Gift fic for tatoeba
Gift fic for: tatoeba
From: newsficcon
Title: Diminished
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Ryo/Shige
Warnings: Main character death
Summary: Shige knew to give himself time to work up to the more difficult items-notebooks, sheet music, Ryo’s phone, his guitar-so he started small and filled the first bag with Ryo’s newest clothes, the ones that had never had a chance to change shape to fit Ryo’s body.
Notes: For tatoeba. Your suggestions were a dream to work from; they got three fics started, one of which has turned into a planet-eating monster fic that I haven't finished yet. This fic is a magnified piece of that longer fic (which includes many more of the suggestions on your list, including Pin and RyoPin friendship). Anyway, I hope you enjoy it! ♥
The last mail Ryo ever sent to Shige read: It’s not funny. Stop trying. He sent it while Shige was in class, about twelve minutes before he was crushed between a cab and the fence of a bicycle parking lot.
Shige saw the mail arrive but didn’t open his phone to read it until his lecture had ended. He’d half expected Ryo to send another message after he ignored the first, and Shige planned to send a mail telling him just that when he read the notification stamped over Ryo’s mail. He had two missed calls and a voicemail, all from a number he didn’t recognize.
“Shige-kun!” Kusano called from the back exit of the lecture hall. “Are you coming out with us?”
Shige struggled to push his books into his bag with one hand. “I can’t, sorry,” he called back. “Today’s bad for me.” Ryo was probably home by now and bored and-8:53-about to cook dinner without bothering to get Shige’s input.
Kusano and all of their classmates were gone when Shige looked up to see why no one had responded, so Shige sat back down in his seat and read Ryo’s mail. Why is it only funny when you say it? he sent back, grinning.
Then he checked his voicemail.
“Kato-kun. This is Ryo’s older brother…listen….”
Shige spotted Kusano down the hallway and ran after him. “Kusano-kun!”
He caught Kusano’s arm and pulled hard enough to make him stumble. Kusano turned, his eyebrows high with alarm. “Shige?” His tone brought the rest of his friends to an abrupt halt.
“Please,” Shige stammered, “I-I need-it’s-I mean….”
Kusano glanced over his shoulder. “Go on without me,” he said. “I’ll call later if I’m going.”
Some of his friends made sullen noises, but ultimately they shrugged both Kusano and Shige off and shuffled down the hall.
“What’s wrong, Shige-kun?”
“It’s my…roommate.”
Shige could never tell how many of his classmates had guessed about Ryo. On the one hand, Shige never went out for drinks without him and Ryo’d gotten more and more demonstrative with Shige lately, but on the other hand, nearly anything could be dismissed with the excuse of inebriation, and most people had never even bothered to crow when Ryo leaned close to press his mouth to the corner of Shige’s lips or blow smoke in Shige’s ear.
Shige felt his calves tensing and his eyes getting hotter. He couldn’t explain his relationship with Ryo to Kusano right now. He had to get to the hospital, but he didn’t have enough in his wallet or even his bank account to cover the cab fare, and the train would take so much longer than a car-
In seconds, Kusano’s expression shifted from polite concern to actual concern to understanding and finally to sympathy.
“What do you need from me?” Kusano asked.
“Your car,” Shige blurted. “Please. Not-I don’t want it, I mean, I-he’s in the hospital, and-”
Kusano interrupted with a nod and a quick, “Right, yeah, yeah, I understand,” and pushed Shige toward the doors. “I’ll drive you, come on.”
In the car, Kusano blasted trashy American pop music so loud the car shuddered, and at first Shige wished that he’d asked anyone else, but then the thrumming bass made him forget how much he was shaking and he caught Kusano glancing at him more than once, but Kusano was tactful enough not to ask him anything. He also drove slightly too fast, but Shige could tell that it was controlled speeding and probably for Shige’s benefit. Kusano was a better friend than Shige would have imagined under different circumstances. He made a mental note to do something nice for Kusano in the future.
Kusano knew some side roads that got them around the usual traffic and to the hospital in twenty-three minutes. In that time, Shige reread every one of Ryo’s mails from the past four days, teared up three times, and finally just let his nose block up because the music wasn’t loud enough to cover the noise it would make if Shige tried to clear it.
“Do you want me to stick around?” Kusano asked as Shige fumbled to open the door.
“I’ll be fine,” Shige said automatically. He regretted it immediately, but not enough to take it back. “Thank you, Kusano-kun. Really. Thank you.”
Kusano lifted one shoulder. “It’s fine, Shige-kun. Mail me when you find out something, all right?” He sounded like he meant it, like he was genuinely worried. Shige wondered when Ryo had made enough of an impression on Kusano to warrant a reaction like that.
Shige nodded, said, “I will,” and didn’t realize until Kusano had left that he didn’t actually have Kusano’s phone number or mail address.
Shige drank bottled tea at the hospital for dinner. He sat with Ryo’s brothers in silence while Ryo’s parents alternated between pacing and running after the nurses and doctors who had nothing new to report.
Shige brought one foot up onto the chair and hugged his knee to his chest, remaining in that position long after it cut off his circulation and put both his legs to sleep. He read Ryo’s mails on his phone all the way back to February and didn’t realize until he made some involuntary noise that he was crying. He wiped his face with his sleeve, then put his forehead down on his knee.
Ryo’s oldest brother left the room around two thirty to talk to Ryo’s younger sister who’d just gotten his message about their brother and called back, frantic. Ryo’s mother sat with Shige for a few minutes, then jumped up to rush after a nurse holding a clipboard that bore kanji only resembling Ryo’s last name.
Shige scrolled back to the very first mails he’d ever gotten on his current phone. He and Ryo had already been living together for six months when he bought it, but he was surprised by how awkward their old exchanges sounded compared to the more recent ones.
Shige’s first mail from Ryo was dated October 13th, the same day he got his phone:
I don’t know whether to wait for you or not. Are you in class? I can’t remember your schedule. You should print it and leave it somewhere.
Yes, I’m in class now.
Should I wait for you, then?
I don’t know. Do you want to?
What kind of response is that?
Shige never answered him, according to his phone’s history. Ryo’s next mail was dated five days later.
Are you going to pick up food? I don’t like fish.
I know that. I was there when you threw it up on me.
Hahaha! Are you going to pick up food?
Then, a week later:
I’m bored. Come home.
I’m at the library.
I didn’t ask where you were! I said come home. Come on, I’m really bored.
What do you think I’m going to do to help that?
You’re interesting. Don’t be so hard on yourself.
I am?
Whatever. Stay in the library if you want to be boring.
???!
Shige closed his eyes and kept them shut, even when he heard one of the quieter doctors asking to speak to Ryo’s parents privately.
Shige took the local back to their apartment. He could have changed trains at some point, gotten there faster, but he didn’t feel like being anywhere enough to leave his seat. Anyway, he’d have to stand if he took the rapid, and there was no guarantee from his body that he’d be able to do that for long.
His eyes hurt. One of Ryo’s brothers-he didn’t see who-had put a pair of sunglasses in Shige’s hand before he left the hospital, and Shige had immediately put them on. He left them on until he climbed the stairs to their apartment, opened the door, toed off his shoes, and swallowed back an automatic greeting.
He took off the sunglasses and went straight to his knees on the floor of the hallway.
Ryo’s shoes outnumbered Shige’s. One of the Italian ones, meant to be worn with his nicer suits, was lying sideways, the interior stained black from the dye of Ryo’s socks.
Shige rested his back against the wall and stared at the shoe and tortured himself.
He’ll never wear that again. No one will. Who would want a dead person’s shoes. Even a nice pair like those.
That night, Shige put the shoes into a trash bag.
He’d woken up from a dream in which someone from the hospital had left a message for him. “We’re so very sorry, Kato-san,” the man had said, “we made a clerical error. Nishikido-san just left. He should be home any minute.”
Shige had said, “That’s not true,” and woke up. He’d breathed in with a sharp sound, rolled onto his back to take up more of the bed, and thought, I don’t need so many pillows.
Then he’d gotten out of bed and grabbed six trash bags from a box underneath the sink.
Shige knew to give himself time to work up to the more difficult items-notebooks, sheet music, Ryo’s phone, his guitar-so he started small and filled the first bag with Ryo’s newest clothes, the ones that had never had a chance to change shape to fit Ryo’s body. Only one T-shirt of the twelve newest was old enough to have absorbed the scent of the shampoo they used to share (shampoo from the same bottle that Shige had just poured down the drain). That particular shirt went to the bottom of the bag.
Shige filled three trash bags before he realized how much was still left. Books, clothes, notebooks, DVDs, CDs, razors, cologne…. So he sped up, throwing as much as he could into the bag and packing it all down with shaking hands to make more room. He kept a fast pace going until he tried to cram Ryo’s favorite guitar into a fresh trash bag and almost bit through his tongue from a sensation of pure pain in his head.
He didn’t hear Ryo screaming at him, didn’t see Ryo trying to hold his face, trying to make him look, see what he was doing, the idiot.
“That’s my fucking guitar!”
Ryo’s hands frantically passed through the fret over and over.
“Shige!” he shouted. “Put it down!” He reached out and tried to grip Shige’s hair, something Shige hated, even during sex.
Shige dropped the guitar.
Ryo didn’t notice. “Shige?”
Shige was looking vaguely in Ryo’s direction. Not quite meeting his eyes, but scared and aware of something.
Ryo tried to touch Shige’s face. His mouth, with his thumb. “Shige, look at me. Shige, please.”
Shige rubbed the back of his head, shuddering, and bent over to pick up the guitar. He put it back on its stand, devastatingly gentle with it now, and went into their bedroom.
Ryo followed him.
He sat on the bed while Shige slept and conveniently forgot that he had to leave soon. He’d come back. Every night, if he could. He’d figure out some way to make Shige aware of him again and again, until Shige knew Ryo was watching over him.
In the morning, Shige woke up warm.
From: newsficcon
Title: Diminished
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Ryo/Shige
Warnings: Main character death
Summary: Shige knew to give himself time to work up to the more difficult items-notebooks, sheet music, Ryo’s phone, his guitar-so he started small and filled the first bag with Ryo’s newest clothes, the ones that had never had a chance to change shape to fit Ryo’s body.
Notes: For tatoeba. Your suggestions were a dream to work from; they got three fics started, one of which has turned into a planet-eating monster fic that I haven't finished yet. This fic is a magnified piece of that longer fic (which includes many more of the suggestions on your list, including Pin and RyoPin friendship). Anyway, I hope you enjoy it! ♥
The last mail Ryo ever sent to Shige read: It’s not funny. Stop trying. He sent it while Shige was in class, about twelve minutes before he was crushed between a cab and the fence of a bicycle parking lot.
Shige saw the mail arrive but didn’t open his phone to read it until his lecture had ended. He’d half expected Ryo to send another message after he ignored the first, and Shige planned to send a mail telling him just that when he read the notification stamped over Ryo’s mail. He had two missed calls and a voicemail, all from a number he didn’t recognize.
“Shige-kun!” Kusano called from the back exit of the lecture hall. “Are you coming out with us?”
Shige struggled to push his books into his bag with one hand. “I can’t, sorry,” he called back. “Today’s bad for me.” Ryo was probably home by now and bored and-8:53-about to cook dinner without bothering to get Shige’s input.
Kusano and all of their classmates were gone when Shige looked up to see why no one had responded, so Shige sat back down in his seat and read Ryo’s mail. Why is it only funny when you say it? he sent back, grinning.
Then he checked his voicemail.
“Kato-kun. This is Ryo’s older brother…listen….”
Shige spotted Kusano down the hallway and ran after him. “Kusano-kun!”
He caught Kusano’s arm and pulled hard enough to make him stumble. Kusano turned, his eyebrows high with alarm. “Shige?” His tone brought the rest of his friends to an abrupt halt.
“Please,” Shige stammered, “I-I need-it’s-I mean….”
Kusano glanced over his shoulder. “Go on without me,” he said. “I’ll call later if I’m going.”
Some of his friends made sullen noises, but ultimately they shrugged both Kusano and Shige off and shuffled down the hall.
“What’s wrong, Shige-kun?”
“It’s my…roommate.”
Shige could never tell how many of his classmates had guessed about Ryo. On the one hand, Shige never went out for drinks without him and Ryo’d gotten more and more demonstrative with Shige lately, but on the other hand, nearly anything could be dismissed with the excuse of inebriation, and most people had never even bothered to crow when Ryo leaned close to press his mouth to the corner of Shige’s lips or blow smoke in Shige’s ear.
Shige felt his calves tensing and his eyes getting hotter. He couldn’t explain his relationship with Ryo to Kusano right now. He had to get to the hospital, but he didn’t have enough in his wallet or even his bank account to cover the cab fare, and the train would take so much longer than a car-
In seconds, Kusano’s expression shifted from polite concern to actual concern to understanding and finally to sympathy.
“What do you need from me?” Kusano asked.
“Your car,” Shige blurted. “Please. Not-I don’t want it, I mean, I-he’s in the hospital, and-”
Kusano interrupted with a nod and a quick, “Right, yeah, yeah, I understand,” and pushed Shige toward the doors. “I’ll drive you, come on.”
In the car, Kusano blasted trashy American pop music so loud the car shuddered, and at first Shige wished that he’d asked anyone else, but then the thrumming bass made him forget how much he was shaking and he caught Kusano glancing at him more than once, but Kusano was tactful enough not to ask him anything. He also drove slightly too fast, but Shige could tell that it was controlled speeding and probably for Shige’s benefit. Kusano was a better friend than Shige would have imagined under different circumstances. He made a mental note to do something nice for Kusano in the future.
Kusano knew some side roads that got them around the usual traffic and to the hospital in twenty-three minutes. In that time, Shige reread every one of Ryo’s mails from the past four days, teared up three times, and finally just let his nose block up because the music wasn’t loud enough to cover the noise it would make if Shige tried to clear it.
“Do you want me to stick around?” Kusano asked as Shige fumbled to open the door.
“I’ll be fine,” Shige said automatically. He regretted it immediately, but not enough to take it back. “Thank you, Kusano-kun. Really. Thank you.”
Kusano lifted one shoulder. “It’s fine, Shige-kun. Mail me when you find out something, all right?” He sounded like he meant it, like he was genuinely worried. Shige wondered when Ryo had made enough of an impression on Kusano to warrant a reaction like that.
Shige nodded, said, “I will,” and didn’t realize until Kusano had left that he didn’t actually have Kusano’s phone number or mail address.
Shige drank bottled tea at the hospital for dinner. He sat with Ryo’s brothers in silence while Ryo’s parents alternated between pacing and running after the nurses and doctors who had nothing new to report.
Shige brought one foot up onto the chair and hugged his knee to his chest, remaining in that position long after it cut off his circulation and put both his legs to sleep. He read Ryo’s mails on his phone all the way back to February and didn’t realize until he made some involuntary noise that he was crying. He wiped his face with his sleeve, then put his forehead down on his knee.
Ryo’s oldest brother left the room around two thirty to talk to Ryo’s younger sister who’d just gotten his message about their brother and called back, frantic. Ryo’s mother sat with Shige for a few minutes, then jumped up to rush after a nurse holding a clipboard that bore kanji only resembling Ryo’s last name.
Shige scrolled back to the very first mails he’d ever gotten on his current phone. He and Ryo had already been living together for six months when he bought it, but he was surprised by how awkward their old exchanges sounded compared to the more recent ones.
Shige’s first mail from Ryo was dated October 13th, the same day he got his phone:
I don’t know whether to wait for you or not. Are you in class? I can’t remember your schedule. You should print it and leave it somewhere.
Yes, I’m in class now.
Should I wait for you, then?
I don’t know. Do you want to?
What kind of response is that?
Shige never answered him, according to his phone’s history. Ryo’s next mail was dated five days later.
Are you going to pick up food? I don’t like fish.
I know that. I was there when you threw it up on me.
Hahaha! Are you going to pick up food?
Then, a week later:
I’m bored. Come home.
I’m at the library.
I didn’t ask where you were! I said come home. Come on, I’m really bored.
What do you think I’m going to do to help that?
You’re interesting. Don’t be so hard on yourself.
I am?
Whatever. Stay in the library if you want to be boring.
???!
Shige closed his eyes and kept them shut, even when he heard one of the quieter doctors asking to speak to Ryo’s parents privately.
Shige took the local back to their apartment. He could have changed trains at some point, gotten there faster, but he didn’t feel like being anywhere enough to leave his seat. Anyway, he’d have to stand if he took the rapid, and there was no guarantee from his body that he’d be able to do that for long.
His eyes hurt. One of Ryo’s brothers-he didn’t see who-had put a pair of sunglasses in Shige’s hand before he left the hospital, and Shige had immediately put them on. He left them on until he climbed the stairs to their apartment, opened the door, toed off his shoes, and swallowed back an automatic greeting.
He took off the sunglasses and went straight to his knees on the floor of the hallway.
Ryo’s shoes outnumbered Shige’s. One of the Italian ones, meant to be worn with his nicer suits, was lying sideways, the interior stained black from the dye of Ryo’s socks.
Shige rested his back against the wall and stared at the shoe and tortured himself.
He’ll never wear that again. No one will. Who would want a dead person’s shoes. Even a nice pair like those.
That night, Shige put the shoes into a trash bag.
He’d woken up from a dream in which someone from the hospital had left a message for him. “We’re so very sorry, Kato-san,” the man had said, “we made a clerical error. Nishikido-san just left. He should be home any minute.”
Shige had said, “That’s not true,” and woke up. He’d breathed in with a sharp sound, rolled onto his back to take up more of the bed, and thought, I don’t need so many pillows.
Then he’d gotten out of bed and grabbed six trash bags from a box underneath the sink.
Shige knew to give himself time to work up to the more difficult items-notebooks, sheet music, Ryo’s phone, his guitar-so he started small and filled the first bag with Ryo’s newest clothes, the ones that had never had a chance to change shape to fit Ryo’s body. Only one T-shirt of the twelve newest was old enough to have absorbed the scent of the shampoo they used to share (shampoo from the same bottle that Shige had just poured down the drain). That particular shirt went to the bottom of the bag.
Shige filled three trash bags before he realized how much was still left. Books, clothes, notebooks, DVDs, CDs, razors, cologne…. So he sped up, throwing as much as he could into the bag and packing it all down with shaking hands to make more room. He kept a fast pace going until he tried to cram Ryo’s favorite guitar into a fresh trash bag and almost bit through his tongue from a sensation of pure pain in his head.
He didn’t hear Ryo screaming at him, didn’t see Ryo trying to hold his face, trying to make him look, see what he was doing, the idiot.
“That’s my fucking guitar!”
Ryo’s hands frantically passed through the fret over and over.
“Shige!” he shouted. “Put it down!” He reached out and tried to grip Shige’s hair, something Shige hated, even during sex.
Shige dropped the guitar.
Ryo didn’t notice. “Shige?”
Shige was looking vaguely in Ryo’s direction. Not quite meeting his eyes, but scared and aware of something.
Ryo tried to touch Shige’s face. His mouth, with his thumb. “Shige, look at me. Shige, please.”
Shige rubbed the back of his head, shuddering, and bent over to pick up the guitar. He put it back on its stand, devastatingly gentle with it now, and went into their bedroom.
Ryo followed him.
He sat on the bed while Shige slept and conveniently forgot that he had to leave soon. He’d come back. Every night, if he could. He’d figure out some way to make Shige aware of him again and again, until Shige knew Ryo was watching over him.
In the morning, Shige woke up warm.