JE/NEWS- "Safe Place"
Title: Safe Place
Universe: JE/NEWS/Yamapi
Theme/Topic: Pi is having a fretting and worrying phase and Tego tries to cheer him up.
Rating: G
Character/Pairing/s: NEWS (Tego and Pi focus, with light Tegopi)
Spoilers/Warnings: Angst? IDK.
Word Count: 2,965
Summary: When the people in it matter more than the name of the group.
Dedication: jo_lasalle’s request for winning my fandom_helps auction! Hope you enjoy this, and thanks for your bid and donation!
A/N: I have not written JE in a long time it feels like? LOL I’m sorry this came out more serious business than your request said, jo_lasalle! I tried fitting your story into real time line and it seems like this is the only thing in my mind NEWS related right now. Orz.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
It is not often that Yamapi’s perfect idol veneer is allowed to show any cracks on the surface, and on the rare occasion when it does happen, it is usually only when he is alone, or as close to alone as someone like him can get at any one given time.
The members of NEWS, after so many years essentially living in each other’s professional pockets, are more or less at a point in their lives where their being around Yamapi (minus anything that can take photographic evidence of his less composed moments, of course) really is as good as being alone to him. The only difference is that they’re also together, so it’s kind of like being alone without being lonely.
At least, this is what Yamapi has attempted to communicate to them on a few occasions, the first of which had been a drunken Christmas party one year, after the tour documentary cameras had been put away and the members were subsequently left to their own devices for the night, happily nursing the remainder of the celebratory cake and a few bottles of surprisingly good champagne.
“Being with you guys is just like being by myself,” Yamapi had hiccupped at random, looking content and unglamorously drunk on the couch between Koyama and Ryo. He might have been drooling a little off to one side as well, though no one said or did anything about it except Koyama, who had laughed a hiccupy, high-pitched little laugh before shaking his head and dabbing the drool away from Yamapi’s mouth for him.
“I don’t know if that’s a compliment,” Shige had slurred in response from Koyama’s other shoulder, infinitely less glamorous in his own drunkenness than Yamapi could ever hope to be. “Do you think we’re invisible or something, Yamashita-kun?”
“It is a compliment! I think,” Yamapi had assured him, and reached around Koyama to add a hearty, perhaps too enthusiastic club to Shige’s back as he did. “Being with NEWS is the same as being home. Being safe. That’s what I mean, ne.”
Koyama had patted Yamapi’s head with one hand and Shige’s aching back with the other. “That’s because we’re friends,” the oldest member felt the need to intone wisely, if a bit blearily. After that, Ryo had irrevocably ruined the moment by tugging on Massu’s hair and demanding all of the strawberries on the last slice of Massu’s Christmas cake.
“Maybe not friends. Maybe more like family,” Koyama had corrected then, as Massu and Ryo started to squabble like siblings. Ryo ended up with all the strawberries after all, but Massu retaliated by taking the rest of his champagne while he was busy with the fruit.
Family, Tegoshi remembers thinking around his own bubbly drunkenness, sounded just about right.
They’d all trudged back into the quiet of their individual rooms and collapsed into slumber not long after that, Christmas presents from one another clutched in their arms and far too much alcohol in their blood. And despite slight hangovers and weariness the next morning, they’d woken up promptly at six and went downstairs to work together, the same as always. No one had acted any differently towards the other members after that, but in Tegoshi’s memory, that is probably the exact moment when he’d known something had changed. At the time, he didn’t know what, and hadn’t wanted to bother figuring it out either, mostly because they had tour things to do and audiences to please.
Sometime afterward though, he will realize that what had changed with Yamapi’s quiet, drunken declaration was only everything. Because safe, while a pleasant enough word to most, has never been-and probably never will be-considered an entirely positive thing in the entertainment industry. And family, while full of people to be loved and cherished, does not simultaneously mean people who you want to spend every waking hour with as well.
As it turns out, sometimes dreams are worth more than any of these things.
~~~~~
While flattered that he can be considered one of the few people allowed to see Yamapi in moments where the mega-idol strays completely outside the shell of his entertainer persona, Tegoshi also considers it a strange sort of burden, because he can no longer consider himself shielded from their group leader’s more intense emotions, of which he has in droves but rarely shows to anyone outside of those he spends the most time with.
Now that NEWS is close-is considered a safe place-it has become increasingly obvious that safe doesn’t necessarily mean happy to Yamapi. And Tegoshi, now seeing himself more than just a coworker, and sometimes, in his secret heart of hearts, even more than just a family member, is discovering that he considers Yamapi’s happiness potentially more important than the whole of NEWS’s success. It is a frightening idea that he tries to ignore as often as possible because isn’t success what they’re all here for, first and foremost? Is one person’s discontent worth tearing down an entire world for?
But fight the feeling as he may, Tegoshi finds that it is not a battle he can see himself winning in the long run, not with his heart so full of Yamapi and the others in the way he knows it is. And so, on what one might call a fateful afternoon, it all comes to head when Tegoshi walks in to work for a photoshoot and sees Yamapi sitting in the dressing room alone, staring contemplatively at a bottle of protein jelly with a mixture of frustration and bittersweet resignation on his face.
“Yamashita-kun,” he begins after a moment, brow furrowed with concern, “is something wrong?” Tegoshi instantly wants to cheer his group leader up at whatever cost, even if it means whisking him away from this job to go spend an hour at the gym or two hours at the bar. The thought is completely irresponsible and not like him at all, but then again, it has always been said that love is an irrational emotion.
As he entertains these thoughts, Yamapi simply looks back at him, eyes tired and droopy, hair and makeup not yet fixed for him after his hasty roll into the studio five minutes earlier. “I’m just thinking,” he admits after a beat, quietly. He pokes listlessly at the protein jelly as if he’s waiting for it to answer all the questions in the universe for him.
Even more concerned now, Tegoshi sits down next to Yamapi and looks at the little drink pouch as well. “About what? Lunch?” he jokes, trying to urge a smile out of the older idol. It doesn’t work.
“About work,” Yamapi answers. It is a vague, predictable answer. There are very few times when Yamapi is not thinking about work, and those times usually involve when he is thinking about food or thinking about Jin.
Tegoshi leans his shoulder against Yamapi’s a little bit on the couch, giving his friend a gentle nudge. When they touch, he thinks that Yamapi feels like metal beside him, solid and unyielding, almost inhuman for how rigidly he sits. He suddenly flashes back to 2003 and the cool, unapproachable idol who existed in the stratosphere above everyone else. It is simultaneously an awesome image and an unpleasant memory. “What about work is making you think so seriously?” Tegoshi pushes with a little poke to Yamapi’s bicep, not caring that he’s being annoying or nosy. It feels like something he has to have the answer to. It feels important.
Yamapi lets out a long, weary sort of sigh, as if he knows that Tegoshi won’t give up pestering him. Koyama always says Tegoshi is the spoiled little brother who won’t go away until he gets what he wants. Tegoshi has never argued that it’s untrue.
“It’s just…” Yamapi begins, slightly hesitant and with a heart that sounds about a million miles away right now, “I want to be a superstar.” The unconscious, “And I can’t like this, right here,” need not be said to be felt. Tegoshi’s insides suddenly feel cold.
He finds himself leaning into the other idol a little more at that, like maybe if he gets closer, it will bring Yamapi back from wherever it is he really is right now and stave off the chill suddenly building in his bones. Part of him knows that won’t really work, but it doesn’t stop him from trying. “You’re already a superstar, aren’t you?” he hedges. To be fair, to him, Yamapi has always been a superstar. To him, Yamapi will never be anything less than one.
Yamapi glances sideways at him then, and the expression on the older idol’s face tells Tegoshi that Yamapi considers himself about as far away from superstardom as one can get. His tired eyes are full of silent longing, and underneath everything else, a quietly burning determination that no amount of weariness or fretfulness or guilt can smother. Under the weight of that look, Tegoshi suddenly feels like he’s part of what’s been holding Yamapi back from achieving his dreams. Maybe he is in a way, though he certainly never intended to be. NEWS was certainly never designed to produce superstars.
Tegoshi’s stomach feels mysteriously tight as he rests his cheek against Yamapi’s shoulder and starts to mull over these revelations. He suddenly feels a little bitter, a little bit cranky. These are burdens he never wanted-never asked for-and that he never would have had to carry six years ago, back when Yamapi was as much NEWS’s idol as he was the fans’. Part of Tegoshi almost wants to go back to the simplicity of that time right now, so that he doesn’t have to worry about anything because Yamapi will do the worrying for him.
But that’s not fair-was never fair- and it certainly isn’t who he is anymore.
And more than that, the larger part of himself, the part that is now more Yamapi’s friend than it is NEWS’s youngest member, rails violently at the thought of abandoning Yamapi’s heart to these burdens alone. Especially when he knows how truly heavy they are now. Especially when he knows that they are the kind of burdens that kill dreams. Hasn’t NEWS’s message always been about following dreams?
And so, before he can stop himself, before he can think, Tegoshi finds himself saying, “If Yamashita-kun wants to be a superstar, then he should be a superstar.”
Yamapi chuckles a little at that, humorlessly. “It’s not that easy, ne. What if it costs too much?”
Tegoshi plows on despite his stomach twisting itself up into a knot, screaming at him to stop what he’s doing right now. Luckily he’s always been the most stubborn of the six of them, the one least willing to listen to orders even if they come from himself. “It won’t cost too much,” he says despite everything, and with complete confidence.
Yamapi hesitates. Then, “What if…what if it means breaking the me right now down to nothing and starting all over again?”
Tegoshi shrugs a little, even as he feels his own heart shatter in time with the rolling tightness in his stomach. Outside, he likes to think he looks undefeatable. “We’ve both done it before,” he says brightly, full of strained nonchalance even as he buries closer into Yamapi’s side on the couch, almost unconsciously. “We’ve already remade ourselves over and over again a hundred times, ne.”
Tegoshi sees it when Yamapi sets his jaw in that moment and a faint but undeniably brilliant light finally returns to his eyes. It burns with epiphany, maybe. “We have, haven’t we?” he echoes. “NEWS stands up again, no matter what happened before.”
No matter who they’ve lost.
Tegoshi feels his throat clench up a little now, in league with his stomach and his broken heart, as if parts of him are failing with each and every forward step Yamapi takes away from him. He thinks that this must have been exactly how his parents felt when he’d told them he was thinking of moving out. He remembers how his mother had cried nonstop for hours, how his grandmother had yelled at him for being an ungrateful brat, and how his father just hadn’t been able to speak to him at all for an entire week.
In the end though, they’d all helped him pack up and move his boxes. Each of them had hugged him on the way out the door. He remembers that when he’d left home that day, he did it knowing he’d always have a place to return to, if he ever wanted it. Somewhere safe to go when everything was said and done and he was full with enough dreams to last a lifetime.
He looks at Yamapi now and thinks he knows what it feels like to be the one who is left behind this time.
But he forces himself to go around this bereft feeling in his heart all the same, even if all he wants to do is cry like his mother or yell like his grandmother or not say anything at all like his father. “We’re good at it rebuilding aren’t we? The six of us, that is,” he jokes, a bit lamely. “NEWS is full of professionals at new starts by now.”
Yamapi takes a deep, slow breath as he considers this. And then, after a minute that feels like a thousand, Tegoshi feels the hard line of Yamapi’s side suddenly give against him, the older boy going soft and relaxed and warm again, as if he had been holding his own humanity back in the moments prior. “We are professionals,” he agrees softly, and turns to look at Tegoshi with a gentle hope in his eyes. “And we’re also a family, right?”
“Your safe place,” Tegoshi answers firmly. “You told us so yourself, ne.”
Yamapi huffs a quiet sound of mirth and leans back into the couch and more deeply into Tegoshi. “Okay,” he says, and looks as if he feels physically lighter somehow as well. “Okay.”
Tegoshi doesn’t say anything else after that. He sits quietly at Yamapi’s side as the others slowly start to trickle in for work as well, wondering if he should worry about the possibility of NEWS being torn to pieces all over again, and his willing-almost eager-part in helping it all along.
But then he feels Yamapi’s warmth along his arm-human and relaxed and easy-and can’t find it in him to regret it just yet, not completely anyway.
NEWS has always been important to him. He knows now though, that it’s because of the members more than the name, because of the dreams more than the reality. The dreams have always been bigger than any of them, have always given them something to reach for rather than something to hold on to.
Tegoshi realizes he can’t feel bad about letting go of someone if that means they can fly a little closer to their dreams because of it.
Fly too high with NEWS, he thinks around a small sigh, and closes his eyes. Yamapi’s shoulder is solid and reassuring beside him.
~~~~~
Yamapi tells the rest of NEWS he’s planning on leaving-for good-a few weeks later. Ryo hears that and slams a few doors and stalks around for a bit, before retreating to god knows where and answering all the others’ mails/messages/texts with nothing but a terse, “I need to think.” For months. Apparently Yamapi isn’t the only one who has been feeling the weight of responsibility pulling him down.
Tegoshi isn’t surprised about any of it. Neither, it seems, are the others. Not really, anyway. But just because he isn’t surprised doesn’t mean he knows exactly how he feels about it at all just yet. It’s too much to sort through right away.
All he does know so far is that he hopes Yamapi can turn safe into happy again, even if it means having to go out and do it in a new place all on his own, starting from scratch. Even if it means tearing down their group and their work all over again. He hopes Yamapi can chase his dreams without feeling the compulsion to always look back over his shoulder at them. He hopes Ryo can too.
At the final meeting between the six of them sometime later, Shige and Ryo shout at everyone, Massu and Koyama can’t stop crying, and Tegoshi has trouble speaking to anyone at all the whole five hours. It reminds Tegoshi exactly of his family. He knows it is exactly like his family because it is his family.
But eventually, when they are deep into the wee morning hours of the following day, they all find themselves exhausted and inexplicably crushed into a giant, ridiculous hug in the center of the room, wishing each other the best in between streams of tears and snot. Because in the end, Tegoshi figures they’ve all gotten to that place together after all, the one where a single person’s happiness-a single person’s dream- becomes more important than the idea of NEWS.
They say their farewells without saying goodbye after that, wiping eyes and managing smiles before scattering to the winds in a way that almost makes their name prophetic.
Tegoshi watches the others disappear into the early morning dark before starting his car and pulling out of the parking lot alone. He hopes the six of them all go knowing that after everything is said and done, after all the dreams they could possibly dream are in hand, each member of this family can return home at any time they want, if they ever should need it.
This will always be their safe place, after all. They said so themselves.
END
EDITS
Universe: JE/NEWS/Yamapi
Theme/Topic: Pi is having a fretting and worrying phase and Tego tries to cheer him up.
Rating: G
Character/Pairing/s: NEWS (Tego and Pi focus, with light Tegopi)
Spoilers/Warnings: Angst? IDK.
Word Count: 2,965
Summary: When the people in it matter more than the name of the group.
Dedication: jo_lasalle’s request for winning my fandom_helps auction! Hope you enjoy this, and thanks for your bid and donation!
A/N: I have not written JE in a long time it feels like? LOL I’m sorry this came out more serious business than your request said, jo_lasalle! I tried fitting your story into real time line and it seems like this is the only thing in my mind NEWS related right now. Orz.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
It is not often that Yamapi’s perfect idol veneer is allowed to show any cracks on the surface, and on the rare occasion when it does happen, it is usually only when he is alone, or as close to alone as someone like him can get at any one given time.
The members of NEWS, after so many years essentially living in each other’s professional pockets, are more or less at a point in their lives where their being around Yamapi (minus anything that can take photographic evidence of his less composed moments, of course) really is as good as being alone to him. The only difference is that they’re also together, so it’s kind of like being alone without being lonely.
At least, this is what Yamapi has attempted to communicate to them on a few occasions, the first of which had been a drunken Christmas party one year, after the tour documentary cameras had been put away and the members were subsequently left to their own devices for the night, happily nursing the remainder of the celebratory cake and a few bottles of surprisingly good champagne.
“Being with you guys is just like being by myself,” Yamapi had hiccupped at random, looking content and unglamorously drunk on the couch between Koyama and Ryo. He might have been drooling a little off to one side as well, though no one said or did anything about it except Koyama, who had laughed a hiccupy, high-pitched little laugh before shaking his head and dabbing the drool away from Yamapi’s mouth for him.
“I don’t know if that’s a compliment,” Shige had slurred in response from Koyama’s other shoulder, infinitely less glamorous in his own drunkenness than Yamapi could ever hope to be. “Do you think we’re invisible or something, Yamashita-kun?”
“It is a compliment! I think,” Yamapi had assured him, and reached around Koyama to add a hearty, perhaps too enthusiastic club to Shige’s back as he did. “Being with NEWS is the same as being home. Being safe. That’s what I mean, ne.”
Koyama had patted Yamapi’s head with one hand and Shige’s aching back with the other. “That’s because we’re friends,” the oldest member felt the need to intone wisely, if a bit blearily. After that, Ryo had irrevocably ruined the moment by tugging on Massu’s hair and demanding all of the strawberries on the last slice of Massu’s Christmas cake.
“Maybe not friends. Maybe more like family,” Koyama had corrected then, as Massu and Ryo started to squabble like siblings. Ryo ended up with all the strawberries after all, but Massu retaliated by taking the rest of his champagne while he was busy with the fruit.
Family, Tegoshi remembers thinking around his own bubbly drunkenness, sounded just about right.
They’d all trudged back into the quiet of their individual rooms and collapsed into slumber not long after that, Christmas presents from one another clutched in their arms and far too much alcohol in their blood. And despite slight hangovers and weariness the next morning, they’d woken up promptly at six and went downstairs to work together, the same as always. No one had acted any differently towards the other members after that, but in Tegoshi’s memory, that is probably the exact moment when he’d known something had changed. At the time, he didn’t know what, and hadn’t wanted to bother figuring it out either, mostly because they had tour things to do and audiences to please.
Sometime afterward though, he will realize that what had changed with Yamapi’s quiet, drunken declaration was only everything. Because safe, while a pleasant enough word to most, has never been-and probably never will be-considered an entirely positive thing in the entertainment industry. And family, while full of people to be loved and cherished, does not simultaneously mean people who you want to spend every waking hour with as well.
As it turns out, sometimes dreams are worth more than any of these things.
~~~~~
While flattered that he can be considered one of the few people allowed to see Yamapi in moments where the mega-idol strays completely outside the shell of his entertainer persona, Tegoshi also considers it a strange sort of burden, because he can no longer consider himself shielded from their group leader’s more intense emotions, of which he has in droves but rarely shows to anyone outside of those he spends the most time with.
Now that NEWS is close-is considered a safe place-it has become increasingly obvious that safe doesn’t necessarily mean happy to Yamapi. And Tegoshi, now seeing himself more than just a coworker, and sometimes, in his secret heart of hearts, even more than just a family member, is discovering that he considers Yamapi’s happiness potentially more important than the whole of NEWS’s success. It is a frightening idea that he tries to ignore as often as possible because isn’t success what they’re all here for, first and foremost? Is one person’s discontent worth tearing down an entire world for?
But fight the feeling as he may, Tegoshi finds that it is not a battle he can see himself winning in the long run, not with his heart so full of Yamapi and the others in the way he knows it is. And so, on what one might call a fateful afternoon, it all comes to head when Tegoshi walks in to work for a photoshoot and sees Yamapi sitting in the dressing room alone, staring contemplatively at a bottle of protein jelly with a mixture of frustration and bittersweet resignation on his face.
“Yamashita-kun,” he begins after a moment, brow furrowed with concern, “is something wrong?” Tegoshi instantly wants to cheer his group leader up at whatever cost, even if it means whisking him away from this job to go spend an hour at the gym or two hours at the bar. The thought is completely irresponsible and not like him at all, but then again, it has always been said that love is an irrational emotion.
As he entertains these thoughts, Yamapi simply looks back at him, eyes tired and droopy, hair and makeup not yet fixed for him after his hasty roll into the studio five minutes earlier. “I’m just thinking,” he admits after a beat, quietly. He pokes listlessly at the protein jelly as if he’s waiting for it to answer all the questions in the universe for him.
Even more concerned now, Tegoshi sits down next to Yamapi and looks at the little drink pouch as well. “About what? Lunch?” he jokes, trying to urge a smile out of the older idol. It doesn’t work.
“About work,” Yamapi answers. It is a vague, predictable answer. There are very few times when Yamapi is not thinking about work, and those times usually involve when he is thinking about food or thinking about Jin.
Tegoshi leans his shoulder against Yamapi’s a little bit on the couch, giving his friend a gentle nudge. When they touch, he thinks that Yamapi feels like metal beside him, solid and unyielding, almost inhuman for how rigidly he sits. He suddenly flashes back to 2003 and the cool, unapproachable idol who existed in the stratosphere above everyone else. It is simultaneously an awesome image and an unpleasant memory. “What about work is making you think so seriously?” Tegoshi pushes with a little poke to Yamapi’s bicep, not caring that he’s being annoying or nosy. It feels like something he has to have the answer to. It feels important.
Yamapi lets out a long, weary sort of sigh, as if he knows that Tegoshi won’t give up pestering him. Koyama always says Tegoshi is the spoiled little brother who won’t go away until he gets what he wants. Tegoshi has never argued that it’s untrue.
“It’s just…” Yamapi begins, slightly hesitant and with a heart that sounds about a million miles away right now, “I want to be a superstar.” The unconscious, “And I can’t like this, right here,” need not be said to be felt. Tegoshi’s insides suddenly feel cold.
He finds himself leaning into the other idol a little more at that, like maybe if he gets closer, it will bring Yamapi back from wherever it is he really is right now and stave off the chill suddenly building in his bones. Part of him knows that won’t really work, but it doesn’t stop him from trying. “You’re already a superstar, aren’t you?” he hedges. To be fair, to him, Yamapi has always been a superstar. To him, Yamapi will never be anything less than one.
Yamapi glances sideways at him then, and the expression on the older idol’s face tells Tegoshi that Yamapi considers himself about as far away from superstardom as one can get. His tired eyes are full of silent longing, and underneath everything else, a quietly burning determination that no amount of weariness or fretfulness or guilt can smother. Under the weight of that look, Tegoshi suddenly feels like he’s part of what’s been holding Yamapi back from achieving his dreams. Maybe he is in a way, though he certainly never intended to be. NEWS was certainly never designed to produce superstars.
Tegoshi’s stomach feels mysteriously tight as he rests his cheek against Yamapi’s shoulder and starts to mull over these revelations. He suddenly feels a little bitter, a little bit cranky. These are burdens he never wanted-never asked for-and that he never would have had to carry six years ago, back when Yamapi was as much NEWS’s idol as he was the fans’. Part of Tegoshi almost wants to go back to the simplicity of that time right now, so that he doesn’t have to worry about anything because Yamapi will do the worrying for him.
But that’s not fair-was never fair- and it certainly isn’t who he is anymore.
And more than that, the larger part of himself, the part that is now more Yamapi’s friend than it is NEWS’s youngest member, rails violently at the thought of abandoning Yamapi’s heart to these burdens alone. Especially when he knows how truly heavy they are now. Especially when he knows that they are the kind of burdens that kill dreams. Hasn’t NEWS’s message always been about following dreams?
And so, before he can stop himself, before he can think, Tegoshi finds himself saying, “If Yamashita-kun wants to be a superstar, then he should be a superstar.”
Yamapi chuckles a little at that, humorlessly. “It’s not that easy, ne. What if it costs too much?”
Tegoshi plows on despite his stomach twisting itself up into a knot, screaming at him to stop what he’s doing right now. Luckily he’s always been the most stubborn of the six of them, the one least willing to listen to orders even if they come from himself. “It won’t cost too much,” he says despite everything, and with complete confidence.
Yamapi hesitates. Then, “What if…what if it means breaking the me right now down to nothing and starting all over again?”
Tegoshi shrugs a little, even as he feels his own heart shatter in time with the rolling tightness in his stomach. Outside, he likes to think he looks undefeatable. “We’ve both done it before,” he says brightly, full of strained nonchalance even as he buries closer into Yamapi’s side on the couch, almost unconsciously. “We’ve already remade ourselves over and over again a hundred times, ne.”
Tegoshi sees it when Yamapi sets his jaw in that moment and a faint but undeniably brilliant light finally returns to his eyes. It burns with epiphany, maybe. “We have, haven’t we?” he echoes. “NEWS stands up again, no matter what happened before.”
No matter who they’ve lost.
Tegoshi feels his throat clench up a little now, in league with his stomach and his broken heart, as if parts of him are failing with each and every forward step Yamapi takes away from him. He thinks that this must have been exactly how his parents felt when he’d told them he was thinking of moving out. He remembers how his mother had cried nonstop for hours, how his grandmother had yelled at him for being an ungrateful brat, and how his father just hadn’t been able to speak to him at all for an entire week.
In the end though, they’d all helped him pack up and move his boxes. Each of them had hugged him on the way out the door. He remembers that when he’d left home that day, he did it knowing he’d always have a place to return to, if he ever wanted it. Somewhere safe to go when everything was said and done and he was full with enough dreams to last a lifetime.
He looks at Yamapi now and thinks he knows what it feels like to be the one who is left behind this time.
But he forces himself to go around this bereft feeling in his heart all the same, even if all he wants to do is cry like his mother or yell like his grandmother or not say anything at all like his father. “We’re good at it rebuilding aren’t we? The six of us, that is,” he jokes, a bit lamely. “NEWS is full of professionals at new starts by now.”
Yamapi takes a deep, slow breath as he considers this. And then, after a minute that feels like a thousand, Tegoshi feels the hard line of Yamapi’s side suddenly give against him, the older boy going soft and relaxed and warm again, as if he had been holding his own humanity back in the moments prior. “We are professionals,” he agrees softly, and turns to look at Tegoshi with a gentle hope in his eyes. “And we’re also a family, right?”
“Your safe place,” Tegoshi answers firmly. “You told us so yourself, ne.”
Yamapi huffs a quiet sound of mirth and leans back into the couch and more deeply into Tegoshi. “Okay,” he says, and looks as if he feels physically lighter somehow as well. “Okay.”
Tegoshi doesn’t say anything else after that. He sits quietly at Yamapi’s side as the others slowly start to trickle in for work as well, wondering if he should worry about the possibility of NEWS being torn to pieces all over again, and his willing-almost eager-part in helping it all along.
But then he feels Yamapi’s warmth along his arm-human and relaxed and easy-and can’t find it in him to regret it just yet, not completely anyway.
NEWS has always been important to him. He knows now though, that it’s because of the members more than the name, because of the dreams more than the reality. The dreams have always been bigger than any of them, have always given them something to reach for rather than something to hold on to.
Tegoshi realizes he can’t feel bad about letting go of someone if that means they can fly a little closer to their dreams because of it.
Fly too high with NEWS, he thinks around a small sigh, and closes his eyes. Yamapi’s shoulder is solid and reassuring beside him.
~~~~~
Yamapi tells the rest of NEWS he’s planning on leaving-for good-a few weeks later. Ryo hears that and slams a few doors and stalks around for a bit, before retreating to god knows where and answering all the others’ mails/messages/texts with nothing but a terse, “I need to think.” For months. Apparently Yamapi isn’t the only one who has been feeling the weight of responsibility pulling him down.
Tegoshi isn’t surprised about any of it. Neither, it seems, are the others. Not really, anyway. But just because he isn’t surprised doesn’t mean he knows exactly how he feels about it at all just yet. It’s too much to sort through right away.
All he does know so far is that he hopes Yamapi can turn safe into happy again, even if it means having to go out and do it in a new place all on his own, starting from scratch. Even if it means tearing down their group and their work all over again. He hopes Yamapi can chase his dreams without feeling the compulsion to always look back over his shoulder at them. He hopes Ryo can too.
At the final meeting between the six of them sometime later, Shige and Ryo shout at everyone, Massu and Koyama can’t stop crying, and Tegoshi has trouble speaking to anyone at all the whole five hours. It reminds Tegoshi exactly of his family. He knows it is exactly like his family because it is his family.
But eventually, when they are deep into the wee morning hours of the following day, they all find themselves exhausted and inexplicably crushed into a giant, ridiculous hug in the center of the room, wishing each other the best in between streams of tears and snot. Because in the end, Tegoshi figures they’ve all gotten to that place together after all, the one where a single person’s happiness-a single person’s dream- becomes more important than the idea of NEWS.
They say their farewells without saying goodbye after that, wiping eyes and managing smiles before scattering to the winds in a way that almost makes their name prophetic.
Tegoshi watches the others disappear into the early morning dark before starting his car and pulling out of the parking lot alone. He hopes the six of them all go knowing that after everything is said and done, after all the dreams they could possibly dream are in hand, each member of this family can return home at any time they want, if they ever should need it.
This will always be their safe place, after all. They said so themselves.
END
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