[Fic] Filling the Silence
Title: Filling the Silence
Author: analine
Warnings: None, worksafe.
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~2,275
Summary: Nagayan surprises Tuti with take-out curry after a day spent taking pictures in the park.
Notes: I started this back when Nagayan first got his new camera, and then fencer_x's last fic, and the fact that Tuti finally got a camera of his own inspired me to actually finish it. ^_~ As usual, it's pretty much just a slice of life thing, with some bonus Tenimyu flashbacks. :D
It was late on a Tuesday night.
The middle of a run for him, and the middle of a rare week off for Takashi, one that his better half had spent, as far as Tuti could tell, hanging out with Kime for the first time in what had to have been months, taking surprisingly artistic photos with his new camera, and then posting them to his blog and/or emailing them to Tuti--the order varied by the day.
Tuti always liked hanging out with Takashi, but he especially liked hanging out with Takashi on days like this, when Takashi wasn't focused on a script, or a character, or a performance, because this was when he really talked. Not just about whatever show he was working on at the time, or about other important things--how long it had been since their last date, or what Tamaoki-san's comments about his performance that night had really meant, or any number of perfectly reasonable conversations that they'd had over and over again on the platform in Shinjuku watching for the Yamanote, or tucked into the corner of an izakaya with Eiji and Daiki, or over lunch near the studio.
If he was lucky, on weeks like this Takashi would show up on his doorstep with take-out curry (or sushi, or well...curry, usually) on at least one evening, like he had tonight, and talk his ear off about things neither of them really had time for, but that Tuti found himself looking forward to all the same.
Because Takashi was different on nights like this. Tuti had just spent the last fifteen minutes listening to him talk about the color of the cherry blossoms in Ueno Park, and as a result he felt about a million times more at ease now than he had when he'd walked through the door to his apartment alone a little over an hour ago. He'd been keyed up then--not stressed, not worried about anything in particular, but just on edge, the way he always was in the middle of a run like this, like he didn't quite know how to let his guard down. It was different now though, with Takashi here, their shoulders pressed together lightly as they struggled to fit their dinners next to each other on Tuti's low table. Tuti felt his mind clearing as he listened to Takashi talk, just enough so that he could feel a little of the tension evaporating from the space between them.
"I was thinking, as I was walking around..." Takashi said as he finished his last bite of curry, and then shifted away from the small table, leaning back against the opposite wall, and stretching his legs out in front of him. "All those high school memories... Walking through the trees after the opening ceremony, hoping to catch your friends before they ran off to their classroom and you went to yours. Trying to figure out where you fit in, you know?"
"I know exactly where you fit in," Tuti said with a smile, poking at Takashi's toe, which was almost touching his thigh at this angle.
"I was stuck in 3-A my junior year, you know. Practically the entire team was in 3-B. It was terrible~" Takashi smiled and swatted at Tuti's hand with his big toe. "Or at least it seemed terrible at the time."
Tuti nodded, amused, a half-smile on his lips. "I'm sure it did."
"What about you? Don't you ever have that feeling of wanting to go back? I mean, I think about how confusing everything seemed, but at the same time, everyone was so honest."
"Honest? What do you mean?"
"You know that feeling, when you're alone with the girl you like for the first time, and you can't think of anything to say, even though you've been thinking about her for weeks? So you just don't say anything?"
Tuti studied Takashi curiously, trying to imagine this, and then he realized that he could. He could see Takashi, standing there outside the clubhouse after baseball practice one some afternoon, alone with the love of his life, staring out into the outfield in complete silence, completely stumped. Come to think of it, he was sure he remembered himself doing pretty much the same thing on several occasions. Because for all of his antics and confidence back then, he had never, ever known what to say to a girl.
"I think about that," Takashi continued, "and I realize that I could never do that now. No one could. You'd fill the silence, right? You'd fill it with something, even if you didn't really mean it."
"That's not always a bad thing."
"I know," Takashi nodded, sitting up straight, his eyes focused, bright. "But there's something refreshing about that silence too, I think."
Surprisingly, Tuti found that he understood.
He reached his hand out for Takashi's foot and squeezed it, enjoying the way it made the other man squirm against the wall. "That switch isn't there yet, the one that makes you avoid the awkwardness of not knowing what to say, the one that makes you just say something, right?"
Takashi nodded. "Yeah, exactly."
"Come to think of it, I seem to remember you being pretty quiet the first time we were alone," Tuti teased, raising his eyebrows, and pulling Takashi's foot towards him until the other man was at his side again, legs draped across Tuti's lap.
"I was not," Takashi countered, slapping Tuti's arm, and grinning, though his eyes were flashing with amusement. "I remember babbling about a ton of things."
"Maybe that was me, then."
"It definitely wasn't you," Takashi said, laughing.
"Do you remember what we talked about that night?"
"Of course I do. You were harassing me about leaving early the night before." Takashi grinned, and shifted his legs from Tuti's lap, so that he was sitting cross-legged at Tuti's side. "I wasn't sure whether or not to be flattered that you'd noticed."
"Of course I noticed!"
"And then you accused me of cutting out and making Kime pay my share."
"...Did I really say that?"
Takashi grinned again. "You did. That was why I wasn't sure if I should be flattered."
Tuti shook his head. He remembered it now, the comments that had just slipped out, things that were supposed to have been funny, because that's what he'd wanted--to make Takashi laugh. Because Takashi always laughed at his jokes, and more than that he laughed and smiled at things Tuti said even when he wasn't trying to be funny, and every time he did Tuti's chest felt a little lighter, and his stomach felt just a little anxious, like he was doing something he shouldn't be doing, or that there was something more he should be doing that he wasn't, it was hard to tell.
It was the second Tenimyu show they'd done together, the first one had been months earlier, and after a couple of days back at rehearsal, Tuti still felt like he was getting to know Takashi all over again, and somehow, it felt like that process wasn't moving fast enough. If he'd asked himself then what exactly this meant, he's sure he wouldn't have had an answer, but looking back he recognizes it as the start of something; of everything, maybe.
He remembered how his breath had caught that night, watching Takashi from across the platform, smiling down at his phone. Takashi had seemed worlds away, even though they'd finished rehearsal not twenty minutes before. Tuti realized that more than anything he wanted to know who Takashi was texting, where he was going after this, what exactly had made him smile like that. This strange person who laughed at his jokes, who laughed at everyone's jokes, who said the strangest things sometimes--an anomaly in a sea of actors who all seemed the same after a while. Someone Tuti wanted to figure out.
And then Takashi had looked up. He'd smiled, flipped his phone shut, and waved Tuti over.
The more Tuti thought about it, Takashi definitely hadn't been quiet that night. There'd been a series of questions at first: No, Eiji wasn't with him, he was still back at the studio; no, he didn't usually take this line home, he was meeting a friend for a drink; no, it wasn't a woman; yes, he'd be on time for rehearsal the next morning, and no, he wouldn't be hung over--it was more of a talking shop thing anyway. A friend of a friend wanted to talk to him about a spot on a drama. Takashi's eyes had lit up then, and the conversation from then on had been comfortable. Friendly. The kind that left Tuti feeling a little giddy and unsettled afterward, like he couldn't figure out if he'd said too much, or not enough, but mostly just good--the kind of mood that carried him all the way through the rest of the evening before he'd even realized it.
"I guess you really weren't that quiet after all," Tuti said, smiling a little.
Takashi laughed. "Yeah, I think it was a little different with you."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Tuti teased. "You hadn't been watching me for weeks, so that means you weren't awkward with me like you were with the other girls?"
Takashi shook his head. "No, I had been." He paused, and looked up to meet Tuti's eyes. "Watching you."
Tuti grinned. "Of course you were~"
Takashi allowed Tuti this, and just smiled.
"So...what exactly is it that makes us different from all those awkward high school romances?"
Takashi shrugged. "Years of experience? General compatibility?" He leaned back, and his shoulder pressed against Tuti's. "I can still remember a couple of awkward moments though. I mean, even that night after rehearsal--the only reason I was talking so much like that was because I was nervous."
"Filling up the silence?"
"I suppose, yeah."
"And that's good, or bad?"
Takashi just grinned. "I think it worked out pretty well for both of us."
Tuti studied Takashi for a moment. "You know I totally missed that friend of mine that night."
Takashi laughed. "Why does that not surprise me."
"Remember when you switched? Aoyama-itchome, I think?"
Takashi eyed him curiously. "Yeah?"
"I should have gotten off three stops before that."
Takashi stared at Tuti, still curious. "I wonder why you never told me that before."
Tuti shrugged. "Never came up, I guess."
"So what, you just... forgot to get up and leave? I don't think what I was saying was all that important."
"You were telling me about that drama you'd done over the summer."
Takashi nodded, thinking. "Yeah, I remember."
"I liked listening to you."
Takashi smiled. "Well, thanks."
"Even if you were just filling the silence."
This earned Tuti the back of Takashi's hand, as he leaned forward and swatted Tuti's shoulder.
"You know it's not like that with you."
Tuti nodded. "Yeah, I know."
Takashi just nodded. He shifted so that he was next to Tuti, legs stretched out under the table as he leaned across Tuti's lap to grab the remote for the TV. Takashi's hair smelled like outside, like grass and leaves and cherry blossoms (though Tuti wondered if he might just be imagining that last one) and as Takashi flipped through the channels, Tuti could feel himself fading quickly, the long day catching up to him all at once.
He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, the TV was off, and Takashi was separating the trash, disposing of the remains of their dinner with quick, efficient movements.
He'd hung his jacket up next to Tuti's, moved their bags into the corner, and shifted the table over to its proper place when it wasn't being used (the opposite corner of the room, under the window).
If someone had told Tuti that night on the train platform, three days into rehearsals for a musical that had lasted so much longer than any of them could have predicted, that going on seven years from then, he'd be sitting on the floor in his apartment with Nagayama Takashi, watching him straighten things up like he owned the place, well... He's sure he would have laughed, and never believed it for a second.
All that had happened since then, all the moments in between, the ones that he thought would end it all, the arguments he wondered if they'd ever come back from, and then the nights like this where nothing in particular happened, but that Tuti found he needed like air sometimes anyway--just knowing that Takashi was here, not worlds away on a train platform somewhere, but right here. It wasn't something that he thought about that often, but when he did, he realized all over again how much it meant to him.
He didn't say anything, just watched Takashi's back in silence, half-wondering if this was the kind of refreshing silence Takashi had mentioned earlier or if maybe this was something else entirely, and then promptly decided that it really didn't matter either way, as long as things stayed like this a little longer. He thought about Takashi's pictures, and the cherry blossoms and wondered what he'd be taking pictures of tomorrow. The sky, maybe, or the grass, it didn't seem to matter what it was, Tuti always seemed to enjoy Takashi's view of the world.
"Hey," Tuti said after another long moment, and Takashi turned to him, eyebrows raised in question.
"Think you could help me find a good deal on one of those cameras of yours someday?"
Takashi's brow furrowed in suspicion. "Really?"
"Sure, why not?"
"You're sure this isn't just an expensive excuse for a park date?"
"...Well..."
Takashi just grinned.
"I'll see what I can do," he said after a moment, and Tuti couldn't help but grin back at him.
***