Whisper in the Darkness Ch11

Jan 11, 2010 21:38

WHISPER IN THE DARKNESS - CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Ryo?”

He wanted to ignore the fact that it was now the second time saying his name and there had been no response. Was he messing around with him? He knew by now how keen Ueda’s sense of hearing was, surely he’d expect him to know whether or not someone had entered the room. So why was he keeping quiet? Was something wrong?

“Ryo? Are you okay?”

Still no reply.

Now he was scared.

And that pissed him off.

Usually if an unknown person came into the room it wouldn’t scare him, but being blind kinda changes things like that. Especially considering there was no-one else there with him.

Taking a deep breath he fully faced the door and folded his arms.

“Ryo, this isn’t funny, in fact it’s downright stupid, what the hell is wrong with you?”

Now he got a response. Of sorts. The footsteps that had stopped just inside the door started again and he twitched slightly backwards almost as a reflex as they came to a halt directly in front of him.

“Ryo? What the hell? Seriously, you’re freaking me out!”

“Sorry, you were so beautiful I didn’t know what to say,”

Ueda froze.

What? What!? WHAT THE FUCK!?

“W-What are you saying all of sudden? Where the hell did that come from?”

“Hmmm?” Ryo’s voice made Ueda shiver, it didn’t sound normal, like he was making it huskier on purpose, keeping his voice low. He didn’t have much time to dwell on this as suddenly Ryo was moving closer, and all he could do was back away, further and further until his back hit a wall. Ryo didn’t stop until there was barely a millimetre between them. Ueda opened his mouth, only half aware of what he was going to say, when the words stuck in throat as Ryo’s hand suddenly touched his cheek, his fingertips stroking gently along his cheekbone before he cupped his cheek in his palm.

Ueda was completely at a loss, confused to hell.

Such a gesture should have set his heart pounding like a clock tower bell, should have made him happy, dizzy, made him want to lean his cheek further into the warm touch.

But the touch wasn’t warm.

Alright, physically it was warm, but beneath the skin temperature was an iciness that set his heart beating like that of a mouse confronted with a feral tom cat in an alleyway on a dark night.

“You’re so tense Princess, what’s wrong?”

Ueda couldn’t respond. He was frozen against the wall, his palms pressed backwards, as though trying to push through the wall. His mouth dropped open as warm breath ghosted over his neck below his ear and that not-right, too-husky voice slid over his ear like refrigerated molasses.

“Shouldn’t this make you happy?”

Instinctively he raised an arm to push at Ryo’s shoulder and froze as his hand came into contact with a thin t-shirt and wiry shoulder.

This isn’t Ryo.

Why hadn’t he thought that immediately? Because he hadn’t even considered that anyone else would come here. Fair enough. Now he was certain, not only did this person not really sound or act like Ryo, but he didn’t even feel like him. Who had come here? Who was it currently pretending to be Ryo?

“Get off me,” Ueda managed, his voice hoarse. The mouth on his neck stilled.

“Get. Off. Me.” Ueda repeated, his jaw clenched. As the mouth and the body pressed against his moved back he relaxed slightly, before suddenly the body was back, pressed even tighter against him, two hands slamming into the wall beside his head and that voice was beside his ear again.

“So cold, Princess, why would you say something like that?”

“Stop calling me Princess,” his voice was getting weaker with each word, and he couldn’t make himself move, his thoughts wouldn’t come in straight lines, all he could thinking clearly was that he was scared. Scared of having some unknown person this close to him, pretending to be Ryo, so persistently.

And angry. Angry with himself for being so unbearably weak…

Ryo, help me…

“Please, stop,” he whispered, struggling to turn away from the breath and the voice.

“You know you don’t really want me to do that,” Ueda bit his lip and shuddered unable to comprehend whether he was going cry or be sick, knowing his luck it would be both.

“Yo, Tatsuya, sorry I - What the fuck!?”

The persistent body pressing him into the wall suddenly lurched back and Ueda felt suddenly able to breathe again, so much he almost choked on the air he gulped in.

He vaguely heard the footsteps rush from the room before he slid to the floor, his palms pressed to the carpet, his head lowered, still unconvinced he wasn’t going to be sick.

Ryo had started to move after the junior that had run past him but out of the corner of his eye he noted movement and turning back found that Ueda had collapsed, and instantly he forgot all about the junior.

Dropping to his knees in front of Ueda he hesitantly reached for his shoulder. Ueda flinched sharply, shrinking back.

“Tatsuya, it’s me, it’s Ryo, are you okay?” Tatsuya tipped his head slightly to one side. It was Ryo, it was his voice and his hands, he was sure of it this time. He sighed in relief and shakily sat up straight, though his face was still turned to the ground.

“I’m fine,” he took a deep breath and sat up, leaning back against the wall.

“I’m okay, sorry, he just kind of freaked me out a bit, who was it anyway?” Ryo stared at him for a moment. He was doing it again, forcing himself to act strong, pretending nothing was wrong, pretending he wasn’t cracking into miniscule fragments inside. I can’t stand it when you do this to yourself…

“Tatsuya, are you sure you’re okay?” Ueda stiffened.

“Yes, I’m fine, really, it was just weird, he was pretending to be you…” Ryo was slightly thrown off by that. His mind instantly formed an image of him in place of the junior, Ueda pressed between him and a wall…he shook the image from his head. Now is not the time to be typically male Nishikido!

“You look a little pale,”

“Really, it’s okay, I’m okay now,” Ueda wasn’t entirely sure if it was Ryo he was trying to convince, or himself. Either way he was suddenly overcome with a heavy blanket of fatigue and self loathing. All he wanted was to sleep.

“Uh, Ryo, can we go home now?” he asked, inwardly cursing how small his voice was. He supposed it would be too much to hope that Ryo would accept his claim to be fine and take him home without anymore questions…

Of course it was.

“Tatsuya, I’ve been living with you for three weeks, I’ve seen you majorly freak out at least once, I’ve seen you have horrible nightmares and I’ve watched you sit in your own darkness and struggle not to fall into it,”

If my eyes weren’t bandaged shut they’d be blinking in confusion…

“What…are you trying to say?”

“Tatsuya, I know when you’re scared, struggling, or hurting, and I know what it looks like when you’re trying to pretend you’re fine, kinda like how you look right now,”

Ueda ran a hand through his hair.

“You’re not fine, what happened just now didn’t just freak you out a little, it scared the hell out of you, you’d feel better if you talked to me about it, instead of trying to deal on your own, I told you I’d help you if you needed me,”

Ueda bit his lip. To talk or not to talk. The million dollar question. In order to even figure out fully for himself why he’d been so scared and upset he’d have to asses the extent of his feelings for Ryo, it was as though he now needed Ryo to survive, he needed Ryo to keep him safe, and the juniors stupid prank, until he had realised it was a prank, had begun to cruelly crack apart the comforting feeling that Ryo was the closest person to him right

Until he had realised it wasn’t Ryo he had faced the possibility of having to accept that Ryo may no longer take care of him and he would lose his link with reality, outside the darkness. For those few moments he had felt his fragile yet precious relationship with Ryo begin to warp and dissolve.

He was jerked back to reality by an urgent hand on his shoulder.

“Tatsuya, talk to me, tell me what’s going on in your head!” a second hand landed on the other shoulder.

“Let me help you!”

I can’t…

He couldn’t think about…about all of that right now, much less talk about it, it was hard and painful and scary and he couldn’t fully face any of it yet. He wanted to, he maybe wanted nothing more than to rely on Ryo and let him help, to talk to him and just…

But he couldn’t.

“Ryo, I…I’m…okay, I just…want to go home,”

Ryo let his hands fall from Ueda’s shoulders and sighed.

“Fine,”

Any other time, with any less keen hearing than he had recently developed, Ueda would not have heard the very faint crack in Ryo’s voice. He was angry with him.

Ryo stood and reached down, taking Ueda’s hand and assisting him to his feet.

“Let’s go home,” Ryo’s tone was short, his voice quiet. But Ueda had it wrong, it wasn’t anger that cracked Ryo’s voice. It was hurt. The thought that Ueda couldn’t - or maybe just wouldn’t - talk to him hurt.

Hesitating to let go of Ryo’s hand Ueda bit his lip again, and Ryo was forced to glance away from how swollen it was beginning to get, seeing as Ueda’s habit of biting his lip had gotten exponentially worse recently.

“Ryo, I just-”

Ryo shook his head, remembering at the last moment that Ueda couldn’t see him and cursing mentally.

“It’s fine, I get it, let’s just go home, okay?”

“Ryo…”

But Ryo was already guiding him out of the room.

The drive back to Ueda’s apartment was the quietest and most awkward of Ueda’s life. Not even the radio was switched on, and as far as he could tell Ryo never once took his focus off the road, and he himself sat with his hands clenched on his knees and his head lowered and didn’t move. He felt like a middle school girl being driven home from a less than pleasant chat with the school principal.

He felt bad, no, h e felt awful for turning down Ryo’s offer of help. He’d wanted his help, he’d wanted to talk to him, could even now imagine mumbling thickly whilst fighting off tears as Ryo listened and possibly hugged him or held his hands the way he had when Ueda had described his nightmare to him. But he couldn’t, this was deeper and scarier and more serious than his nightmare and he wasn’t strong enough to deal with it.

Which was yet another thing he hated himself for.

Next morning found them just as awkward and quiet if not more so, not to mention that both Ueda and Ryo had barely slept through worrying themselves stupid over each other, not that either of them had the guts or the common sense to reveal this.

In the car on the way to the Jimusho Ueda twisted the hem of his t-shirt in both hands and chewed on his lip willing himself to say something, but it was useless. He just about suffered a coronary when Ryo broke the silence to inform him they had arrived.

To say it was a little odd to be back to holding onto Ryo’s jacket as they walked instead of his hand was the greatest understatement since records began, it was not only incredibly weird, but it was surprisingly upsetting. And unbeknownst to him Ryo bit his lip to stop himself saying something about the fact that Ueda had hesitantly taken hold of Ryo’s sleeve instead of his hand the way he had been doing for two weeks.

And how much that hurt him.

Hearing the sounds of voices from his band’s room Ueda bit his lip again and swallowed, trying harder to urge his voice to cooperate, he didn’t want Ryo to go away for the rest of the day without them having exchanged any words in more than twelve hours besides ‘We’re here’.

He gave a start when his name was suddenly being called.

“Ohayou Uepi!”

“O-Ohayou, Taguchi,” he replied shakily, dropping Ryo’s sleeve.

“I’ll see you later,” Ryo’s voice was still quiet and somewhat wounded and Ueda found himself suddenly spinning desperately to face him.

“Wait, Ryo, I-”

“I’m late for a meeting, see you later,”

Ueda couldn’t say anything to that. He could only stand and listen to Ryo walk away from him until he couldn’t hear him anymore.

“Uh-oh, trouble in paradise Uebo?” Jin teased, not noticing Kame’s warning glare. Ueda turned, his shoulders trembling ever so slightly and walked shakily to the couch sitting heavily at the end of it and gripping the armrest.

“Do me a favour Jin?” he said, his voice thin, his face pointed at the ground. “Just don’t okay,”

Maru and Kame exchanged glances and shrugged, totally clueless.

To be fair, Ueda thought at the end of the day, he had to give the rest of the band credit; they had been doing their best all day to make him feel better, but without all the details, which he wasn’t exactly itching to disclose, there wasn’t much they could really do.

It was almost half past five by the time they were all leaving and Ueda and Nakamaru were the only ones left in the room. Maru stood at the table, having been sorting through some schedule sheets for the summer concerts, and looked across at his friend.

Ueda was sitting, wedged into a corner of the couch, with his legs crossed and one hand almost hopelessly tangled in his hair.

“Uh, Tat-chan, I don’t want to pry at you or anything, but you’ve been miserable all day, can you tell me what happened, maybe I can help, I want to be able to help,”

Ueda sighed.

“I made a stupid mistake,” Nakamaru tilted his head to one side and joined Ueda on the couch, watching him until he spoke again. Truth be told he was overjoyed Ueda had even agreed to speak about his problem at all, since he’d been so closed off recently.

“What kind of mistake?”

“I basically said no when I should have said yes,” Maru sighed inwardly. Could you be a little more cryptic, I do like a good challenge after all.

“What did you say no to? And be specific, so I don’t have to keep digging for answers,”

“I…Ryo wanted to me to…talk to him,” Maru raised one eyebrow.

“What do you mean? Talk about what?”

“Yesterday…” Ueda made a face as he recalled the events of the previous evening and shuddered.

“Suffice it to say that the second I get my eyesight back I will be making one particular junior’s life so miserable he’ll wish he was in a horrible accident,”

“What happened?” But Ueda only shook his head.

“I’d really rather not go into it, I don’t even want to think about it, but Ryo was there…well, he turned up in time to make it stop, and he wanted to me to talk to him,”

“Why wouldn’t you? I mean, it sounds like whatever happened was no small matter,” Ueda lowered his head.

“I told him I was fine,”

“You mean the way you do when you’re not fine but you want everyone to believe you are?” Ueda made a face.

“Bingo,” Maru said drily.

“Shut up,” Ueda muttered.

“So, you said you were fine, Ryo called bullshit and said, like any of us would, that you would probably feel better about the whole thing if you were honest with both him and yourself, and you still said no, that you were fine?” Ueda dragged a hand through his hair again, wincing as he caught a couple of tangles.

“Well if you will hit the nail right on the head,” he mumbled.

“That’s because I’m awesome, plus I’ve known you for almost a decade, but Tat-chan, why’d you say no?”

Ueda pressed his face into his hands.

“Tat-chan?”

“I was too scared to say yes,” he whispered.

“Scared?”

“He wanted to tell him how it had really made me feel, he wanted me to face what I really felt so I could move past it, and he was so willing to help me, but I couldn’t face it,”

“Face what?”

“I started thinking about…everything and…I couldn’t say any of it, so I said I was fine, and he hasn’t spoken to me since,” Maru blinked.

“Nishikido doesn’t strike me as the silent treatment type, that’s you,” Ueda briefly did his best to glare at his friend through the bandage.

“I can’t tell if he’s angry with me or if it’s something else, but I’ve been trying to say something, anything, to him since last night, but I didn’t know what to say and I tried this morning but he wasn’t listening,”

“Tat-chan, you have to tell him something, at the very least tell him why you couldn’t talk to him about whatever it was that happened yesterday, it ridiculous for the two of you to suddenly be so alienated when you’ve been like best friends this past fortnight or so, you have to do something,”

“I know, but it’s easier said than done, and maybe he doesn’t want to talk to me anymore, maybe he’d rather I just got someone else to drive me to work and stuff,”

Maru bit his lip. That’s never going to happen! He’s hopelessly in love with you! Why can’t you see that!? Swallowing back those thoughts he squeezed Ueda’s shoulder in an attempt to be comforting.

“I doubt that’s true Tat-chan, seriously, talk to him tonight, at least try,”

Ueda nodded slowly and sank into contemplative silence.

He was about to suggest Ueda finally just confess to him, even though he knew what the response to that would be, when Ryo walked in, his expression gloomy.

“Tatsuya?” Well, he’s not gone back to calling him ‘Ueda’, I call that a start.

“Ryo?” Ueda looked up and shakily stood. Maru suddenly noted Ryo’s hesitant biting of the lip, He must have picked that up off Tat-chan.

“Nishikido-kun, is something wrong?” Ryo sighed.

“I had a meeting with my managers today,” Ueda looked up at the plural form of the word ‘manager’.

“What happened?” Ryo sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“They want me in Osaka, tomorrow,” Maru snapped his focus back to Ueda. Shit.

Curling his hands slowly into weak fists Ueda made a conscious effort not to sink back onto the couch as he fought for something to say in reponse.

“Oh,” was all he could manage.

TSUZUKU   <-----------using a crappy old laptop with no Japanese writing option T^T

A/N Don’t like this chapter much either but c’est la vie (I’m starting French this semester). At the very least the story has progressed a little…kind of, should only be another two or three chapters, depends on how much I fit into Chapter 12. Anyways, comments are always enjoyed and appreciated, and if anyone can pinpoint what the hell is suddenly wrong with my writing all of a sudden (I swear, I suddenly can’t write properly anymore) I would love to know. I’m back at university on Friday (I was supposed to be back last Friday but the weather’s been a  bitch) so I’ll have a ton of work to be doing but I will also be doing my best to keep writing. Aurevoir~ (I’m pretty sure that’s spelt wrong :P)

EDIT: So I went back and changed some things according to some really good advice I got (^_^) and I’m a little happier with this chapter, but I still think I can do better, so I’m gonna give it  shot with Chapter Twelve. Ganbaru yo! ^_^


pairing: ryoda, multichap: whisper in the darkness, genre: drama, genre: angst

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