JE/NEWS- "Four Times Ryo Steals Shige’s Thunder (and One Time Shige Doesn’t Mind So Much)"
Title: Four Times Ryo Steals Shige’s Thunder (and One Time Shige Doesn’t Mind So Much)
Universe: JE/ NEWS
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (lightly RyoxShige)
Warnings/Spoilers: Crack, ooc, a whole lot of not making any sense.
Word Count: 3,145
Summary: Ryo has a way of shutting Shige up.
Dedication: Crys’s request!
A/N: LOL My RyoShige muse was shot dead by the last RyoShige I wrote. I tried to work it in a little though. I TRIED. Canon helped. LOL
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
Distribution: Just lemme know.
1.
When Shige comes over to Ryo’s place to hang out until it’s time for dinner the younger idol seems kind of nervous and idiotic; Ryo supposes offhandedly that it’s probably because he is kind of nervous and idiotic. He perfunctorily tells the nervous idiot to go ahead and take off his shoes since it’s pretty much a guarantee that they’ll have to wait for Yamapi until well past the agreed upon meeting time anyway.
Shige obediently toes off his shoes and continues not to say anything; he lingers in the entryway looking kind of lost.
Ryo rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to shoot or rape you, Jesus.”
Shige scowls. “I know that.” He takes one or two steps further into the apartment and then stops again.
Ryo goes to the kitchen and yanks open the fridge. “You want something to drink?” he offers.
“No,” Shige responds automatically, while Ryo shrugs and helps himself to a beer. He then proceeds to plop onto his couch with a tired sigh before popping open the top of his drink with the edge of his belt buckle.
Shige continues to stand around, shuffling his feet. Ryo is almost amused as he watches him. “You sure make things awkward don’t you?” he poses after a while, when he’s halfway done with his beer and feeling a little more relaxed now.
Shige bristles. “I’m not the one who's making things awkward! You are.”
Ryo arches an eyebrow. “How’s that?”
Indignant, Shige motions with his hands to Ryo, who is slouching on his couch drinking beer and not doing anything like a good host ought to. “You didn’t even ask me to sit down when we got here. Isn’t it natural that you say that sort of thing first? And when you offered me something to drink you didn’t say what the options were, so of course I’m going to decline if I don’t know what you have.”
Ryo snorts. “I see.”
Shige puts his nose in the air a little. “Exactly. So it’s actually your fault that the air in here is awkward, not mine. If it were under normal circumstances, I could talk about anything and it would be fine. I’m actually a really good conversationalist.”
Ryo finishes off his beer. “Have a seat,” he offers after a bit, and stands up to get himself a second drink. “I’ve got beer, wine, water, iced tea, and strawberry milk.”
Shige blinks, like he hadn’t been expecting that. “Uh…, then… beer’s fine,” he says eventually, and then sits down at the very edge of the couch.
Ryo nods and goes back to the kitchen to get his guest a drink, like a good host ought to.
When he comes back, Shige is doing his best to look relaxed, clearly just to prove a point.
His acting still sucks though.
But Ryo is playing the good host now so he doesn’t say anything; instead he pops open both beers-again with his belt buckle-before sitting down, right next to Shige despite the couch being very long. “Alright,” he says as he hands Shige his drink, “so start talking normally. Wow me with your conversational prowess.”
“Fine,” Shige says.
“Great,” Ryo tells him.
A moment.
And then Shige downs half his beer in one drink. Swallows. Blinks.
“Um, I really like your rug,” he manages, eventually. “Did you get it on sale?”
Ryo bursts out laughing. “That’s a normal conversation for you? What are you, a fifty-nine year old grandma?”
“That wasn’t the right answer to the start of the conversation at all!” Shige accuses him, scowling. “Stop making this difficult!”
In the meantime, Ryo grins and asks, “So, how about that weather, huh? Amazing.”
Shige sulks. “You shut up.”
2.
When Ryo gives Shige the throw rug from his apartment that Shige had complimented during the last time they’d hung out at his place, Shige is naturally, very pleased.
“Eh, what’s that you’re carrying, Shige?” Tegoshi asks brightly, when he sees Shige getting ready to go at the end of the night and notices the rather large bag tucked securely in Shige’s arms like a trophy. To be fair, Tegoshi notices the rather large, self-satisfied smile secured on Shige’s face first, and naturally supposes that it means whatever is in the bag is very precious and that Shige is anticipatorily waiting for someone to inquire as to what it is so he can explain why it is precious. Tegoshi loves Shige a lot, so he asks because he doesn’t want Shige to be disappointed if no one else does. “Is it something you won as a prize in a contest?”
True to Tegoshi’s predictions, Shige’s smile somehow manages to become even more pleased now that someone has finally asked him about the contents of his very important bag. “Well if you must know, Nishikido-kun gave me his rug today,” the law student explains to Tegoshi very plainly, except he also manages to work his natural air of elitism into his tone as well. “I got it as a present from him, since I said I liked it a lot when I went to his place last month.”
Tegoshi blinks and wonders if this is somehow a bigger deal than it sounds like, because his coursework in psychology has taught him how to read body language and other visual clues when conversing with people. Shige’s body language and other visual clues are currently telling Tegoshi that this is a very big deal, even if the words Shige is using to explain the situation are not very impressive or important-sounding to the youngest member at all. As he is a little bit confused by the discrepancy, Tegoshi supposes that asking for more details won’t hurt, especially since getting to talk about this very clearly makes Shige extremely pleased. “Is it a very important rug?” he inquires next, innocently.
The left side of Shige’s mouth curls upward more, subsequently changing his smile into more of a smirk. “For Nishikido-kun to give me something useful and expensive from his own house just because I told him liked it one time says a lot about how well we’re getting along and the way our bond is changing over time, doesn’t it?” He pauses then, to look Tegoshi over critically. “You should know how to infer this sort of thing automatically as a psychology student, shouldn’t you?”
Tegoshi blinks some more. Then smiles because he supposes it doesn’t really have to make sense so long as Shige is happy. “Is that so?”
“Yes, it is!” Shige insists. “As a psychology major your job is to analyze people’s actions and figure out the thoughts and motives behind each of them, isn’t it? Well clearly Nishikido-kun giving me this rug means that he li…”
Ryo walks back into the room then, just in time to hear the last half of the conversation. “I spilled beer all over that rug yesterday,” he says simply, as he goes to grab the bag he’d accidentally left in the corner of the dressing room earlier. It has his wallet inside.
Once he has his bag, he stops to ruffle Tegoshi’s hair on his way out again, before leaving for the night without another word.
Shige blinks.
“Eh, I think I get it now, ne,” Tegoshi announces sweetly, after a moment. Then he grabs his own bag and moves to head out the door as well. “See you tomorrow, Shige! Enjoy your present, ne. I’m glad it made you happy.”
He leaves Shige to stare down at the bag in his arms and wonder what the hell that was supposed to mean.
3.
They start arguing about it halfway through the meal. “Look, I’ll pay; it’s fine,” Shige tells Koyama again, and cites that it’s only fair because Koyama paid for everyone’s curry earlier that week during rehearsals (via prank).
“It’s okay! Since Shige’s younger I should be the one to do it, right?” Koyama argues in reply, and moves to break out his wallet and count his bills right then and there.
“That argument has never flown before!” Shige reminds him hotly. “The last time it was just the two of us eating like this, you were the one telling me I shouldn’t use my age as an excuse to slack!”
Koyama mibbles for a bit, when he does indeed recall that conversation (he may have been a little bit drunk). Across from them, Ryo wordlessly finishes cooking and eating the last of his shabu shabu happily.
“I bet you just want to try and act cool because Nishikido-kun is here,” Shige accuses his best friend next, when he begins to catch on to Koyama’s game and why he’s acting all strange and charitable today. The fact that it may or may not be the exact same game Shige is currently playing at right now is entirely irreverent to the point.
“What? No!” Koyama insists. “Can’t I just want to take care of my members?”
“Then do us a favor by learning to take care of yourself first,” Shige retorts, derisively.
Meanwhile, across the table, Ryo burps once he’s finished the last of the food and moves to excuse himself to the bathroom. “You idiots are giving me indigestion,” he notes absently, as he slides out of the booth around Koyama and pads off further into the restaurant.
“Ah, see, all this arguing made the harmony go down!” Koyama frets under his breath, once Ryo is gone.
“Well then you should stop the arguing and agree to let me pay before the whole thing is ruined simply because you’re being stubborn,” Shige rationalizes back, and expertly corners Koyama with his own words in the process. “Taking care of your members also means reading the atmosphere, doesn’t it? Not everything involves money, you know.”
Koyama looks at him, all sad-eyed.
Shige is now impervious to that attack. It’s been more than eight years, after all. “Do you really want to be the reason why Nishikido-kun can’t enjoy the rest of the night out with us? What if he never wants to eat with us again after this?”
Koyama’s sad eyes get sadder-eyed. “That’s true, ne.”
Shige grins. “Good. Then it’s settled. I’m paying.”
Koyama sighs in defeat. “Can I pay next time?” he asks quietly, looking hopeful.
Shige makes a mental note to remember those words too, since the next time will probably just be the two of them eating together again, as per usual. “Sure,” he tells his friend, magnanimously. Koyama visibly cheers up when he acquiesces.
That thus taken care of, Shige gets up to go to the front and take care of the bill before Ryo returns from the bathroom. It’s the cool thing to do, after all.
Except that when he hands the maitre'd his credit card, the maitre'd automatically hands it back. “Your bill has already been taken care of,” he informs Shige, with a large smile and a bow.
Shige stares. When he finally figures it out, he frowns and storms back to their table.
Where Ryo is already waiting for him, absently running a toothpick between his teeth while Koyama enjoys one of the three cups of melon sorbet currently sitting on the table in front of them.
Shige points. “We didn’t talk about this possibility at all just now!” he complains to Ryo, instinctively. “That’s not fair!”
Ryo just shrugs one shoulder absently. “What can I say, I’m a man of action. Now sit down, eat your dessert, and be thankful, stupid.”
Shige twitches, while Koyama is an idiot and looks incredibly impressed with the manly way in which Ryo settles things.
“Ryo-chan is so cool,” Koyama flutters, with hearts in his eyes and sorbet in his mouth.
Shige just looks like he wants to argue more about why this is unfair.
But then Ryo corners him by sliding a helping of sorbet in his direction. “I got this especially for you,” he informs Shige, sweetly.
Shige’s mouth works.
“Isn’t Ryo-chan nice?” Koyama sparkles.
Shige scowls and plops back into his seat.
He grudgingly enjoys his refreshing frozen treat.
4.
After they each submit their part of the lyrics for the new song they are going to perform at their Dome concert this year Yamapi charges each of them to stop for a while and think up appropriate titles for the piece so that they can officially slide it into the set list later in the year.
Shige takes the responsibility very seriously because after looking at everyone’s lyrics and remembering the shy embarrassment each of them had felt sharing them with one another, he feels that their efforts should be rewarded with an appropriately epic and touching namesake.
Especially because he is definitely not letting Koyama call it NEWS no Member-Ai like he’d suggested to Shige over the phone yesterday.
As such Shige spends the better part of two days brainstorming ideas; at first he looks up words in French and Italian and Venetian and Spanish because somehow he wants the significance of using a romance language to subtly emphasize the fact that all NEWS members are clearly involved in a kind of platonic romance with each other and their audience, and that even if they speak different languages the root of the feeling is still the same.
After that he thinks that maybe Japanese is best because that is how they really communicate with each other and so he looks up historical references to stars, encounters, and journeys, examining legends having to do with such matters (including a long segue into the mythology of Journey to the West). From there the possibilities branch out even further, until he is heavily immersed in various religious and philosophical texts, studying Shinto, Taoist, and Zen Buddhist interpretations of fate and inevitability, simplicity and existence, death, and rebirth, creation and the cosmos.
By the time they’re supposed to meet to talk about the song again, Shige has nearly ten pages of possible titles, all annotated with points that came up during the course of his research and personal reflections on significance, a character’s etymology, or what line of the lyrics he feels are emphasized by certain choices.
“Alright,” Yamapi starts, once they’re all seated around the dressing room, “So what ideas have you all come up with so far, ne?”
Shige waits for a moment because even though he hardly expects any of the others to have come up with anything stupendous, he feels it’s the polite thing to do by giving them a chance to voice their thoughts before he blows them out of the water with his ideas.
After a beat, when no one speaks up right away, Shige takes a deep breath. “I…”
And gets interrupted by Ryo.
“How about Share?” Ryo suggests offhandedly, like he’d come up with that just now.
The others blink. “Eh, that’s really good ne,” Koyama starts first, in all enthusiasm. “It’s pure, right? It has the feeling that it wouldn’t be bogged down by anything unnecessary. Simple!”
Massu nods. “That way it will be easy for the audience members to remember it afterwards, I think.”
“Un, and it still manages to get the theme and the message across really clearly,” Yamapi agrees.
“Without being overly vague or making any of the actual lyrics sound redundant either,” Tegoshi poses as well, clearly pleased. “Ryo-tan is so good at this, ne.”
Everyone turns to Shige for the final verdict.
Who sighs and flips his notebook closed. “Share works,” he admits helplessly after a moment, and kind of hates that he’s not just saying that.
Ryo grins.
5.
During the first week run of his Seminar stage play, Shige gets a lot of praise from the newspapers and stage critics about how unexpectedly smooth his love scenes look. Clearly they did not expect that from a Johnny, all things considered.
“I didn’t think he could do it at first either, but it was really surprisingly sexy, ne,” Koyama is quoted on Mezamashi later, and makes Shige’s face go absolutely red when it gets replayed over and over and over again during the course of the morning of the second day.
“Shige is really handsome, so when I went to watch him do those kinds of things, my heart started beating really fast!” Tegoshi sparkles shamelessly during his interview for the upcoming NEWS activities section of Myojo.
“I definitely learned a few things watching him do love scenes, ne! I’ll keep them in mind for my next drama!” Yamapi writes in his nikki enthusiastically, and mortifies Shige for life when he reads it (even as he can’t help but be pleased at the same time).
“Since Koyama went first he told me to bring an uchiwa with me,” Duet journalists quote from Massu during the next group photoshoot. “I didn’t get it at first, but as the show went on I found I had to fan myself a lot, ne.” He smiles shyly, and Shige groans behind his hands to hide his answering smile.
Really, the only one with any criticisms is Ryo.
“Eh, he was okay,” Ryo says about it to the rest of the group, while they’re in the dressing room one afternoon. “I think I could have done it better, though.”
Shige snorts automatically when he hears that, because he still remembers a time not so long ago when Ryo couldn’t even look Toda Erika in the eye just to talk to her normally. Imagining Ryo lip locked with four different women in the course of two hours while managing to stay completely cool and composed doesn’t hit Shige as a possibility in light of that. “I guess we’ll just have to wait for your sex play next and see how good you are when it happens, right? Then you can give me pointers afterwards,” Shige drawls sarcastically in response to Ryo’s jab, right before he finishes fixing his hair in the mirror and moves to follow the others as they shuffle out to go get their photos for the next CD jacket taken.
Except that when he stands up to follow he can’t, because he’s suddenly getting pushed back down into the chair instead and Ryo is somehow, unbelievably, climbing right into his lap. “You sucked so bad I already have plenty pointers to give you now,” the older idol tells him flatly, voice low, eyes challenging.
Shige inexplicably feels his face starting to get hot. “Um… shouldn’t we follow the guys to the shoot?”
Ryo’s response is to pinch Shige in the side to keep the focus, just a little bit vicious as he tilts his head and leans in close. “I’m only going to show this to you once, so pay attention, rookie.”
A few minutes later, Shige grudgingly supposes that maybe there are still a few things he could stand to improve on after all.
END
EDITS IT IS SO SO LATE.
Universe: JE/ NEWS
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (lightly RyoxShige)
Warnings/Spoilers: Crack, ooc, a whole lot of not making any sense.
Word Count: 3,145
Summary: Ryo has a way of shutting Shige up.
Dedication: Crys’s request!
A/N: LOL My RyoShige muse was shot dead by the last RyoShige I wrote. I tried to work it in a little though. I TRIED. Canon helped. LOL
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
Distribution: Just lemme know.
1.
When Shige comes over to Ryo’s place to hang out until it’s time for dinner the younger idol seems kind of nervous and idiotic; Ryo supposes offhandedly that it’s probably because he is kind of nervous and idiotic. He perfunctorily tells the nervous idiot to go ahead and take off his shoes since it’s pretty much a guarantee that they’ll have to wait for Yamapi until well past the agreed upon meeting time anyway.
Shige obediently toes off his shoes and continues not to say anything; he lingers in the entryway looking kind of lost.
Ryo rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to shoot or rape you, Jesus.”
Shige scowls. “I know that.” He takes one or two steps further into the apartment and then stops again.
Ryo goes to the kitchen and yanks open the fridge. “You want something to drink?” he offers.
“No,” Shige responds automatically, while Ryo shrugs and helps himself to a beer. He then proceeds to plop onto his couch with a tired sigh before popping open the top of his drink with the edge of his belt buckle.
Shige continues to stand around, shuffling his feet. Ryo is almost amused as he watches him. “You sure make things awkward don’t you?” he poses after a while, when he’s halfway done with his beer and feeling a little more relaxed now.
Shige bristles. “I’m not the one who's making things awkward! You are.”
Ryo arches an eyebrow. “How’s that?”
Indignant, Shige motions with his hands to Ryo, who is slouching on his couch drinking beer and not doing anything like a good host ought to. “You didn’t even ask me to sit down when we got here. Isn’t it natural that you say that sort of thing first? And when you offered me something to drink you didn’t say what the options were, so of course I’m going to decline if I don’t know what you have.”
Ryo snorts. “I see.”
Shige puts his nose in the air a little. “Exactly. So it’s actually your fault that the air in here is awkward, not mine. If it were under normal circumstances, I could talk about anything and it would be fine. I’m actually a really good conversationalist.”
Ryo finishes off his beer. “Have a seat,” he offers after a bit, and stands up to get himself a second drink. “I’ve got beer, wine, water, iced tea, and strawberry milk.”
Shige blinks, like he hadn’t been expecting that. “Uh…, then… beer’s fine,” he says eventually, and then sits down at the very edge of the couch.
Ryo nods and goes back to the kitchen to get his guest a drink, like a good host ought to.
When he comes back, Shige is doing his best to look relaxed, clearly just to prove a point.
His acting still sucks though.
But Ryo is playing the good host now so he doesn’t say anything; instead he pops open both beers-again with his belt buckle-before sitting down, right next to Shige despite the couch being very long. “Alright,” he says as he hands Shige his drink, “so start talking normally. Wow me with your conversational prowess.”
“Fine,” Shige says.
“Great,” Ryo tells him.
A moment.
And then Shige downs half his beer in one drink. Swallows. Blinks.
“Um, I really like your rug,” he manages, eventually. “Did you get it on sale?”
Ryo bursts out laughing. “That’s a normal conversation for you? What are you, a fifty-nine year old grandma?”
“That wasn’t the right answer to the start of the conversation at all!” Shige accuses him, scowling. “Stop making this difficult!”
In the meantime, Ryo grins and asks, “So, how about that weather, huh? Amazing.”
Shige sulks. “You shut up.”
2.
When Ryo gives Shige the throw rug from his apartment that Shige had complimented during the last time they’d hung out at his place, Shige is naturally, very pleased.
“Eh, what’s that you’re carrying, Shige?” Tegoshi asks brightly, when he sees Shige getting ready to go at the end of the night and notices the rather large bag tucked securely in Shige’s arms like a trophy. To be fair, Tegoshi notices the rather large, self-satisfied smile secured on Shige’s face first, and naturally supposes that it means whatever is in the bag is very precious and that Shige is anticipatorily waiting for someone to inquire as to what it is so he can explain why it is precious. Tegoshi loves Shige a lot, so he asks because he doesn’t want Shige to be disappointed if no one else does. “Is it something you won as a prize in a contest?”
True to Tegoshi’s predictions, Shige’s smile somehow manages to become even more pleased now that someone has finally asked him about the contents of his very important bag. “Well if you must know, Nishikido-kun gave me his rug today,” the law student explains to Tegoshi very plainly, except he also manages to work his natural air of elitism into his tone as well. “I got it as a present from him, since I said I liked it a lot when I went to his place last month.”
Tegoshi blinks and wonders if this is somehow a bigger deal than it sounds like, because his coursework in psychology has taught him how to read body language and other visual clues when conversing with people. Shige’s body language and other visual clues are currently telling Tegoshi that this is a very big deal, even if the words Shige is using to explain the situation are not very impressive or important-sounding to the youngest member at all. As he is a little bit confused by the discrepancy, Tegoshi supposes that asking for more details won’t hurt, especially since getting to talk about this very clearly makes Shige extremely pleased. “Is it a very important rug?” he inquires next, innocently.
The left side of Shige’s mouth curls upward more, subsequently changing his smile into more of a smirk. “For Nishikido-kun to give me something useful and expensive from his own house just because I told him liked it one time says a lot about how well we’re getting along and the way our bond is changing over time, doesn’t it?” He pauses then, to look Tegoshi over critically. “You should know how to infer this sort of thing automatically as a psychology student, shouldn’t you?”
Tegoshi blinks some more. Then smiles because he supposes it doesn’t really have to make sense so long as Shige is happy. “Is that so?”
“Yes, it is!” Shige insists. “As a psychology major your job is to analyze people’s actions and figure out the thoughts and motives behind each of them, isn’t it? Well clearly Nishikido-kun giving me this rug means that he li…”
Ryo walks back into the room then, just in time to hear the last half of the conversation. “I spilled beer all over that rug yesterday,” he says simply, as he goes to grab the bag he’d accidentally left in the corner of the dressing room earlier. It has his wallet inside.
Once he has his bag, he stops to ruffle Tegoshi’s hair on his way out again, before leaving for the night without another word.
Shige blinks.
“Eh, I think I get it now, ne,” Tegoshi announces sweetly, after a moment. Then he grabs his own bag and moves to head out the door as well. “See you tomorrow, Shige! Enjoy your present, ne. I’m glad it made you happy.”
He leaves Shige to stare down at the bag in his arms and wonder what the hell that was supposed to mean.
3.
They start arguing about it halfway through the meal. “Look, I’ll pay; it’s fine,” Shige tells Koyama again, and cites that it’s only fair because Koyama paid for everyone’s curry earlier that week during rehearsals (via prank).
“It’s okay! Since Shige’s younger I should be the one to do it, right?” Koyama argues in reply, and moves to break out his wallet and count his bills right then and there.
“That argument has never flown before!” Shige reminds him hotly. “The last time it was just the two of us eating like this, you were the one telling me I shouldn’t use my age as an excuse to slack!”
Koyama mibbles for a bit, when he does indeed recall that conversation (he may have been a little bit drunk). Across from them, Ryo wordlessly finishes cooking and eating the last of his shabu shabu happily.
“I bet you just want to try and act cool because Nishikido-kun is here,” Shige accuses his best friend next, when he begins to catch on to Koyama’s game and why he’s acting all strange and charitable today. The fact that it may or may not be the exact same game Shige is currently playing at right now is entirely irreverent to the point.
“What? No!” Koyama insists. “Can’t I just want to take care of my members?”
“Then do us a favor by learning to take care of yourself first,” Shige retorts, derisively.
Meanwhile, across the table, Ryo burps once he’s finished the last of the food and moves to excuse himself to the bathroom. “You idiots are giving me indigestion,” he notes absently, as he slides out of the booth around Koyama and pads off further into the restaurant.
“Ah, see, all this arguing made the harmony go down!” Koyama frets under his breath, once Ryo is gone.
“Well then you should stop the arguing and agree to let me pay before the whole thing is ruined simply because you’re being stubborn,” Shige rationalizes back, and expertly corners Koyama with his own words in the process. “Taking care of your members also means reading the atmosphere, doesn’t it? Not everything involves money, you know.”
Koyama looks at him, all sad-eyed.
Shige is now impervious to that attack. It’s been more than eight years, after all. “Do you really want to be the reason why Nishikido-kun can’t enjoy the rest of the night out with us? What if he never wants to eat with us again after this?”
Koyama’s sad eyes get sadder-eyed. “That’s true, ne.”
Shige grins. “Good. Then it’s settled. I’m paying.”
Koyama sighs in defeat. “Can I pay next time?” he asks quietly, looking hopeful.
Shige makes a mental note to remember those words too, since the next time will probably just be the two of them eating together again, as per usual. “Sure,” he tells his friend, magnanimously. Koyama visibly cheers up when he acquiesces.
That thus taken care of, Shige gets up to go to the front and take care of the bill before Ryo returns from the bathroom. It’s the cool thing to do, after all.
Except that when he hands the maitre'd his credit card, the maitre'd automatically hands it back. “Your bill has already been taken care of,” he informs Shige, with a large smile and a bow.
Shige stares. When he finally figures it out, he frowns and storms back to their table.
Where Ryo is already waiting for him, absently running a toothpick between his teeth while Koyama enjoys one of the three cups of melon sorbet currently sitting on the table in front of them.
Shige points. “We didn’t talk about this possibility at all just now!” he complains to Ryo, instinctively. “That’s not fair!”
Ryo just shrugs one shoulder absently. “What can I say, I’m a man of action. Now sit down, eat your dessert, and be thankful, stupid.”
Shige twitches, while Koyama is an idiot and looks incredibly impressed with the manly way in which Ryo settles things.
“Ryo-chan is so cool,” Koyama flutters, with hearts in his eyes and sorbet in his mouth.
Shige just looks like he wants to argue more about why this is unfair.
But then Ryo corners him by sliding a helping of sorbet in his direction. “I got this especially for you,” he informs Shige, sweetly.
Shige’s mouth works.
“Isn’t Ryo-chan nice?” Koyama sparkles.
Shige scowls and plops back into his seat.
He grudgingly enjoys his refreshing frozen treat.
4.
After they each submit their part of the lyrics for the new song they are going to perform at their Dome concert this year Yamapi charges each of them to stop for a while and think up appropriate titles for the piece so that they can officially slide it into the set list later in the year.
Shige takes the responsibility very seriously because after looking at everyone’s lyrics and remembering the shy embarrassment each of them had felt sharing them with one another, he feels that their efforts should be rewarded with an appropriately epic and touching namesake.
Especially because he is definitely not letting Koyama call it NEWS no Member-Ai like he’d suggested to Shige over the phone yesterday.
As such Shige spends the better part of two days brainstorming ideas; at first he looks up words in French and Italian and Venetian and Spanish because somehow he wants the significance of using a romance language to subtly emphasize the fact that all NEWS members are clearly involved in a kind of platonic romance with each other and their audience, and that even if they speak different languages the root of the feeling is still the same.
After that he thinks that maybe Japanese is best because that is how they really communicate with each other and so he looks up historical references to stars, encounters, and journeys, examining legends having to do with such matters (including a long segue into the mythology of Journey to the West). From there the possibilities branch out even further, until he is heavily immersed in various religious and philosophical texts, studying Shinto, Taoist, and Zen Buddhist interpretations of fate and inevitability, simplicity and existence, death, and rebirth, creation and the cosmos.
By the time they’re supposed to meet to talk about the song again, Shige has nearly ten pages of possible titles, all annotated with points that came up during the course of his research and personal reflections on significance, a character’s etymology, or what line of the lyrics he feels are emphasized by certain choices.
“Alright,” Yamapi starts, once they’re all seated around the dressing room, “So what ideas have you all come up with so far, ne?”
Shige waits for a moment because even though he hardly expects any of the others to have come up with anything stupendous, he feels it’s the polite thing to do by giving them a chance to voice their thoughts before he blows them out of the water with his ideas.
After a beat, when no one speaks up right away, Shige takes a deep breath. “I…”
And gets interrupted by Ryo.
“How about Share?” Ryo suggests offhandedly, like he’d come up with that just now.
The others blink. “Eh, that’s really good ne,” Koyama starts first, in all enthusiasm. “It’s pure, right? It has the feeling that it wouldn’t be bogged down by anything unnecessary. Simple!”
Massu nods. “That way it will be easy for the audience members to remember it afterwards, I think.”
“Un, and it still manages to get the theme and the message across really clearly,” Yamapi agrees.
“Without being overly vague or making any of the actual lyrics sound redundant either,” Tegoshi poses as well, clearly pleased. “Ryo-tan is so good at this, ne.”
Everyone turns to Shige for the final verdict.
Who sighs and flips his notebook closed. “Share works,” he admits helplessly after a moment, and kind of hates that he’s not just saying that.
Ryo grins.
5.
During the first week run of his Seminar stage play, Shige gets a lot of praise from the newspapers and stage critics about how unexpectedly smooth his love scenes look. Clearly they did not expect that from a Johnny, all things considered.
“I didn’t think he could do it at first either, but it was really surprisingly sexy, ne,” Koyama is quoted on Mezamashi later, and makes Shige’s face go absolutely red when it gets replayed over and over and over again during the course of the morning of the second day.
“Shige is really handsome, so when I went to watch him do those kinds of things, my heart started beating really fast!” Tegoshi sparkles shamelessly during his interview for the upcoming NEWS activities section of Myojo.
“I definitely learned a few things watching him do love scenes, ne! I’ll keep them in mind for my next drama!” Yamapi writes in his nikki enthusiastically, and mortifies Shige for life when he reads it (even as he can’t help but be pleased at the same time).
“Since Koyama went first he told me to bring an uchiwa with me,” Duet journalists quote from Massu during the next group photoshoot. “I didn’t get it at first, but as the show went on I found I had to fan myself a lot, ne.” He smiles shyly, and Shige groans behind his hands to hide his answering smile.
Really, the only one with any criticisms is Ryo.
“Eh, he was okay,” Ryo says about it to the rest of the group, while they’re in the dressing room one afternoon. “I think I could have done it better, though.”
Shige snorts automatically when he hears that, because he still remembers a time not so long ago when Ryo couldn’t even look Toda Erika in the eye just to talk to her normally. Imagining Ryo lip locked with four different women in the course of two hours while managing to stay completely cool and composed doesn’t hit Shige as a possibility in light of that. “I guess we’ll just have to wait for your sex play next and see how good you are when it happens, right? Then you can give me pointers afterwards,” Shige drawls sarcastically in response to Ryo’s jab, right before he finishes fixing his hair in the mirror and moves to follow the others as they shuffle out to go get their photos for the next CD jacket taken.
Except that when he stands up to follow he can’t, because he’s suddenly getting pushed back down into the chair instead and Ryo is somehow, unbelievably, climbing right into his lap. “You sucked so bad I already have plenty pointers to give you now,” the older idol tells him flatly, voice low, eyes challenging.
Shige inexplicably feels his face starting to get hot. “Um… shouldn’t we follow the guys to the shoot?”
Ryo’s response is to pinch Shige in the side to keep the focus, just a little bit vicious as he tilts his head and leans in close. “I’m only going to show this to you once, so pay attention, rookie.”
A few minutes later, Shige grudgingly supposes that maybe there are still a few things he could stand to improve on after all.
END
EDITS IT IS SO SO LATE.