.
Sometimes Kato finds him. Or maybe he finds Kato, Ryo isn’t sure. Kato is softer in the night, like he smooths out, the straight-laced therapist vanishing and giving place to... something else. He always walks Ryo back to his room, stays in the doorway until Ryo has pulled the covers up to his chin, the quirk of his mouth amused but something else in his eyes. All so soft.
Ryo tries to push the images of Kato out of his mind as he rounds the corner to the corridor where the relaxation and therapy rooms are, when he hears very subdued sniffling sounds. As he moves down the corridor, he notices that Kato’s door is open, and he moves closer, peeking into the office. He is surprised at the sight that greets him: Kato curled up on the floor, hugging his legs to his chest, tears rolling down his cheeks. Before Ryo has even processed what he’s doing he is pushing the door open all the way, marching in and sliding to his knees next to Kato who looks up, startled.
“Ryo,” Kato whispers almost soundlessly, then visibly shakes himself and says, “I mean, Nishikido-kun. What are you doing here?”
Ryo shrugs, pushing aside the thought that this is his therapist. “Why are you crying?”
“I-” Kato pauses, wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. “It’s personal.”
“Tell me anyway,” Ryo shrugs again, slides closer until he’s sitting with his side pressed against Kato.
Kato closes his eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath. “This is so unprofessional ,” he mutters to his hands, then turns to look at Ryo. “There is something... missing.”
“Missing?”
“I lost something.”
“So, why don’t you just get a new one?”
That almost makes Kato crack a smile, “It’s not that easily replaced, I’m afraid.”
Ryo frowns a little. “What kind of thing is it, then?”
Kato fidgets slightly. “It’s a person.”
“Someone died?” Ryo asks, a jolt of pity in his stomach.
“No, not exactly. But. This person doesn’t really know about me.” He glances at Ryo, then smiles a little at his puzzled expression. “It’s complicated,” he adds. Silence settles over them for a moment, and Ryo feels at a loss, but then Kato continues. “There was... We had this really amazing thing. And then something happened, and now it’s gone, and,” his voice becomes thick with tears, “It’s just hard sometimes.”
Ryo is quite sure he is breaking several codes of proper behaviour, but he has broken so many already, and Kato is crying again. He slips his arms around Kato slowly, pulls him towards himself until Kato has uncurled enough to lean against Ryo’s chest, his arms wound tight around Ryo’s waist. Kato’s sniffles muffled, his tears disappearing into Ryo’s pyjama top, Ryo slowly says, “If you believe that things will work out, then... then they will, one way or another.”
-
It’s not awkward the next time he meets Kato, but then, they seem to have come to an unspoken agreement not to mention what happened, and for the most part Ryo tries block their conversation out of his mind due to the unnerving pang of - sadness? pity? jealousy? - that comes over him every time he thinks of it. There is a shift though, in the way Ryo feels when they speak, in the things he feels at liberty to say. Ryo doesn’t feel like a patient. He feels like a friend.
His condition is still the same; vague images blurring in and out of focus in his dreams, never giving away enough for him to form any coherent idea about it, nothing he can see as himself. He starts to think that maybe he can live without a past. Create a new life out of the nothing that clouds his days. There have not been any visitors - no cards, no flowers, no chocolates - not for the full four months he has been there, and the loneliness of his situation digs into him when neither Kato or Taguchi is around. Who was he? What kind of a person could he have been when there was nobody there to, to claim him, he supposed. Why hadn’t anybody come looking for him? Why didn’t anybody miss him? They know his name at the centre, so surely his relatives would have been contacted. If he had any left. He finds himself wishing that he doesn’t have a family; the loss would be much easier to handle than the rejection. But it’s all futile, in the end. He never gets any stupid flowers.
-
“I just. Think. I should give up,” Ryo confesses. “I’ll never remember.” He slouches in his seat, his eyes closed, head bowed, twisting his hands together in his lap.
“No! You can’t give up!” Kato exclaims and Ryo looks up at him quickly, never hearing such a fierce tone from his therapist. He blinks, surprised, the look in Kato’s eyes intense with anger, but Ryo can see the lingering pieces of sadness.
Kato coughs behind a hand, seems to regain his composure, and when he looks at Ryo again, his expression is softer, but the sadness is still there. Just barely, but Ryo can see it, can feel it, and it makes him want to take back his earlier words, if only to never see such a look on Kato’s face ever again.
“I haven’t given up on you,” Kato is saying, and Ryo feels his heart thumping in his ears at those words. “I haven’t given up, so you can’t give up either.”
-
Kato visits him more and more during the day, now. Ryo doesn’t mind, it gives him something to do, someone to interact with, and he quite likes Kato’s company when he’s not analyzing his every sentence. Well, he’s sure Kato still does, just now he doesn’t tell him what he’s thinking. The point of the matter is that when he’s with Kato, he feels…normal. He forgets about the memories he’s lost, he forgets about the fact he’s stuck in this facility, he forgets about the blank walls and the itchy bedsheets.
It’s comfortable, familiar, Kato sitting beside him as they watch movies or play games, Kato smiling at him, Kato teasing him. It feels like those flashes of memories or dreams or whatever-they-are about the two of them. Living together, Kato cooking in the small kitchenette, Ryo setting the table. Bumping hips and nudging each other in the ribs as they pass each other by. Ryo pushing Kato against the sink, kissing him soundly on the mouth. Kato smacking him on the back of the head with a spatula, laughing a crystal-clear laugh - the same laugh the Kato he knows now makes when he wins a hand at poker.
He doesn’t know if it’s comfortable because he and Kato shared a life before the accident, or if it’s just because he’s dreamed of Kato so many times. Either way, all Ryo knows is that the time they spend together is the best thing that has happened to him so far and he desperately doesn’t want it to stop. Whether they have a history or not, Ryo doesn’t want to lose the only good feeling he ever remembers having.
-
He doesn’t know where it comes from, doesn’t know why he says it, can’t even be sure what it means, but it’s out of his mouth in an instant, tastes familiar and easy on his tongue, like he’s said it hundreds of times before.
“Shige.”
There’s no accompanying image or flashback of a lost memory, nothing to put it into context other than the fact that he says it towards Kato as if addressing him by the name.
And when Kato freezes in his chair, his pencil slipping out of his lax fingertips, eyes wide behind his dark-rimmed glasses, Ryo actually remembers.
“Shige,” he says again, louder, the syllables rolling off his tongue expertly, like he’s meant to say the name.
Kato jumps out of his chair and walks up to Ryo, looks him directly in the eye. “What did you say?” he asks, voice rushed, desperate.
“Your name, right? I said your name,” Ryo replies, feeling a little winded. “Shige. It’s your nickname…”
The look on Kato’s face is practically euphoric. “Ryo,” he exclaims, eyes shining, “you remembered something! This…This is wonderful, this is-Ryo. You remembered.”
Ryo blinks at him dazedly. “You called me Ryo.”
Kato’s eyes widen as if he realizes what he’s done. Swallowing down a lump in his throat, he backs away a little, coughs behind his hand, his gaze falling to the ground, and Ryo hates the way that gesture makes him feel so lonely.
“S-Sorry,” Kato murmurs, his cool composure falling back into place.
“You can call me Ryo, if you want,” Ryo tells him quickly, liking the way his name sounded in Kato’s voice, liking the way it makes him feel. “As long as I can call you Shige again.”
Kato - Shige - Ryo reminds himself - turns back to look at him. Then, slowly, he smiles, that bright look back in his eyes, and Ryo’s can practically feel his insides melting. Shige nods, perhaps a little too enthusiastically, and says, “Okay, you’ve got youself a deal. Ryo.”
-
He’s a young man with auburn hair and bright smiles like Taguchi’s, sitting in the common room with a guitar across his lap when Ryo happens to walk by. It’s not the man that makes him stop and turn, but the music. The slow, acoustic tunes of the guitar, the first pleasant sound he’s heard in the facility since his arrival. The nurses occasionally play some music during lunch, but it’s never anything but sounds that put Ryo to sleep. This music is different, alive and tempting, and Ryo finds himself pulling up a chair and sitting right in front of the nameless man, watching as his slender fingers move into chords and strum the strings.
He doesn’t really understand it, but a warmth seems to settle inside of him, that familiar feeling he gets far too often, but this time it’s different, somehow. He can’t really place it, but he can’t place a lot of things, so he doesn’t think too much on it and instead listens to the music. The sounds are soothing and comfortable and he watches as the man plays, almost sensing when the notes will change next, when the strumming patterns will switch. It’s like he knows the song, knows how to play it, and when the man finishes the piece, and looks up at Ryo directly, Ryo almost feels like he knows this man, too.
Except that he doesn’t, he doesn’t know his name or anything about him, even though the smile he gives Ryo feels like something he’s seen a hundred times before. The man glances around at everyone in the room, and introduces himself as Koyama Keiichiro , then asks if anyone has a request for a song. When no one answers, Koyama meets Ryo’s eyes and winks, says, “Tough crowd.”
Ryo smiles at him, liking him instantly, and Koyama turns to him directly, asks, “Do you have a request?”
Ryo bites his lip, looks at him thoughtfully. He doesn’t remember if he liked music, if he liked listening to it, or playing it. He doesn’t know if he ever played an instrument, ever been to a concert. But something tugs at him as he glances at the guitar, as he continues to hear the song Koyama played in his ears.
Koyama follows his gaze, smiles and holds it out. “Want to try?” he asks.
Ryo’s taking the guitar from him before he even knows what he’s doing. When he places it on his lap, it feels right, like he’s done this before. And when he draws his fingers over the strings, presses them against the frets, along the smooth, polished wood, he feels a little bit of completion inside of him . And when he positions the fingers of his left hand into a chord and the right strums, they do it naturally, with no thinking, no guessing.
And he plays music, not stilted notes, but music. He goes straight through a song he’s never heard before, and when he finishes he feels absolutely stupefied . He hands back the guitar to Koyama without a word, his throat too tight to speak, not sure what had just happened.
“That was really good!” Koyama exclaims, and his bright smile instantly makes Ryo’s surprise fade away. “Where did you learn to play like that?”
Ryo shrugs, lowers his head. “I-I don’t remember,” he replies sadly.
-
A hand suddenly lands on his shoulder. It’s instinctive, and Ryo has grabbed the arm at his shoulder and flipped the person over before even realising what he is doing. Taguchi squints up at him in pain from the floor, having been thrown on his back in front of Ryo. “Oh, ow,” he grunts as he sits up slowly, reaching gingerly to rub at the small of his back. “What was that for? You could have broken my spine. Was it for that banana joke?”
“I-I’m so sorry!” Ryo splutters, wide-eyed, too stunned at his own actions to know what to do. “I didn’t know I could do that.” He reaches out to help Taguchi up, who slowly straightens his back out as he stands.
“It’s okay. I was just going to say that lunch is ready.”
“I, er, right.” Ryo hesitates, “Will you be okay?”
“Oh, fine, fine,” Taguchi smiles unconvincingly, “Run along, you.”
“If you’re sure,” Ryo says doubtfully, starting to make his way down the corridor. Just before he turns the corner he swears he can hear Taguchi muttering to himself about needing to get more practice.
Ryo shivers. He didn’t have any idea he could do that.
posting will occur once every two days; anon commenting is on
Title: Iridescence
Pairing: Ryo/Shige
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It’s a strange reality to wake up to, having close to no memories of your past, and the person who is supposed to help you recover starts to feature prominently in your wet dreams. What is your world worth when you can’t remember it?
Notes: 10358 words. AU. Lots of love and thanks to T for all of your help and the wonderful beta. <3
Ryo's gaze pans across the room in fuzzy lines, comes into focus on Kato who has stilled with his pen poised over the notebook. “Go on,” he says, the corner of his mouth quirked up in the tiniest encouraging smile, and Ryo swallows. He's already forgot what he was talking about. He looks away, eyes fixing on the meaningless picture of a tree frog on the wall.
“Sometimes I get this feeling, you know,” he says, staring into the expressionless red eyes of the frog while a strange sort of thickness seems to press down over his chest.
Kato's voice. “What kind of feeling?”
The truth isn't always a good answer. “The feeling that I'm missing something important.”
The quick scrawl of pen sliding against paper. Kato's voice. “Well, maybe you are.”
“Yeah,” Ryo agrees. Then softer. “Yeah.”
-
Even his face is different. Older. More tanned. The short scar glazed over his cheekbone unfamiliar. He can't help but wonder how he got here, what he has been through. It's like a forced innosence, a reality that his body knows, but not his mind. He remembers some things, but even that is vague, lost in a haze of childhood and summer dreams. The image of running barefoot through grass in sunshine, his mother's red-painted smile beneath the shadowing brim of her sunhat, the rush of adrenaline through his veins.
There is an empty space where reality should be, a space filled only with baseless fiction and unanswered questions. Kato says he has to want to remember without pushing himself, but one of the very few things Ryo knows about himself is that his want is impatient, spikes in his veins for instant gratification and burns when it is witheld. Sometimes Kato's secretive half-expressions piss him off, but when Kato grins bright and wide Ryo's heart thumps, and he forgets even the fact that he can't remember.
He stays at some kind of rehabilitation facility on a floor with other amnesiacs. He keeps to himself mostly. The other patients have it far worse - the kind of amnesiacs who forget new things an hour or two after learning them. It’s hard to make any friends that way, hard to talk to someone about the difficulties and frustrations. Each day feels worse than the day before, and Ryo starts to truly hate life and everything about it. He wants to remember, to fill that black void he can feel inside of him. Something is missing, something big, and it’s driving him insane, not knowing what it is.
Ryo starts to talk a bit with some of the workers. A bright, smiling male nurse named Taguchi is the most friendly of the bunch. Ryo can’t help but like him, despite the fact that he makes really bad jokes.
Ryo tells Kato a joke at one of their sessions but forgets the punch-line halfway through.
“It’s okay,” Kato assures him, jots something down onto his notepad.
“It was a stupid joke anyway,” Ryo feels the need to say, but hates himself a little, even though he doesn’t have that kind of amnesia, because now he can’t even hold onto the memory of a damn joke.
-
He dreams. Of places he’s never been - or never remembers being. Of faces that feel familiar but names that sound foreign. Of abilities he never thought possible.
Kato gives him a leather bound journal. “Write down everything you see in your dreams when you wake up,” he says.
Ryo takes the journal, fingers the blank, smooth pages.
“We’ll go over them in your next session.” Kato smiles and Ryo clutches the journal tight in his fingers .
-
A warm, sleek body presses against his own and hands slide along his back, up over his shoulders. Ryo leans forward, touches mouths with the other, a heated, molten kiss that rocks his heart. He pulls back, glances down into the beautiful eyes that are so familiar, so -
Ryo wakes with a start, blood rushing too fast, a cold sweat breaking out along his neck. He can’t tell if that was a dream or a memory - it felt so familiar, comfortable, nothing he hadn’t done before. But then, the eyes, and that face…
He leaves the dream out of his journal. The last thing he wants to tell his therapist is how he dreams about sleeping with him.
-
“Is that everything?” Kato says, flipping through Ryo’s journal.
Ryo nods. “Yes.” He stares hard at the floor.
Kato glances at him with sad, disappointed eyes, and says, “Okay. Keep it up.” He hands the journal back.
Ryo squeezes his fingers over the edges. He glances up. “How do I know if something is a memory or a dream?”
Kato looks at him sharply, the pencil in his hand suspended in midair. “Why? Is there something you remember?”
Ryo quickly shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says.
Kato sets his pencil down, the look in his eyes now hopeful. “If there’s anything, you should tell me.”
“There’s nothing,” Ryo insists.
Kato nods slowly, his lips in a tight frown, and leans back in his chair. “I suspect, if you remember something, it should feel familiar, like you’ve experienced it before.” He pauses. “Does that make sense?”
Ryo nods, grips his journal tighter. “Yeah. It makes perfect sense.”
-
The void keeps getting bigger. Day by day, he grows more impatient, more angry. There’s nothing for him to do - the only constant event on his agenda are his meetings with Kato and those have proved to be a waste of his time. Kato has no answers, he continues to tell Ryo that the answers will come to him, that there’s no forcing the memories back into his brain. They will come back. Or they will not. He has nothing to do but wait.
And Ryo hates that. Waiting. So he lays in bed with his eyes clenched as tight as they can and searches. Thinks. Tries to remember something. Goes over and over the faces and the places and the sounds and words that come up in his dreams, those flashes of a life he doesn’t remember. But the dreams change too - more faces and more places. People with long hair, some with short, black and brown and blonde. Some women, mostly men. Smiling at him, teasing him - friends, maybe? He can’t remember. And the places change more than the people. Different cities and buildings; schools and airports, train stations and crowded streets.
There is only one thing that seems to stay the same: Kato. He’s always there - the only face Ryo can recognize by name, the only person that he actually knows. Kato, by his side, smiling, holding hands, leaning in and kissing him, fingers in his hair, breath warm against his jaw. The scenes are endless and Ryo doesn’t know what to think. Did Kato know him before his accident? Or is he only in his dreams because he is the only person Ryo knows in his life right now?
He doesn’t know which to believe. And he never tells Kato about it. Any dream, any memory, any whatever-it-is that involves Kato Ryo leaves out of his journal. He doesn’t understand why even that makes him feel all the more empty.
-
“Anything new happen lately?” Kato asks him.
Ryo shakes his head. “Nothing different than usual.”
“How are you feeling?”
Ryo shrugs noncommitally and doesn’t answer. Kato waits patiently for a few minutes before he says kindly, “Nishikido-kun, if you don’t talk to me, then nothing will ever change.”
Ryo snaps his head up to glare at him. “Nothing is changing! Everything’s the same as it was yesterday, as it was the day before that! I’m sick of sitting around and waiting for something to happen!”
“Why didn’t you just say that in the beginning?” Kato questions, not perturbed in the slightest by Ryo’s outburst, which only makes Ryo all the more annoyed. “It’s normal to feel frustrated.”
“Well, I’m tired of it,” Ryo says grumpily, crossing his arms and slouching in his chair. “I just want to do something. Anything.”
Kato taps the pen against his chin. “The problem with your memory loss is that several years are missing. If it had only been one isolated incident, for instance, then we could have tried to trigger your memory by recreating the situation.”
“Can’t we do that anyway?” Ryo wonders, a faint glimmer of hope rushing through him.
Kato shakes his head, grimacing slightly. “There is no base memory to use as a trigger. If you could remember something in your dreams then maybe we could use that, but as of right now there is nothing to go on.”
Ryo slumps bonelessly in the chair and sighs.
-
Kato comes to visit one day - the first time he’s ever done so. Ryo just sits in his bed, arms crossed, uninterested.
“How are you today?” Kato asks, looking around Ryo’s empty room with more interest than it needs.
“Fine,” Ryo mutters grumpily.
Kato turns to him, smiles softly, and says, “Sorry for barging in without notifying you, but I thought you’d like some company during the day.”
Despite himself, Ryo turns to look at him. He doesn’t say anything, but Kato seems to understand, smiling even more brightly and continuing, “It gets boring in here, doesn’t it? And the other patients on this floor are hardly the kind to keep a good conversation with, right?”
He looks at Ryo expectantly and grins when Ryo just rolls his eyes. “Okay, okay,” he says. “Enough with that, I get it.” He purses his lips thoughtfully, glancing at Ryo’s bed and then the chair in the corner. He pulls the chair up closer to the side of the bed and then sits down. “So, what should we do?”
“You came here without thinking about that first?” Ryo asks, slightly annoyed.
“No, I have thought about it, but I wanted to see if you had any ideas first.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“All right. Then, we could get a game from the closet, and play something, or watch a movie. We could just talk, if you want.”
“We talk all the time during our sessions,” Ryo points out.
“You’re right, we do. But I meant talking without me analyzing everything you say,” Kato explains.
Ryo eyes him warily. “Can you really do that?”
Kato laughs and Ryo realizes it’s the first time he’s ever heard him laugh, seen him laugh, for that matter. He can’t be sure why but he feels his stomach flutter, can’t get himself to look away, and he’s horribly reminded of the Kato that haunts his dreams - the vibrant, spirited man who is always by his side. As his mind fills with flashes of images of Kato from his dreams his heart spreads warmth through his chest.
-
It’s silent in the hallway, moonlight from the windows casting rectangles of silver over the dark floor. The fabric of his pyjamas whispers as he moves through the darkness, sheet bunched up in his hands. It’s a stupid, stupid idea, but Ryo can’t sleep, and anyway, it’s not as though they don’t think he’s messed up already. Besides, he isn’t planning on getting caught.
The door to the common room slides open with a slight creak, which sounds too loud in the night, and Ryo winces as he sneaks into the room. It is a minute’s work for him to slip the sheet over one of the tables, pull the chairs away, and crawl under the table. He remembers having done this as a child, hiding from... He can’t remember what. It is a stupid idea, grappling for straws, and Kato is probably right - it won’t work - but Ryo is tired of not doing anything. He curls up, crossing his arms over his knees and leaning his head against them.
He is nodding off by the time the low taps of footsteps can be heard, and it’s not until the door creaks open again that he shakes himself out of his light doze. He wonders if trying to sneak away is an option, then quickly dispels the idea. He’s already caught anyway if his sheet is still missing in the morning. A few more footsteps and a bit of the sheet is lifted up. Kato peers in at him, a peculiarly amused expression on his face. “Nishikido-kun,” he says quite evenly, “What are you doing?”
Ryo scowls. “Trying to remember.” He feels stupid now, even more ridiculous than he thought he’d feel. He looks away from Kato awkwardly.
“I see,” Kato says softly, a Ryo’s stomach jolts with shame and he closes his eyes. There is the rustle of fabric, a hand slapping lightly against the floor, and then Kato’s voice just a little distance away. “I might as well help you then,” Kato says, and when Ryo opens his eyes in surprise he can see him smiling slightly in the near darkness under the table.
They’re silent for a while; then Ryo says, “I used to do this when I was little.” His gaze flitters up at Kato, “I don’t know why though,” he adds.
Kato scoots around, comes to sit leaned against the wall next to Ryo, mirroring his position. “It’s kind of nice,” he observes casually, “Like a hidden place for all your secrets.” His shoulder presses against Ryo’s lightly, and Ryo smiles. It is nice to be sitting with Kato under a sheet-covered table in the common room in the middle of the night. He feels oddly brave - it’s so different from their therapy sessions, Kato’s voice even softer than usual, the comfort of Kato’s warmth so close next to him - and for some unfathomable reason he grabs Kato’s hand, slides their fingers together. Kato doesn’t comment, and Ryo doesn’t look up at his face, but after a moment Kato’s fingers curl around his and Ryo breathes out.
“Tell me a story,” he says.
Kato looks surprised. “What kind of a story?”
Ryo grins. “A scary one.”
It’s probably the lamest scary story Ryo has ever been told, but Kato’s hand is a little clammy against Ryo’s, and he even lets Ryo lean his head against his shoulder. It’s the best night Ryo has had since he remembers.
-
He sees himself doing things he doesn’t remember learning, things he thought only ever happened in novels or in the movies. It all feels like a completely different life, yet so familiar at the same time. Nothing is concrete, though. Just glimpses of these places and faces, a mesh of memories forgotten.
Yesterday he was dressed in a high school uniform, tailored perfectly for his size. He knows he’s not a high schooler, so he doesn’t understand why he’s wearing the uniform. Someone - he doesn’t remember the name, can barely recognize the face - comments how he suits it - being short and all, he’d fit right in. Ryo laughs, he knows it’s a joke. How he knows, he’s not really sure.
Today he is on the train, a cap pulled over his head, and his eyes are trained on the middle-aged salary man on the other side. He’s not sure who it is at all, but knows he’s supposed to watch him, keep an eye on him. A few feet over, standing and holding onto one of the metal polls, is a familiar face - friend? colleague? - who nods in Ryo’s direction when the train pulls to a stop.
It only confuses him even more. These different scenes, these different versions of himself. Which one is real? Which one is the life he led before his accident?
-
“You know, don’t you?”
“Know what?”
“What my life was like before this!” Ryo exclaims. “What I did, where I lived, who my friends were, whether I had a family, who…” He glances up to meet Kato’s eyes before continuing, “who I was with.”
Kato leans back in his chair, does nothing except offer Ryo a mysterious smile. “Maybe,” he says a few moments later.
“And you can’t tell me?” Ryo asks. He knows the answer but he still sounds hopeful.
“No,” Kato says with a shake of his head. “I can’t tell you.”
-
Ryo gasps as he wakes up, his heart thumping heavily in his chest, the 2 AM silence settling around him as his breathing slows. Vague images shimmer in his mind, half vaporizing now that he is awake, but he can still almost feel the sensation of Kato’s skin beneath his palms, his scent, the sound of his moans. Ryo closes his eyes, squeezes the bridge of his nose with his fingers for a moment, trying to dispel his arousal , then shoves away the comforter and sighs.
This has happened so many times now that he knows it is useless to try to go back to sleep. Instead he has taken to walking around the building, slinking between the shadows almost soundlessly, his thoughts swirling aimlessly around his dreams. It feels familiar to sneak around dark corridors, his body moving in fluid motions that strike him as practiced, but he has no recollection of when he would have learned to move like that.
There is no practical purpose for it though, the skulking and hiding, for if anybody was to find him all they’d do would be to send him back to his room. He learned that after boredom made him restless in the night, and he started breaking the curfew. The tranquility of it calmed him, and nobody he met seemed to be terribly upset. Taguchi even lets him keep at it the few nights they bump into each other, just flashes him a grin and walks away without saying anything. “It’s so I can say I haven’t spoken to you if someone asks if I’ve seen you,” he shrugs one day when Ryo follows him to the laundry room, sitting on a pile of wrung sheets while Taguchi sorts out laundry and loads a machine.
Sometimes Kato finds him. Or maybe he finds Kato, Ryo isn’t sure. Kato is softer in the night, like he smooths out, the straight-laced therapist vanishing and giving place to... something else. He always walks Ryo back to his room, stays in the doorway until Ryo has pulled the covers up to his chin, the quirk of his mouth amused but something else in his eyes. All so soft.
Ryo tries to push the images of Kato out of his mind as he rounds the corner to the corridor where the relaxation and therapy rooms are, when he hears very subdued sniffling sounds. As he moves down the corridor, he notices that Kato’s door is open, and he moves closer, peeking into the office. He is surprised at the sight that greets him: Kato curled up on the floor, hugging his legs to his chest, tears rolling down his cheeks. Before Ryo has even processed what he’s doing he is pushing the door open all the way, marching in and sliding to his knees next to Kato who looks up, startled.
“Ryo,” Kato whispers almost soundlessly, then visibly shakes himself and says, “I mean, Nishikido-kun. What are you doing here?”
Ryo shrugs, pushing aside the thought that this is his therapist. “Why are you crying?”
“I-” Kato pauses, wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. “It’s personal.”
“Tell me anyway,” Ryo shrugs again, slides closer until he’s sitting with his side pressed against Kato.
Kato closes his eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath. “This is so unprofessional ,” he mutters to his hands, then turns to look at Ryo. “There is something... missing.”
“Missing?”
“I lost something.”
“So, why don’t you just get a new one?”
That almost makes Kato crack a smile, “It’s not that easily replaced, I’m afraid.”
Ryo frowns a little. “What kind of thing is it, then?”
Kato fidgets slightly. “It’s a person.”
“Someone died?” Ryo asks, a jolt of pity in his stomach.
“No, not exactly. But. This person doesn’t really know about me.” He glances at Ryo, then smiles a little at his puzzled expression. “It’s complicated,” he adds. Silence settles over them for a moment, and Ryo feels at a loss, but then Kato continues. “There was... We had this really amazing thing. And then something happened, and now it’s gone, and,” his voice becomes thick with tears, “It’s just hard sometimes.”
Ryo is quite sure he is breaking several codes of proper behaviour, but he has broken so many already, and Kato is crying again. He slips his arms around Kato slowly, pulls him towards himself until Kato has uncurled enough to lean against Ryo’s chest, his arms wound tight around Ryo’s waist. Kato’s sniffles muffled, his tears disappearing into Ryo’s pyjama top, Ryo slowly says, “If you believe that things will work out, then... then they will, one way or another.”
-
It’s not awkward the next time he meets Kato, but then, they seem to have come to an unspoken agreement not to mention what happened, and for the most part Ryo tries block their conversation out of his mind due to the unnerving pang of - sadness? pity? jealousy? - that comes over him every time he thinks of it. There is a shift though, in the way Ryo feels when they speak, in the things he feels at liberty to say. Ryo doesn’t feel like a patient. He feels like a friend.
His condition is still the same; vague images blurring in and out of focus in his dreams, never giving away enough for him to form any coherent idea about it, nothing he can see as himself. He starts to think that maybe he can live without a past. Create a new life out of the nothing that clouds his days. There have not been any visitors - no cards, no flowers, no chocolates - not for the full four months he has been there, and the loneliness of his situation digs into him when neither Kato or Taguchi is around. Who was he? What kind of a person could he have been when there was nobody there to, to claim him, he supposed. Why hadn’t anybody come looking for him? Why didn’t anybody miss him? They know his name at the centre, so surely his relatives would have been contacted. If he had any left. He finds himself wishing that he doesn’t have a family; the loss would be much easier to handle than the rejection. But it’s all futile, in the end. He never gets any stupid flowers.
-
“I just. Think. I should give up,” Ryo confesses. “I’ll never remember.” He slouches in his seat, his eyes closed, head bowed, twisting his hands together in his lap.
“No! You can’t give up!” Kato exclaims and Ryo looks up at him quickly, never hearing such a fierce tone from his therapist. He blinks, surprised, the look in Kato’s eyes intense with anger, but Ryo can see the lingering pieces of sadness.
Kato coughs behind a hand, seems to regain his composure, and when he looks at Ryo again, his expression is softer, but the sadness is still there. Just barely, but Ryo can see it, can feel it, and it makes him want to take back his earlier words, if only to never see such a look on Kato’s face ever again.
“I haven’t given up on you,” Kato is saying, and Ryo feels his heart thumping in his ears at those words. “I haven’t given up, so you can’t give up either.”
-
Kato visits him more and more during the day, now. Ryo doesn’t mind, it gives him something to do, someone to interact with, and he quite likes Kato’s company when he’s not analyzing his every sentence. Well, he’s sure Kato still does, just now he doesn’t tell him what he’s thinking. The point of the matter is that when he’s with Kato, he feels…normal. He forgets about the memories he’s lost, he forgets about the fact he’s stuck in this facility, he forgets about the blank walls and the itchy bedsheets.
It’s comfortable, familiar, Kato sitting beside him as they watch movies or play games, Kato smiling at him, Kato teasing him. It feels like those flashes of memories or dreams or whatever-they-are about the two of them. Living together, Kato cooking in the small kitchenette, Ryo setting the table. Bumping hips and nudging each other in the ribs as they pass each other by. Ryo pushing Kato against the sink, kissing him soundly on the mouth. Kato smacking him on the back of the head with a spatula, laughing a crystal-clear laugh - the same laugh the Kato he knows now makes when he wins a hand at poker.
He doesn’t know if it’s comfortable because he and Kato shared a life before the accident, or if it’s just because he’s dreamed of Kato so many times. Either way, all Ryo knows is that the time they spend together is the best thing that has happened to him so far and he desperately doesn’t want it to stop. Whether they have a history or not, Ryo doesn’t want to lose the only good feeling he ever remembers having.
-
He doesn’t know where it comes from, doesn’t know why he says it, can’t even be sure what it means, but it’s out of his mouth in an instant, tastes familiar and easy on his tongue, like he’s said it hundreds of times before.
“Shige.”
There’s no accompanying image or flashback of a lost memory, nothing to put it into context other than the fact that he says it towards Kato as if addressing him by the name.
And when Kato freezes in his chair, his pencil slipping out of his lax fingertips, eyes wide behind his dark-rimmed glasses, Ryo actually remembers.
“Shige,” he says again, louder, the syllables rolling off his tongue expertly, like he’s meant to say the name.
Kato jumps out of his chair and walks up to Ryo, looks him directly in the eye. “What did you say?” he asks, voice rushed, desperate.
“Your name, right? I said your name,” Ryo replies, feeling a little winded. “Shige. It’s your nickname…”
The look on Kato’s face is practically euphoric. “Ryo,” he exclaims, eyes shining, “you remembered something! This…This is wonderful, this is-Ryo. You remembered.”
Ryo blinks at him dazedly. “You called me Ryo.”
Kato’s eyes widen as if he realizes what he’s done. Swallowing down a lump in his throat, he backs away a little, coughs behind his hand, his gaze falling to the ground, and Ryo hates the way that gesture makes him feel so lonely.
“S-Sorry,” Kato murmurs, his cool composure falling back into place.
“You can call me Ryo, if you want,” Ryo tells him quickly, liking the way his name sounded in Kato’s voice, liking the way it makes him feel. “As long as I can call you Shige again.”
Kato - Shige - Ryo reminds himself - turns back to look at him. Then, slowly, he smiles, that bright look back in his eyes, and Ryo’s can practically feel his insides melting. Shige nods, perhaps a little too enthusiastically, and says, “Okay, you’ve got youself a deal. Ryo.”
-
He’s a young man with auburn hair and bright smiles like Taguchi’s, sitting in the common room with a guitar across his lap when Ryo happens to walk by. It’s not the man that makes him stop and turn, but the music. The slow, acoustic tunes of the guitar, the first pleasant sound he’s heard in the facility since his arrival. The nurses occasionally play some music during lunch, but it’s never anything but sounds that put Ryo to sleep. This music is different, alive and tempting, and Ryo finds himself pulling up a chair and sitting right in front of the nameless man, watching as his slender fingers move into chords and strum the strings.
He doesn’t really understand it, but a warmth seems to settle inside of him, that familiar feeling he gets far too often, but this time it’s different, somehow. He can’t really place it, but he can’t place a lot of things, so he doesn’t think too much on it and instead listens to the music. The sounds are soothing and comfortable and he watches as the man plays, almost sensing when the notes will change next, when the strumming patterns will switch. It’s like he knows the song, knows how to play it, and when the man finishes the piece, and looks up at Ryo directly, Ryo almost feels like he knows this man, too.
Except that he doesn’t, he doesn’t know his name or anything about him, even though the smile he gives Ryo feels like something he’s seen a hundred times before. The man glances around at everyone in the room, and introduces himself as Koyama Keiichiro , then asks if anyone has a request for a song. When no one answers, Koyama meets Ryo’s eyes and winks, says, “Tough crowd.”
Ryo smiles at him, liking him instantly, and Koyama turns to him directly, asks, “Do you have a request?”
Ryo bites his lip, looks at him thoughtfully. He doesn’t remember if he liked music, if he liked listening to it, or playing it. He doesn’t know if he ever played an instrument, ever been to a concert. But something tugs at him as he glances at the guitar, as he continues to hear the song Koyama played in his ears.
Koyama follows his gaze, smiles and holds it out. “Want to try?” he asks.
Ryo’s taking the guitar from him before he even knows what he’s doing. When he places it on his lap, it feels right, like he’s done this before. And when he draws his fingers over the strings, presses them against the frets, along the smooth, polished wood, he feels a little bit of completion inside of him . And when he positions the fingers of his left hand into a chord and the right strums, they do it naturally, with no thinking, no guessing.
And he plays music, not stilted notes, but music. He goes straight through a song he’s never heard before, and when he finishes he feels absolutely stupefied . He hands back the guitar to Koyama without a word, his throat too tight to speak, not sure what had just happened.
“That was really good!” Koyama exclaims, and his bright smile instantly makes Ryo’s surprise fade away. “Where did you learn to play like that?”
Ryo shrugs, lowers his head. “I-I don’t remember,” he replies sadly.
-
A hand suddenly lands on his shoulder. It’s instinctive, and Ryo has grabbed the arm at his shoulder and flipped the person over before even realising what he is doing. Taguchi squints up at him in pain from the floor, having been thrown on his back in front of Ryo. “Oh, ow,” he grunts as he sits up slowly, reaching gingerly to rub at the small of his back. “What was that for? You could have broken my spine. Was it for that banana joke?”
“I-I’m so sorry!” Ryo splutters, wide-eyed, too stunned at his own actions to know what to do. “I didn’t know I could do that.” He reaches out to help Taguchi up, who slowly straightens his back out as he stands.
“It’s okay. I was just going to say that lunch is ready.”
“I, er, right.” Ryo hesitates, “Will you be okay?”
“Oh, fine, fine,” Taguchi smiles unconvincingly, “Run along, you.”
“If you’re sure,” Ryo says doubtfully, starting to make his way down the corridor. Just before he turns the corner he swears he can hear Taguchi muttering to himself about needing to get more practice.
Ryo shivers. He didn’t have any idea he could do that.