(no subject)
I'm Wrecking This Evening Already and Loving Every Minute of It
nishikato
It has been raining for the whole morning now and Shige is a pissed man standing under the sidewalk shade of a local café with an unpleased face, a scarf worn too firmly around his neck, and a tight crotch area to match.
“What’s been biting you today?” Pi nudges him with a shoulder, breath fogging up in the air space between them. A car speeds up past the road and splashes dirt water all over his shoes. “Damn it,” Pi curses under his breath, tries to kick off any particles that haven’t stained the material.
If every morning had been raining, Shige could have said “it’s like this everyday.” The weather aside, it is like this everyday: photo shoots, interviews, sometimes a recording at the studio-which, by the way, makes him catch a wrong note in his throat for the nth time singing, and it makes everyone groan when they have to repeat-and radio shows at the evening. He goes to school only twice a week, but that bit of information deviates away from the point of his irate demeanor that day-or everyday, since it is like this everyday.
Groupmate Nishikido Ryo always finds a way to ruin someone’s day. He ruins Shige’s day particularly well, makes the man writhe in his head when he found out that Ryo was the one who deliberately spilled the orange juice on his pants; who stuck paper with baka-desu! written on it on the back of his shirt; who scribbled over his composition sheets just for the hell of it.
“Doesn’t he do that to you?”
“Me?” Tegoshi doesn’t think twice and says, “No, not me. Just you, I suppose,” and it’s the same for everybody in the group, even with longtime best friend Pi.
“Doesn’t he tease you about your bucktooth Doraemon?”
“What, no. How did you know about that.”
Ryo passes them by in the dressing room, Shige’s eyes carefully watching his every move. He doesn’t take his eyes off him until he completely leaves the room, and it makes Koyama a little nervous for him.
“Is it that bad?”
Shige looks at him, and then looks back at Ryo. He hasn’t done anything for the day-yet. So far… or so he knows it-but he’s ready, so ready. Koyama leaves the room momentarily and follows Ryo out.
It’s when he’s sitting down strumming his guitar with his newly written composition laid out in front of him that Ryo decides to walk up to him, and Shige snaps to a realization that he’s not more than a few inches away from him.
“I’m inviting you to have dinner with me tonight. How does that sound?”
The scary thing is that he’s smiling when he says it. The scarier thing is that Shige knows it’s bound to be a prank pulled off well because of careful planning and cunning strategies. The scariest thing is that Shige is actually saying yes.
He tries to see this from another point of view: besides the fact that he may look like a man-hater-woman with the way he’s responded to Ryo’s figure, it must be strange since this has never happened before, Ryo inviting him for dinner. Heck, he’s never invited anyone else in the group besides Pi, but that’s another thing. There’s nothing wrong-or gay for that matter-about it.
“Be there, aight?” and he leaves him there, walks into the next room and laughs at a joke Koyama has brought up.
Shige decides to dress not too fancy for the night, thinks that he might as well end up in soaked pants anyway if Ryo had plans to spill anything over them. He doesn’t even look in the mirror to see if what he’s wearing matches-it’s just Ryo, he says to himself-but it’s him being meticulous that makes him look anyway and change into a better looking belt.
They both arrive at the place decided, an Italian restaurant where Ryo claims to have had the best penne in his whole life. It bothers him a little, Shige, how they’ve both arrived at the same time, like Ryo’s been watching him this whole evening-but that’s probably just him. Again, he keeps a sharp eye on the man, but Ryo doesn’t look at him in the eye at all. He occasionally smiles at him, tells him once he should try the penne he’s been talking about, and that’s about most of what their evening conversations are about, that is, if that is considered as such.
They sit down near the glass windows with the perfect view of the town in neon glowing lights, the toe of Ryo’s shoe constantly hitting his ankles under the table, but Shige doesn’t want to say anything, doesn’t want to break the awkward silence that has long developed between them. He figures it should stay that way for the rest of the night, that hopefully, it stays quiet and nuisance free for the rest of the night.
“Do you have a ride home?”
“What?” Shige looks up from his watch. He feels some color drain from his face, and the back of his neck is itchy. He reaches out to rub his neck, slowly, casually-
“I figured I could bring you home. You know, if you don’t have anywhere else you want to go-”
“No.” it’s a firm answer which startles Ryo for awhile, possibly because Shige’s said it a little to firmly, and he probably expected an answer one more preferable than the other. “I mean, no, it’s okay. I don’t mind walking.”
Ryo nods, slips his hands in his pocket and looks around for awhile. Shige seems unnerved by his casualty, thinking this could be it; he could be pulling one on me right now and I just don’t know it.
“You think I’m going to spill something over your pants, don’t you?”
“What?” Ryo probably thinks he’s deaf, and it’s almost as embarrassing as him knowing what he’s thinking. Shige knows that; that he thinks too much and it makes Koyama worry whenever he comes over to his house just to talk about his problem-of-the-day over melted ice cream. He just can’t help it; it’s a mindset he’s born with, like narcolepsy or the fact that he really can’t sing nor dance, that he might as well be just a pretty face in the agency, just like everyone else. But, Ryo, Ryo is-
“I’m driving you home.”
They’re at his doorstep, Shige taking his keys from his pocket while Ryo is still following him up until there.
“You know you could have waited in the car.” Shige mutters, still shuffles for his keys-damn, he can’t remember where he’s placed them.
“You’ve been paranoid this whole evening, haven’t you?”
Shige doesn’t need to say it again and sound deaf, because he knows he’s been thinking about it the whole time they were in his car. He’s digging in his back pocket now, the house keys still missing somewhere…
“You seriously thought I was going to pull something on you, didn’t you? This was why you’ve been so quiet the whole night; hell you’ve been staring at me the whole time we were eating it was making me think-”
“You’re going to tell me what you want me to think, then you’re going to do it, I know you are. I know you, Nishikido!” Shige backs up against his door, searches for his coat pockets now. Damn, where are those keys?
“Stop that, you’re being paranoid,” Ryo throws his head back in stifled laughter, his hand over his mouth, hiding the smile as if no one else has seen it. He explains everything, that he had intended to take a girl out for a date, but she screwed up her schedule and decided that she couldn’t go. Presumed truth, Shige thinks, because he seems apologetic now, even when he says, “Sorry about all the pranks.”
Shige reaches in the last coat pocket. “What were those for, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Ryo shrugs. “Maybe I just like you.”
Shige finds his keys, but he drops them back into the depth of his pocket. “Pardon?”
“I’m kidding!” he pats Shige on the shoulder, laughing. “I’m kidding, seriously. That’d be a little too grade school, don’t you think?”
Shige nods. Color drains from his face again, and Shige rolls his eyes. He’s thinking of getting his keys and locking himself in his house already. It’s either he does this slowly and without notice, or quickly so he can get away while Ryo’s in his momentary stupor.
“Or I could just be lying.”
Shige takes his keys and faces the door behind him. Something glows in his vision when Ryo takes his wrist and pins him on the door, hands above their heads and he’s kissing him on the mouth, probing his lips to part.
The keys fall to the ground. Ryo pushes him into the house, into the dark, and he’s not the least bit surprised that Shige is actually falling into place when they settle down on the sofa.