Love Letters
Title : Love letters
Pairing : Ryo/Yamapi, Jin/Kame
Rating : PG-13
Summary : 100082
A/N or Warnings : all lyrics in ryo's letters are by news, kat-tun, tohoshinki, spontania & ito yuna, nishikido ryo, yamashita tomohisa, and kamenashi kazuya.
love letters
ryo's hundred and seventh letter:
surely, we are a miracle,
this summer i shall expect more.
to yamapi, home is tokyo, japan. home is tokyo, japan, with its busy midnight streets and multi-coloured neon signs, with the girls with the too-short skirts and too-high socks and too-many-layered make-up. tokyo, japan, with the pretty boys and dyed hair, with the people loitering around back alleys of shops with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of beer in another.
home is where the heart is. yamapi doesn't remember who said that, but when he steps out of the airport, dragging his luggage behind him, the phrase swims around his mind. he sighs, breath puffing out in white clouds around his mouth. he'd forgotten how much he loved tokyo until right now, when he's squatting unglamorously by the sidewalk supported by his luggage, waiting for a never-coming cab.
maybe it's because yamapi left his heart here when he escaped to paris more than two years ago. maybe it's because being back here in tokyo means that he'll get another shot, another chance of reconstructing his life.
maybe it's because nishikido ryo is two feet away from him staring at him like he's just seen a ghost.
"pi," ryo says. "is that you?"
yamapi blinks back at ryo, taking in the dark rings under his tired-looking eyes, his chin-length black hair, his beat-up leather jacket. "yes," he says, finally finding his voice. "it's me."
ryo's face splits into a wide, wide smile, and yamapi has no idea how he can find the courage to grin at him - yamapi certainly can't. at the sight of nishikido ryo, all the feelings he's kept locked tightly at the back of his mind are resurfacing all over again. he can feel his heart beating at least three times faster, and is positive that ryo can probably hear it even from two feet away.
ryo jogs towards him, and yamapi slowly gets up from his squatting position. an ice-cold breeze sweeps by, ruffling yamapi's hair and sending a shiver down his spine. "oh my god," ryo says, throwing his arms around yamapi. "it really is you."
who else would it be, yamapi wants to ask, but then ryo is so, so close. so close that yamapi can smell the familiar scent of nishikido ryo, so close that yamapi has to try so damn hard to resist the urge to grab ryo's face and plant a kiss on his lips. so close that yamapi sort of wants to cry, because ryo feels so much like home.
"does anyone know you're back?" asks ryo, and yamapi shakes his head.
"i was going home when you appeared," yamapi says.
ryo laughs and taps his index finger against his temple. "i see our minds are still connected," ryo jokes, and yamapi wishes ryo would joke about things like that. not when the reason why yamapi fled from tokyo was because of ryo.
yamapi manages a weak laugh, disentangling himself from ryo. he can't afford another heartbreak, not when he's just back home. he doesn't really want to leave again, not so soon at least. ryo stares into yamapi's eyes, brushes a light finger against yamapi's cheek, and yamapi shuts his eyes automatically.
"missed you," ryo whispers, and yamapi thinks, you have no idea how much i do.
ryo, being ryo, insists on driving yamapi home. they sit in the warm, toasty car listening to the latest songs that yamapi has never heard of (he's been away for so long, after all), and yamapi concentrates on ryo's husky voice. concentrates on ryo singing without you there is no meaning, without you i can't live, and yamapi smiles despite himself.
"stop smirking at me," ryo snaps mock-angrily without looking at yamapi. yamapi blinks, and then laughs.
"how's life?" yamapi asks, drumming his fingers against the cup holder beside him. ryo talks about his new job (a bartender at some really famous new bar in shibuya), about tegoshi's love life (dating a guy he met at the very bar ryo is working at, some guy who smiles way too much and likes to eat gyoza and is called masuda takahisa, massu for short), about his boss who is really nice (kato shigeaki, but everyone calls him kato-kun or shige, who wanted to be a lawyer but his father's dying wish was for him to take over his bar). ryo talks and yamapi listens, nods whenever necessary and asks the occasional question.
yamapi had forgotten how easy it was to be around ryo, how easy it was to let go of all his pretences and become himself. today he thinks about what had been and what could have been, what their life might have been like if he had been a little braver, a little more courageous, if he had stayed instead of running away to paris. if he hadn't been so scared of falling so deep, if he hadn't caught ryo kissing koyama, if he had listened when ryo was explaining about how it was an accident they were all drunk. if ryo still loved him.
ryo's three hundredth letter:
whenever i look at you, love;
there is no hesitation, no shadows.
today yamapi thinks about regret. today yamapi wonders if he had made the right choice all those years ago. and then he starts to wonder what he is regretting - falling in love with ryo, or running away?
before he can stop himself, his phone is in his hand and he is punching those familiar numbers that will dial ryo's phone. ryo doesn't pick up, and yamapi doesn't know if this is a blessing or a curse. he listens to the operator telling him to please try again, and yamapi closes his eyes and says i'm sorry over and over again until the line is dead.
he is sorry, really, because he thinks they might have been something wonderful.
everything is white, so white that the only splash of colour yamapi can see is ryo. ryo, who has a smile the shade of rainbows. ryo, who is walking to yamapi with stars in his eyes and sunshine shimmering through the gaps between his fingers.
yamapi, ryo says, and his voice is like bells, like chimes, like the wind that whistles past yamapi during summer nights. yamapi takes a step forward, and then ryo disappears.
and just like that, yamapi wakes up with his hands clutching at thin air, at nothingness, with a gaping hole in his chest that grows bigger by the second.
they meet up for coffee - yamapi and ryo and tegoshi and koyama. koyama is apologetic around yamapi, and yamapi shakes his head and smiles and says its okay, inwardly wishing koyama would stop it already because it was just reminding him fo what had happened.
tegoshi goes on and on about massu, and yamapi exchanges a knowing look with ryo as they both notice the shine in tegoshi's eyes. yamapi is happy for tegoshi, really, but as he tents his hands together and sneaks peeps at ryo every few minutes, he wishes his love life was as wonderful and happy as tegoshi's.
again, yamapi has no-one to blame but himself. yamapi is the one who backed away when the going got tough, yamapi is the one who abandoned everything and ran away to the other side of the world, ignoring ryo's anxious letters and calls. yamapi is the one who was unable to forgive and forget, the one who gave up everything all on his own.
and so as he looks at ryo out of the corner of his eye, he wishes he were a lot more mature back then, wishes he were a lot less stupid.
"stop rambling, tegoshi," says koyama, hitting the younger boy's head with a loud thwack. "give yamapi a chance to talk about what he's been doing these past few years, won't you?"
tegoshi pouts. "i was just telling pi about what i've been doing these past few years," he retorts, and earns another whack from koyama.
yamapi gives a small smile. "there's nothing to talk about, really," he reassures tegoshi. "you can continue. seriously."
"see," tegoshi tells koyama, sticking out his tongue and making an incredibly childish face that cracks everyone up.
"yamapi," koyama whines. "it was just an excuse to shut him up!"
tegoshi gives him a baleful glare. "wait 'til i tell massu," he says to koyama huffily. "you just wait."
"getting your boyfriend to fight your fights, tego-nyan?" teases ryo, and tegoshi crosses his arms across his chest and attempts to burn the chair at the other corner of the room with his deathglare.
yamapi laughs along with the other three. right now, it doesn't matter that he's incredibly jealous of tegoshi, or that he's still sore about what koyama and ryo did, or that he's head over heels and heels over head in love with ryo. all that matters is these are his best friends, his 'bestest friends in the world', as he'd once said when he was younger, and yamapi can't think of a better reason to come home to.
shige, the boss of ryo's bar, is surprisingly young. handsome, too, yamapi notes, as shige flashes a wide grin at him and says hello nice to meet you yamashita-san.
"yamapi," yamapi corrects, smiling.
"that's a cool nickname," shige says, whether it is the truth or he is trying to be polite, yamapi doesn't know.
"he had this enormous obsession for pink when we were in high school," ryo explains, rolling his eyes as he wipes a glass. "so yamashita became yamapink and became yamapi."
shige nods, laughing a little. "interesting," he says, and from the way the corners of his lips are twitching, yamapi can tell he is trying to hide a smile.
"not funny," yamapi complains, sticking his hands on his hips. "anyway, there's nothing wrong with pink. i don't get why you guys caused such a ruckus over my fixation over pink."
"there's everything wrong with pink," says ryo, shaking his head as he overturns the glass and sets it on the rack. "don't you agree, shige?"
shige smiles. "well," he says diplomatically. "i'm sort of okay with pink, i guess."
ryo groans, and yamapi slaps shige a high-five. "says the boss," yamapi says cheekily to ryo, who turns around, back facing yamapi.
"child," yamapi says.
"i'm going to the bathroom, shige," ryo says, turning back again. "take care of him, yeah?"
shige says sure at the same time as yamapi says what the hell ryo i'm not a kid anymore do you think i'm going to run around and overturn tables?
when ryo disappears out of sight, shige chuckles and yamapi turns to him quizzically.
"you guys are good friends," shige says, smiling widely. "i've never seen ryo acting like that before."
yamapi gives him a weird look. "what do you mean?" he asks, furrowing his brow. "ryo's always acting like that."
"i dunno," shige mumbles, turning his gaze to the bar-top, which is so shiny that it reflects shige's oh-shit-i-shouldn't-have-said-that expression.
"tell me," yamapi pleads, shaking shige's arm childishly. "shigeeeeeee~"
"nothing!" shige sing-songs as he peels yamapi's fingers off his arm. "that was nothing. you didn't hear anything, yamapi-san, nothing!"
"stop trying to hypnotise me," yamapi complains. "tell me!"
"tell you what?" ryo asks, magically appearing behind them. shige lets out a startled squeak when he hears ryo's voice.
now it is ryo's turn to throw shige a weird look. "what's wrong with you?" he questions, shaking his head. he turns to yamapi and says, "look, you made him go nuts!"
"i didn't do anything," yamapi protests, throwing up his arms exasperatedly. "he just started saying all sorts of weird stuff like -"
shige's right hand flies up to clamp over yamapi's still-moving mouth. ryo stares suspiciously at shige. "what?"
shige stomps down, hard, on yamapi's foot. yamapi winces, and attempts to bite shige's palm, but ends up getting saliva all over it instead. shige makes a disgusted face, letting go of yamapi's mouth and wiping his wet palm on his jeans.
"what were you going to say, pi?"
shige kicks yamapi's shin. "ow," yamapi says, and earns another kick.
"huh?" ryo asks, confused. "are you okay?"
"yeah, yeah, fine," yamapi says hastily when he glances down under the bar-top table and sees shige's foot ready for another kick. "i just um, had a leg cramp. yeah."
"forget it," says ryo finally, rolling his eyes yet again. he waggles his fingers imperiously at shige and yamapi. "i'm going to get some food from the combini, want something?"
shige wants an iced tea, yamapi wants an onigiri. ryo disappears out of the glass door, and he turns back to shige curiously.
"i saved you," yamapi says. "you have to tell me."
"another day," says shige. "i'll tell you another day when i figure it out."
they link pinkies together, and then ryo comes back with no iced tea and no onigiri, just a styorofoam cup full of murky brown coffee, then lies that he couldn't find them anywhere (how can a combini not have onigiri, demands yamapi as he throws a dishrag at ryo, who yelps and shields his face with his hands).
ryo's seventy-third letter:
i opened my eyes, and saw you there,
shining as brightly as a star.
yamapi was fifteen when he fell in love with ryo. he'd been sort of scared of ryo in the very beginning, when ryo was silent and cold and had a sharp tongue. but after a year of hanging out with him in school and outside, after a year of lunches and outings and video game battles, yamapi discovers that underneath the mean and unfeeling façade ryo has carefully put on, ryo is just a normal teenager. one who worries about his friends and family, one who can brighten the world with his rare smile.
that's when yamapi starts the slow and dangerous fall for ryo - when he realises that ryo is only human. when he realises that ryo is even more fragile and terrified of the world than them, that beneath the prickly surface, ryo's heart is very, very breakable.
today when yamapi thinks about it, he wonders about whose heart had broken into the most pieces - his? or ryo's?
massu indeeds like to smile. he beams at yamapi as tegoshi clutches his arm.
"you two look cute together," yamapi says, and he means it. they look like two five-year-old children, with their matching guileless grins and twinkling eyes.
ryo scoffs, patting massu's shoulder loudly and most probably strongly. massu hides a wince. "they look like they're two kids playing house in a playground," he says, and yamapi is reminded of ryo whispering into the shell of his ear (an eternity ago) about how he can read yamapi's mind.
massu and tegoshi run off to get cotton candy, and yamapi looks around at the amusement park filled with little children probably half their age and sighs. "why are we even here?" he asks ryo, shaking his head.
"don't you feel like we're parents?" ryo agrees.
"then you're the mother," yamapi says, smiling.
"who said i was going to be parents with you?" asks ryo, and yamapi is at a loss for words. his stomach feels like it's just been punched, and he resists the urge to curl into a ball on the dirty ground.
ryo laughs. "just joking," he says, slinging an arm around yamapi's shoulders and poking his cheek. "but you're the girl, yamapink."
yamapi stares awkwardly into the night sky as their cabin in the ferris wheel climbs higher and higher. ryo is alternating between whistling and humming and singing, mixing notes and words into a beautiful symphony.
"remember that time when we came here on your birthday?" ryo asks, breaking off in the middle of his yeahs and ohs. "we brought a cake up here and had a cakefight."
yamapi giggles at the memory of the two of them emerging out of the cabin, covered in whipped cream and chocolate as the person in charge of manning the ferris wheel actually stumbled back a few steps at the scary sight of the two of them.
"that was terrible," yamapi says, half-laughing. "but the cake was nice."
ryo is silent for a while. "so were you," he says.
"he still loves you," shige says simply, and yamapi, flustered and stunned and confused, walks out of the bar and nearly crashes into ryo.
"pi," ryo says, worried, as he catches yamapi and steadies him. "are you okay? you look -"
"i'm fine," yamapi says faintly, then wriggles out of ryo's hold and runs away from him for the second time.
ryo's two hundred and twelfth letter:
there've been times we disagreed because we know too many things,
but together we finally found something precious we don't want to lose.
because, really, how could ryo still love him? how could he? yamapi left him. he'd probably cried thousands of hours over yamapi, had probably taken even more hours to slowly glue back the pieces of his heart. yamapi was so very cruel to him, but then again -
even now, even back then when yamapi had stared, wide-eyed and shell-shocked, at the sight of ryo's lips pressed against koyama's, he loved ryo. even when he threw his clothes into his luggage and stalked out of his house, he loved ryo. even when he was a million miles away from tokyo, japan, walking along a sunstreaked parisian street, he loved ryo.
it's not easy to stop loving someone. of all people, yamapi should understand. no matter how you try to forget, no matter how you try to empty your mind of any thoughts related to him, he still haunts the back corners of your mind. he is still there.
yamapi slides down the wall, his back pressed against the cool surface. "oh, god," he whispers. "what do i do now?"
before he knows it, yamapi ends up at the airport staring at the flickering numbers and words on the screen above him. he has no clothes, no personal effects, nothing except a confused mind. his flight to los angeles is half an hour later - he'd requested (demanded, actually) for the nearest flight out of here, and the ticket attendant had stared at him and his desperate gaze and said okay.
"are you running away again?"
yamapi whirls around to see ryo standing there, hands tucked into his jeans pockets, wearing a very tiny smile that doesn't reach his sad eyes. yamapi just stares and stares and stares as the lump in his throat grows bigger and bigger, as the words he was going to say vanish into thin air.
"shige told me," ryo says, proving his point once again that he has the uncanny ability to read yamapi's thoughts.
"oh."
they are silent for a while, yamapi averting his gaze to look awkwardly at the floor. he watches the lights dancing across the reflective floor, watches ryo scuffing his shoe.
"don't you want to know if it's true?" asks ryo quietly, and yamapi's eyes dart up to look into ryo's bright ones.
"is it?" yamapi asks finally. he can feel his palms sweating, can feel his heart thudding way too quickly, can feel his eyes brimming over with tears. ryo's answer can alter his entire life, can wipe away and re-draw his entire future, can send him off-course, off-track. ryo's answer can let him tear the ticket to los angeles he is clutching tightly in his right hand into pieces, can let him stay in tokyo, can stop him from escaping once again.
"yamapi."
"what?"
"i love you."
more than two years ago, ryo was standing there and yamapi was standing here and they were both crying.
"please," was all ryo said, and then yamapi turned on his heel and walked into the departure hall and away from a life with nishikido ryo.
today, yamapi is still scared. terrified, really. he is terrified that they won't make it to forever, that his already shattered heart will break into so many fragments it won't even exist it anymore - just turn into dust and get blown away in the wind.
yamapi loves ryo. yamapi really, really does. but he still looks at ryo and says i have to go, then flees again. the sense of déjà vu is so strong it nearly halts yamapi in his tracks, but yamapi keeps breathing, keeps walking, keeps living. keeps leaving.
they meet in a bar, yamapi spending his last few dollars on a drink. a stranger, obviously asian, slips fluidly into the seat beside him, smiling as he says in fluent japanese, "i'm akanishi jin."
"i'm broke," yamapi replies, and grins back.
"no, seriously, what's your name?"
"i told you, i'm broke."
"you're joking."
"i'm not."
"...seriously?"
"nope."
"you suck."
"i'm not suck, i'm broke."
"i'm leaving."
"hi, leaving, i'm yamashita tomohisa."
"i really hate you."
"you're an idiot, you know."
"no, i don't know."
"well, obviously, since you're an idiot."
ryo's four hundred and fifty-seventh letter:
what shined was neither the mirror nor the sun, but you.
since then, behind those tearful clouds is always a smiling moon.
akanishi jin is different from ryo in so many ways, with his stupidity and light-brown hair and tendency to squeak whenever people touch his collarbone. yamapi names him bakanishi, and jin responds with a horrified expression and hard jab in yamapi's side after a whole minute of processing the reason for the nickname.
yamapi doesn't say why he's in los angeles singing in a bar for money, and jin doesn't ask, just tells him about how he's always wanted to be famous, about his hopes and dreams, paints a different future for yamapi (one without a certain someone named nishikido ryo).
they share a flat, just the two of them, and argue over the stupidest things like whose turn it is to wash the dishes or do the laundry or cook, like who left the milk out for so long it spoiled, like who forgot to buy the groceries and who forgot to remind the person who was supposed to buy the groceries to buy the freaking groceries.
but yamapi likes jin, likes his adorable smile and amazing voice, and so he stays.
it's better than the alternative of going back to japan anyway.
yamapi tells himself that ryo is nothing but a breeze, a light wind that barely ruffles his hair - one that passes by in a quick and fleeting moment. yamapi tells himself that there are a million people better than ryo, with prettier smiles and brighter eyes and better personalities. yamapi tells himself that when there's a will there's a way, and that it is definitely possible to forget ryo's existence.
(ryo is a hurricane that sweeps through his life and leaves a mess of destruction in his wake, leaves a city of loneliness and fear that will never crumble. ryo is better than a million people, with his warm touch and husky voice and the never-ending love he gives to yamapi. ryo is impossible to forget, because ryo is ryo.)
the first letter comes after a month yamapi left. he sees the familiar untidy handwriting across the front of envelope (to yamashita tomohisa), and picks it up to do something with it - hurl it out of the window, throw it down the rubbish chute, burn it, anything - but he sees the broken seal and turns around to glare at jin.
"akanishi jin," he hisses through his clenched teeth. "did you read my mail?"
jin chews his lip nervously, unused to seeing yamapi so worked up. "yeah, but -"
"i don't want to hear any excuses!" yamapi yells, throwing the letter angrily on the floor for effect. he turns around, ready to go into his room and slam the door to vent his anger, but a movement catches his eye and he turns back.
jin is picking up the letter, and he looks at yamapi with bright eyes. "you should read it," jin says quietly, and yamapi's heart plummets to somewhere near his feet.
"don't tell me what i should do," yamapi whispers, then flees.
but jin is stubborn, and yamapi finds himself involuntarily reading the letter where it is placed under his glass of milk the next morning.
right now, the proof that you're one to two steps ahead of me,
helps by breaking the growing silence.
yamapi crumples the paper up into a ball and throws it across the room, then buries his face in his hands. jin pats yamapi's shoulder sympathetically, and yamapi flinches slightly from the unexpected touch.
"he loves you," jin says quietly.
"i know."
"you love him."
"i know."
"then -"
"just shut up for a while, okay, jin?"
"okay."
"can i talk now?"
"no."
"oh. sorry."
"i thought i told you to keep your damn mouth shut."
"oh. right."
yamapi watches jin drum his fingers against the make-up table through the mirror, inwardly sighing at the obvious thoughts going on in his friend's head.
"pi," jin begins and yamapi shoots him a glare.
"that topic is off-limits," yamapi informs him, and jin pouts and falls silent again.
yamapi sighs. "why do you want to know so much, anyway? you're really nosy."
"like you said, i'm nosy."
"poke your nose somewhere else."
jin smiles smugly. "it's my nose, i can choose where i want to poke it, mister."
"then poke it in your ass," yamapi mutters, and earns a horrified look from the owner of the bar, nakamaru.
"language," nakamaru reminds, and yamapi nods contritely.
when nakamaru leaves, jin starts laughing. "sucker!" he cries, pointing a finger in yamapi's direction.
"language, jin." nakamaru's head appears by the doorway, his face wearing an unimpressed frown, and jin immediately freezes.
yamapi hides a grin.
the next letter says:
we both loved each other, but we couldn't get beyond that
i guess it must have been fate.
yamapi has the urge to tear it up into a million tiny pieces, then shower the bits onto the heads of walking pedestrians below, but sees the knowing expression on jin's face and decides not to do it, just to prove jin wrong.
so, instead, yamapi pulls open his drawer, tosses the letter inside, then slams it shut and locks it along with his heart.
it was a summer night when yamapi confessed. it was the heat of the moment, really, that sent yamapi's thoughts in a whirl and his heart so full that he just blurted it out without thinking about it. they were sitting on the swings at a park near yamapi's house, talking and laughing under the stars and the pitch-black night sky. and then ryo's face, caught in the glow of the full moon, looked so gorgeous it took yamapi's breath away, and without realising it, he had blurted out i like you ryo-chan i really do.
and ryo, after blinking confusedly for a few seconds, smirked and said, "i know."
yamapi and jin get a few rare days of holidays, and after much consideration, decide to go to seoul.
"remind me why we're going there again," says jin, obviously still sore from the fact that yamapi had practically used bodily force to make him agree. "i really, really, really want to go to shanghai!"
"well, can you speak mandarin?"
"can you speak korean?"
yamapi glares at him. "enough to get by," he retorts, sticking out his tongue at jin.
jin shakes his head. "i think my immaturity is rubbing off on you," he remarks, tapping his air ticket against his chin. "what time is our flight again?"
"twelve thirty," yamapi says. "right?"
jin shrugs. "you're the one who got the tickets, don't ask me."
it's only eleven, so they wander off to a café selling horrible cakes and pastries and stale-tasting coffee to pass the time. jin picks at his chocolate cake morosely while yamapi alternates between staring into his cup of coffee and looking out of the floor-length windows at the planes taking off into the bright-blue sky.
"will yamashita tomohisa and akanishi jin please proceed to the boarding gate, please?" the calm, cool voice rings around the café, and yamapi glances up with a start.
"oh my god," jin shrieks, and every head in the café turns to stare at the strange japanese man flapping his arms wildly and grabbing his friend's hand as he hyperventilates.
"stop panicking, run!" yamapi shrieks back, immediately hopping up to grab his luggage and turning to run out of the place.
jin shrieks, "okay!" and then he is running behind yamapi as they head for boarding gate 21. jin almost dashes past the woman in charge of checking their plane tickets, but yamapi pulls him back by the end of his jacket (it's new, pi, stop it! jin wails).
they make it on the plane just in time, the passengers all turning around to stare at them as they make their way awkwardly through the aisles. when they finally get to their seats, jin plops down with a relieved sigh, wiping a drop of perspiration from his forehead.
"our flight was totally at twelve thirty," jin says, sarcasm turning his voice into acid.
yamapi looks down at his watch. eleven thirty. "oh, fine, sorry."
"you better be," sniffs jin. "you made me mess up my hair."