JE/NEWS- "The Ryo Method"
Title: The Ryo Method
Universe: JE/NewS
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-15
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (sort-of Tegopi and sort-of RyoShige?)
Warnings/Spoilers: OOC, stupid, CRACK.
Word Count: 2,635
Summary: The next installment of the series involving “The One Step Program” and “Taking the Edge off”- Yamapi still hates to lose and Shige’s life is hard.
Dedication: Formerly rejected fic that Ann is telling me to post, so I’ll give it to her, even though she doesn’t like it. XD
A/N: I still don’t like it. BUT I GUESS IT MAKES MY REALLY BAD MAY FIC STATS A LITTLE BIT BETTER?
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
Yamapi makes a very important decision after he hears Tegoshi’s declaration regarding Ryo during their latest magazine interview; it is when the youngest member chirps, “Yappari, Ryo-tan’s definitely the most adult-like in NewS when it comes to his determination!” while he is resting his head adorably on Ryo’s shoulder.
Yamapi realizes that Tegoshi is talking like he believes his words are the truest things in the world.
And while Yamapi definitely agrees that Ryo is a very dependable and admirable type of person, when Yamapi hears Tegoshi say something about someone else being the most at anything in NewS (who isn’t him), Yamapi can’t help but become a little bit competitive, since he’s the one who’s supposed to be Tegoshi’s hero. He thinks to himself, “Yabai… I definitely can’t lose to Ryo-chan like this!”
He takes it as a challenge.
And so, the very next day, Yamapi decides it’s time for him to quit smoking too.
He’s confident that Tegoshi’s head will be on his shoulder in no time.
~~~~~
“Great. Now I won’t have anyone to smoke with!” Jin complains loudly on day one, when Yamapi breaks the news to him while they’re outside on the balcony together. Jin pouts and blows a puff of smoke right into Yamapi’s face, just to be spiteful.
Yamapi scowls at his friend and tries to wave the smoke away, even though he knows that a part of him kind of misses the taste and the smell already and it’s only been half a day. He manages to square his jaw and stand up straight quickly though, gathering his resolve and saying, “You can do anything if you put your mind to it!” as firmly as he can.
Jin just stares back, and in the meantime, the cigarette he’s holding wafts lazy wisps of smoke into the air between them in thin, fragrant trails.
Yamapi swallows, turns around, and promptly leaves the balcony.
He heads to the bathroom instead.
~~~~~
When he opens the bathroom door he finds Ryo and Shige already inside; Shige’s back is pressed up against the wall between the two sinks while Ryo kisses him hard, both hands fisted tightly in Shige’s shirt.
Yamapi blinks, and after a moment, pads up to the sink closest to the door. He proceeds to wash his hands.
He had originally been planning to use the urinal, but realizes just in time that doing so would have probably made things awkward for everyone who is in here right now.
~~~~~
Later, when they are all back in the dressing room again and Ryo no longer has his tongue inside Shige’s mouth, Yamapi asks them, “Are you two dating?”
Ryo snorts at the question; he even looks kind of charmed by Yamapi’s naiveté.
Shige just becomes indignant and shouts, “Of course not!” before Ryo can say anything. “The bathroom wall is not a date!”
“Shige is helping me quit,” Ryo explains simply, offering Yamapi a weird kind of sideways smile that makes Shige suddenly go bright red around his ears for no particular reason.
“Oh,” Yamapi says, and tries to sound like he understands what’s going on even though it’s pretty clear he doesn’t.
Ryo just sighs; he reaches out to pat his friend on the shoulder with all the gravity of a seasoned cigarette-quitting professional. “Day one is easy,” he says to Yamapi sagely, “But day two sucks ass. You should try my method; it helps.”
Shige sputters, looking horrified at the thought of being casually passed along from groupmate to groupmate like some sort of strange home remedy. “What?!”
Yamapi eyes Shige dubiously as well; even though it seems to be working for Ryo, he’s not really sure how kissing someone who smokes so much will be conducive to helping him quit. “Really?” he asks Ryo, and is unable to hide the doubt in his voice even a little.
“Well, maybe not with Shige, exactly,” Ryo amends, and Shige almost looks relieved to hear that. “Maybe someone else.”
Yamapi is just about to ask who Ryo has in mind when Tegoshi suddenly bounces into the room on his way back from lunch, bright-eyed and cheerful after getting one senpai or another to treat him out for food today. When he notices that Ryo, Shige, and Yamapi are all sitting on the couch looking at him oddly, he smiles and tells them that they’re cute, sitting together like that while blinking in sync.
Then he heads to his corner of the dressing room so that he can change in preparation for dance rehearsal; he casually pulls off his shirt and unzips his jeans and doesn’t notice it at all when Ryo’s eyebrows shoot up and he turns to give Yamapi a telling look.
“What? No! He doesn’t even smoke!” Shige hisses under his breath, and is appalled (and blushing for some reason) at the mental image he suddenly gets of someone like Yamapi pressing someone like Tegoshi up against a bathroom wall in the same way Ryo does to him. Thinking about it makes Shige feel oddly guilty, like he’d just watched a dirty movie full of inexplicable, wide-eyed schoolboy kinks of some sort.
Ryo has no such moral issues about the thought of Yamapi manhandling Tegoshi and elbows Shige in the stomach so he’ll shut up about his for a second. He turns to Yamapi. “So?”
Yamapi looks at Tegoshi from across the room, lips pursed thoughtfully. “Really?” he asks Ryo after a beat, but clearly isn’t opposed to the idea.
Ryo nods. “Trust me.”
A moment.
Then, Yamapi pumps his fist. “Okay!” he says, since he does trust Ryo.
The two of them smile at one another-Yamapi confidently and Ryo in another way altogether- while Shige just gets a headache.
~~~~~
“Why would you say something like that?!” Shige asks Ryo later, as they’re packing up to leave for the evening. “I thought you were overprotective of Tegoshi! Now you’re telling our own groupmates to use him however they want? Despite what you might think your kouhai are not your Nicotine patches!”
“Yamapi doesn’t need a patch,” Ryo replies calmly, checking his watch every so often as he stuffs his things into his bag, “he just needs justification to grab Tego-nyan.”
Shige blinks. He turns bright red. “Wait a minute, does that mean you also just needed justi…”
“Go have a cigarette and meet me in the bathroom in ten minutes,” Ryo says suddenly, and stops looking at his watch. “That way I can make the last train.”
Shige sighs.
~~~~~
The next day, Yamapi gets to work and realizes that Ryo had been right about day two; day two sucks.
Yamapi sees Jin alone on the balcony as he takes his smoking break early that afternoon; Jin sees him through the sliding glass door as well and makes a show of enjoying his cigarette lots and lots, just for Yamapi.
Yamapi frowns and ignores him determinedly, moving out of the hallway and into the dressing room. He’s annoyed with Jin for being a dick but even more annoyed with himself for wanting a cigarette so badly so soon.
Tegoshi is already in the dressing room when Yamapi ducks inside, obliviously bobbing his head to music as he does his homework at the table. Koyama pours the youngest member a cup of cold tea every once in a while, in-between rehearsing lines for his next stage play, while Massu does sit-ups around mouthfuls of tamago gohan in the back. Ryo and Shige are nowhere to be seen, and Yamapi suspects that it’s because they are in the bathroom right now, doing everything they can to keep Ryo from relapsing since this whole quitting thing is actually a lot harder than it looks.
Yamapi stands in the doorway and eyes Tegoshi for a moment; he finds himself remembering Ryo’s words from yesterday and imagines himself pressing Tegoshi up against a wall somewhere while fisting Tegoshi’s thin T-shirt tightly in both hands.
He discovers that thinking about it does make him forget about smoking, exactly like Ryo had said it would.
“Yosh,” Yamapi murmurs under his breath, when he comes to a decision. He tells himself that it’s time to show the world what he’s really made of.
He’ll quit smoking no matter what.
~~~~~
Five minutes later, Yamapi ends up wordlessly tugging a bemused Tegoshi into one of the abandoned practice rooms two floors down (because Yamapi already knows that the bathroom on their floor is otherwise occupied).
When he closes the door behind them he also pushes Tegoshi right up against it, fisting Tegoshi’s thin T-shirt tightly in both hands and pressing their mouths together.
Tegoshi flushes pink and gasps at first, but when his eyes flutter closed and his lips part with a little sigh a moment later, Yamapi is pleased to discover that cigarettes are now the farthest things from his mind.
Instead, he concentrates on urging Tegoshi’s legs up and around his waist, all the while marveling to himself at how smart Ryo-chan is for coming up with all sorts of helpful coping strategies like this.
~~~~~
“I’ll definitely help Yamashita-kun quit smoking in any way I can!” Tegoshi declares passionately (if a bit breathlessly) sometime later, while Yamapi is in the middle of pulling his pants back on.
Yamapi once again feels the kindness of his groupmates when he hears Tegoshi’s words of support; something in his chest catches inexplicably at the determined look on Tegoshi’s face. He pauses to smile down at the younger boy; “I think it’s already working!” he says, and means it. He reaches out to ruffle Tegoshi’s hair fondly. “Let’s do our best together then, okay?”
Tegoshi glows. “Hai!”
After that Yamapi helps Tegoshi up off the floor and back into his jeans again; the two of them return upstairs together and get yelled at for being late to practice.
~~~~~
The next day, Ryo and Yamapi janken for the bathroom.
Yamapi wins and Shige ends up with his back pressed against one of the huge floor-to-ceiling mirrors in the rehearsal room two floors down. In the meantime, Tegoshi gets deposited on the edge of one of the bathroom sinks, feet dangling down by Yamapi’s calves and toes eventually curling into the rough fabric of Yamapi’s jeans as the afternoon progresses.
In this manner, Yamapi successfully makes it through three whole days without smoking a single cigarette.
~~~~~
“Tegoshi…Tegoshi aren’t you limping a little lately?” Koyama frets during dance practice on day four, “Did you hurt your legs recently?”
Tegoshi smiles back and shakes his head. “I’m fine, Kei-chan!” he assures the oldest member sweetly. “I’m just a bit sore from all the…”
“Soccer!” Shige yells suddenly, twitching a little on his left eye, “He’s sore from all the soccer he’s been playing, so can we please move on!? I really need to learn this dance today okay!?”
Koyama’s worry immediately shifts to Shige. “Shige, you’re all red and twitchy. Are you sick? And it’s only the first day we’re learning this dance, ne.”
In the background, Yamapi obliviously marvels out loud to Ryo about how his stamina has really improved over the last few days.
Shige turns even redder when he hears this, while Tegoshi just innocently replies, “See what happens when you don’t smoke, Leader?”
~~~~~
“What is something that has impressed you lately?” A journalist asks Tegoshi during a magazine interview the next morning.
Tegoshi smiles and glances sideways at Yamapi for a brief moment before answering. “I’m really impressed with Leader’s determination!” he starts. “And his stamina, and his power, and the really intense face he makes when he comes…”
“Shige, are you okay?! What’s wrong?!” Koyama screams under his breath in the background, looking panicked when Shige suddenly starts to choke.
“…to a decision,” Tegoshi finishes in the meantime, sweetly oblivious. “He hasn’t smoked for a whole five days now!”
“And I won’t ever again,” Yamapi agrees. Pause. “Unless it’s for a movie or a drama and the director insists,” he adds, dutifully.
Shige groans and rests his head on Koyama’s shoulder as he tries to catch his breath.
~~~~~
“Maybe if you quit,” Ryo begins around a smirk to Shige later that afternoon, “your stamina will improve someday as well.” He throws Shige’s pants back at him and walks out of the bathroom whistling.
Shige sits panting on the floor in disbelief; he thinks that his stamina is fine and that it’s Ryo’s that’s abnormal.
~~~~~
“Quitting was actually pretty easy,” Yamapi crows to Jin come the end of the month, when they’re out on the balcony together during Jin’s cigarette break. This time, the smoke doesn’t bother Yamapi even a little bit. “I really think that you should try to quit too.”
Jin just looks back at him questioningly. “It is an addiction. Quitting isn’t easy and you’re lying if you say it is. Plus I look cool when I do this.”
“I’m not lying!” Yamapi protests. “Ryo-chan has a method, ne. Now I’m over my addiction and I…”
He trails off abruptly when, through the sliding glass door, he sees Tegoshi step off of the elevator and head towards the dressing room.
“I’ll be right back,” he tells Jin, completely forgetting what he’d been about to say just now as he pulls the door open and jogs down the hall without a backwards glance.
Jin watches, eyebrows arched, as Yamapi promptly grabs a laughing Tegoshi by the wrist and tugs him into one of the emergency exit stairwells before the kid can so much as chirp good morning to him.
A moment.
Jin sighs, thinking to himself that if he had to choose between manhandling one of his groupmates in a semi-public place and smoking, he would definitely choose smoking without a moment’s hesitation.
Because given the way the rest of KAT-TUN is, he’s pretty sure the cigarettes would be healthier for him anyway.
~~~~~
“Maybe I should try to quit too,” Koyama muses out loud to Massu one afternoon some weeks later, as the two of them watch Ryo, Tegoshi and Yamapi all sitting on the couch together, each of them perfectly happy and tobacco free. They might be cuddling a little too, and anything that leads to cuddles is a good idea in Koyama’s book.
“You should ask Nishikido-kun to help you then,” Massu suggests, around a mouthful of tarako gohan. “I’m sure he would!”
“You really don’t want to do that,” Shige snorts, walking back into the room after his cigarette break just in time to overhear the tail end of their conversation. Shige smells strongly of tobacco and-for reasons that Koyama hasn’t quite been able to figure out yet- Ryo’s cologne.
Koyama blinks back at Shige. “I don’t want to quit?” he asks, not getting what Shige means, “Why not? Ryo-chan’s method looks like it really works, ne! And quitting is healthy.”
Massu nods in silent agreement; his face clearly says he is wondering if Shige is sick.
Shige frowns at them both and gestures towards the couch, where Tegoshi is in the process of perching himself quite comfortably in Yamapi’s lap. Beside them, Ryo looks on with interest. “I promise you, quitting that way isn’t healthy at all,” Shige snorts.
Koyama turns to watch the scene on the couch too, and doesn’t get what horrible thing Shige is pointing at because all he sees is adorableness and member-ai. “Eh? What do you mean, Shige? I don’t get it, ne.”
Shige sighs. “All Ryo’s quitting method really does,” he explains slowly, as Tegoshi deliberately cants his hips forward just a little bit and Yamapi’s eyes promptly glaze over when he does, “is replace one addiction with another.”
Five minutes later, Yamapi tugs a laughing Tegoshi out of the room.
Koyama and Massu still don’t get it, but Shige hopes-for their sakes-that they never will.
END
EDITS PLS.
Universe: JE/NewS
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-15
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (sort-of Tegopi and sort-of RyoShige?)
Warnings/Spoilers: OOC, stupid, CRACK.
Word Count: 2,635
Summary: The next installment of the series involving “The One Step Program” and “Taking the Edge off”- Yamapi still hates to lose and Shige’s life is hard.
Dedication: Formerly rejected fic that Ann is telling me to post, so I’ll give it to her, even though she doesn’t like it. XD
A/N: I still don’t like it. BUT I GUESS IT MAKES MY REALLY BAD MAY FIC STATS A LITTLE BIT BETTER?
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
Yamapi makes a very important decision after he hears Tegoshi’s declaration regarding Ryo during their latest magazine interview; it is when the youngest member chirps, “Yappari, Ryo-tan’s definitely the most adult-like in NewS when it comes to his determination!” while he is resting his head adorably on Ryo’s shoulder.
Yamapi realizes that Tegoshi is talking like he believes his words are the truest things in the world.
And while Yamapi definitely agrees that Ryo is a very dependable and admirable type of person, when Yamapi hears Tegoshi say something about someone else being the most at anything in NewS (who isn’t him), Yamapi can’t help but become a little bit competitive, since he’s the one who’s supposed to be Tegoshi’s hero. He thinks to himself, “Yabai… I definitely can’t lose to Ryo-chan like this!”
He takes it as a challenge.
And so, the very next day, Yamapi decides it’s time for him to quit smoking too.
He’s confident that Tegoshi’s head will be on his shoulder in no time.
~~~~~
“Great. Now I won’t have anyone to smoke with!” Jin complains loudly on day one, when Yamapi breaks the news to him while they’re outside on the balcony together. Jin pouts and blows a puff of smoke right into Yamapi’s face, just to be spiteful.
Yamapi scowls at his friend and tries to wave the smoke away, even though he knows that a part of him kind of misses the taste and the smell already and it’s only been half a day. He manages to square his jaw and stand up straight quickly though, gathering his resolve and saying, “You can do anything if you put your mind to it!” as firmly as he can.
Jin just stares back, and in the meantime, the cigarette he’s holding wafts lazy wisps of smoke into the air between them in thin, fragrant trails.
Yamapi swallows, turns around, and promptly leaves the balcony.
He heads to the bathroom instead.
~~~~~
When he opens the bathroom door he finds Ryo and Shige already inside; Shige’s back is pressed up against the wall between the two sinks while Ryo kisses him hard, both hands fisted tightly in Shige’s shirt.
Yamapi blinks, and after a moment, pads up to the sink closest to the door. He proceeds to wash his hands.
He had originally been planning to use the urinal, but realizes just in time that doing so would have probably made things awkward for everyone who is in here right now.
~~~~~
Later, when they are all back in the dressing room again and Ryo no longer has his tongue inside Shige’s mouth, Yamapi asks them, “Are you two dating?”
Ryo snorts at the question; he even looks kind of charmed by Yamapi’s naiveté.
Shige just becomes indignant and shouts, “Of course not!” before Ryo can say anything. “The bathroom wall is not a date!”
“Shige is helping me quit,” Ryo explains simply, offering Yamapi a weird kind of sideways smile that makes Shige suddenly go bright red around his ears for no particular reason.
“Oh,” Yamapi says, and tries to sound like he understands what’s going on even though it’s pretty clear he doesn’t.
Ryo just sighs; he reaches out to pat his friend on the shoulder with all the gravity of a seasoned cigarette-quitting professional. “Day one is easy,” he says to Yamapi sagely, “But day two sucks ass. You should try my method; it helps.”
Shige sputters, looking horrified at the thought of being casually passed along from groupmate to groupmate like some sort of strange home remedy. “What?!”
Yamapi eyes Shige dubiously as well; even though it seems to be working for Ryo, he’s not really sure how kissing someone who smokes so much will be conducive to helping him quit. “Really?” he asks Ryo, and is unable to hide the doubt in his voice even a little.
“Well, maybe not with Shige, exactly,” Ryo amends, and Shige almost looks relieved to hear that. “Maybe someone else.”
Yamapi is just about to ask who Ryo has in mind when Tegoshi suddenly bounces into the room on his way back from lunch, bright-eyed and cheerful after getting one senpai or another to treat him out for food today. When he notices that Ryo, Shige, and Yamapi are all sitting on the couch looking at him oddly, he smiles and tells them that they’re cute, sitting together like that while blinking in sync.
Then he heads to his corner of the dressing room so that he can change in preparation for dance rehearsal; he casually pulls off his shirt and unzips his jeans and doesn’t notice it at all when Ryo’s eyebrows shoot up and he turns to give Yamapi a telling look.
“What? No! He doesn’t even smoke!” Shige hisses under his breath, and is appalled (and blushing for some reason) at the mental image he suddenly gets of someone like Yamapi pressing someone like Tegoshi up against a bathroom wall in the same way Ryo does to him. Thinking about it makes Shige feel oddly guilty, like he’d just watched a dirty movie full of inexplicable, wide-eyed schoolboy kinks of some sort.
Ryo has no such moral issues about the thought of Yamapi manhandling Tegoshi and elbows Shige in the stomach so he’ll shut up about his for a second. He turns to Yamapi. “So?”
Yamapi looks at Tegoshi from across the room, lips pursed thoughtfully. “Really?” he asks Ryo after a beat, but clearly isn’t opposed to the idea.
Ryo nods. “Trust me.”
A moment.
Then, Yamapi pumps his fist. “Okay!” he says, since he does trust Ryo.
The two of them smile at one another-Yamapi confidently and Ryo in another way altogether- while Shige just gets a headache.
~~~~~
“Why would you say something like that?!” Shige asks Ryo later, as they’re packing up to leave for the evening. “I thought you were overprotective of Tegoshi! Now you’re telling our own groupmates to use him however they want? Despite what you might think your kouhai are not your Nicotine patches!”
“Yamapi doesn’t need a patch,” Ryo replies calmly, checking his watch every so often as he stuffs his things into his bag, “he just needs justification to grab Tego-nyan.”
Shige blinks. He turns bright red. “Wait a minute, does that mean you also just needed justi…”
“Go have a cigarette and meet me in the bathroom in ten minutes,” Ryo says suddenly, and stops looking at his watch. “That way I can make the last train.”
Shige sighs.
~~~~~
The next day, Yamapi gets to work and realizes that Ryo had been right about day two; day two sucks.
Yamapi sees Jin alone on the balcony as he takes his smoking break early that afternoon; Jin sees him through the sliding glass door as well and makes a show of enjoying his cigarette lots and lots, just for Yamapi.
Yamapi frowns and ignores him determinedly, moving out of the hallway and into the dressing room. He’s annoyed with Jin for being a dick but even more annoyed with himself for wanting a cigarette so badly so soon.
Tegoshi is already in the dressing room when Yamapi ducks inside, obliviously bobbing his head to music as he does his homework at the table. Koyama pours the youngest member a cup of cold tea every once in a while, in-between rehearsing lines for his next stage play, while Massu does sit-ups around mouthfuls of tamago gohan in the back. Ryo and Shige are nowhere to be seen, and Yamapi suspects that it’s because they are in the bathroom right now, doing everything they can to keep Ryo from relapsing since this whole quitting thing is actually a lot harder than it looks.
Yamapi stands in the doorway and eyes Tegoshi for a moment; he finds himself remembering Ryo’s words from yesterday and imagines himself pressing Tegoshi up against a wall somewhere while fisting Tegoshi’s thin T-shirt tightly in both hands.
He discovers that thinking about it does make him forget about smoking, exactly like Ryo had said it would.
“Yosh,” Yamapi murmurs under his breath, when he comes to a decision. He tells himself that it’s time to show the world what he’s really made of.
He’ll quit smoking no matter what.
~~~~~
Five minutes later, Yamapi ends up wordlessly tugging a bemused Tegoshi into one of the abandoned practice rooms two floors down (because Yamapi already knows that the bathroom on their floor is otherwise occupied).
When he closes the door behind them he also pushes Tegoshi right up against it, fisting Tegoshi’s thin T-shirt tightly in both hands and pressing their mouths together.
Tegoshi flushes pink and gasps at first, but when his eyes flutter closed and his lips part with a little sigh a moment later, Yamapi is pleased to discover that cigarettes are now the farthest things from his mind.
Instead, he concentrates on urging Tegoshi’s legs up and around his waist, all the while marveling to himself at how smart Ryo-chan is for coming up with all sorts of helpful coping strategies like this.
~~~~~
“I’ll definitely help Yamashita-kun quit smoking in any way I can!” Tegoshi declares passionately (if a bit breathlessly) sometime later, while Yamapi is in the middle of pulling his pants back on.
Yamapi once again feels the kindness of his groupmates when he hears Tegoshi’s words of support; something in his chest catches inexplicably at the determined look on Tegoshi’s face. He pauses to smile down at the younger boy; “I think it’s already working!” he says, and means it. He reaches out to ruffle Tegoshi’s hair fondly. “Let’s do our best together then, okay?”
Tegoshi glows. “Hai!”
After that Yamapi helps Tegoshi up off the floor and back into his jeans again; the two of them return upstairs together and get yelled at for being late to practice.
~~~~~
The next day, Ryo and Yamapi janken for the bathroom.
Yamapi wins and Shige ends up with his back pressed against one of the huge floor-to-ceiling mirrors in the rehearsal room two floors down. In the meantime, Tegoshi gets deposited on the edge of one of the bathroom sinks, feet dangling down by Yamapi’s calves and toes eventually curling into the rough fabric of Yamapi’s jeans as the afternoon progresses.
In this manner, Yamapi successfully makes it through three whole days without smoking a single cigarette.
~~~~~
“Tegoshi…Tegoshi aren’t you limping a little lately?” Koyama frets during dance practice on day four, “Did you hurt your legs recently?”
Tegoshi smiles back and shakes his head. “I’m fine, Kei-chan!” he assures the oldest member sweetly. “I’m just a bit sore from all the…”
“Soccer!” Shige yells suddenly, twitching a little on his left eye, “He’s sore from all the soccer he’s been playing, so can we please move on!? I really need to learn this dance today okay!?”
Koyama’s worry immediately shifts to Shige. “Shige, you’re all red and twitchy. Are you sick? And it’s only the first day we’re learning this dance, ne.”
In the background, Yamapi obliviously marvels out loud to Ryo about how his stamina has really improved over the last few days.
Shige turns even redder when he hears this, while Tegoshi just innocently replies, “See what happens when you don’t smoke, Leader?”
~~~~~
“What is something that has impressed you lately?” A journalist asks Tegoshi during a magazine interview the next morning.
Tegoshi smiles and glances sideways at Yamapi for a brief moment before answering. “I’m really impressed with Leader’s determination!” he starts. “And his stamina, and his power, and the really intense face he makes when he comes…”
“Shige, are you okay?! What’s wrong?!” Koyama screams under his breath in the background, looking panicked when Shige suddenly starts to choke.
“…to a decision,” Tegoshi finishes in the meantime, sweetly oblivious. “He hasn’t smoked for a whole five days now!”
“And I won’t ever again,” Yamapi agrees. Pause. “Unless it’s for a movie or a drama and the director insists,” he adds, dutifully.
Shige groans and rests his head on Koyama’s shoulder as he tries to catch his breath.
~~~~~
“Maybe if you quit,” Ryo begins around a smirk to Shige later that afternoon, “your stamina will improve someday as well.” He throws Shige’s pants back at him and walks out of the bathroom whistling.
Shige sits panting on the floor in disbelief; he thinks that his stamina is fine and that it’s Ryo’s that’s abnormal.
~~~~~
“Quitting was actually pretty easy,” Yamapi crows to Jin come the end of the month, when they’re out on the balcony together during Jin’s cigarette break. This time, the smoke doesn’t bother Yamapi even a little bit. “I really think that you should try to quit too.”
Jin just looks back at him questioningly. “It is an addiction. Quitting isn’t easy and you’re lying if you say it is. Plus I look cool when I do this.”
“I’m not lying!” Yamapi protests. “Ryo-chan has a method, ne. Now I’m over my addiction and I…”
He trails off abruptly when, through the sliding glass door, he sees Tegoshi step off of the elevator and head towards the dressing room.
“I’ll be right back,” he tells Jin, completely forgetting what he’d been about to say just now as he pulls the door open and jogs down the hall without a backwards glance.
Jin watches, eyebrows arched, as Yamapi promptly grabs a laughing Tegoshi by the wrist and tugs him into one of the emergency exit stairwells before the kid can so much as chirp good morning to him.
A moment.
Jin sighs, thinking to himself that if he had to choose between manhandling one of his groupmates in a semi-public place and smoking, he would definitely choose smoking without a moment’s hesitation.
Because given the way the rest of KAT-TUN is, he’s pretty sure the cigarettes would be healthier for him anyway.
~~~~~
“Maybe I should try to quit too,” Koyama muses out loud to Massu one afternoon some weeks later, as the two of them watch Ryo, Tegoshi and Yamapi all sitting on the couch together, each of them perfectly happy and tobacco free. They might be cuddling a little too, and anything that leads to cuddles is a good idea in Koyama’s book.
“You should ask Nishikido-kun to help you then,” Massu suggests, around a mouthful of tarako gohan. “I’m sure he would!”
“You really don’t want to do that,” Shige snorts, walking back into the room after his cigarette break just in time to overhear the tail end of their conversation. Shige smells strongly of tobacco and-for reasons that Koyama hasn’t quite been able to figure out yet- Ryo’s cologne.
Koyama blinks back at Shige. “I don’t want to quit?” he asks, not getting what Shige means, “Why not? Ryo-chan’s method looks like it really works, ne! And quitting is healthy.”
Massu nods in silent agreement; his face clearly says he is wondering if Shige is sick.
Shige frowns at them both and gestures towards the couch, where Tegoshi is in the process of perching himself quite comfortably in Yamapi’s lap. Beside them, Ryo looks on with interest. “I promise you, quitting that way isn’t healthy at all,” Shige snorts.
Koyama turns to watch the scene on the couch too, and doesn’t get what horrible thing Shige is pointing at because all he sees is adorableness and member-ai. “Eh? What do you mean, Shige? I don’t get it, ne.”
Shige sighs. “All Ryo’s quitting method really does,” he explains slowly, as Tegoshi deliberately cants his hips forward just a little bit and Yamapi’s eyes promptly glaze over when he does, “is replace one addiction with another.”
Five minutes later, Yamapi tugs a laughing Tegoshi out of the room.
Koyama and Massu still don’t get it, but Shige hopes-for their sakes-that they never will.
END
EDITS PLS.