Chocolate fic for sweetgelato
To: sweetgelato
From: tinyangl
Title: Three's a Crowd
Pairing: Nishikido Ryo/Toda Erika
Rating: PG-13 but only for cursing.
Summary: Ryo thinks his friends are the shittiest ever for constantly setting him up to be alone with Toda Erika.
A/N: For sweetgelato! I hope you enjoy this, dear. Thanks to my beta’s C and R for their hard-work in this. You both were invaluable to making this actually work.
Nino tricks him.
Which, of course he does, Ryo thinks, because Nino is a bastard who sticks his nose into people's businesses a little too much.
"What are you in the mood for, Tai-nii?" Erika asks, her attention focused on the menu in front of her instead of the jittery man whose hands will not stay still. Ryo cringes at the use of a nickname that should've died out two years ago with Ryuusei no Kizuna’s end.
"Anything would be good," Ryo mumbles.
Erika laughs, taking her eyes off the menu and locking them with his. Ryo makes sure not to look away too sharply, casually glancing down at his menu. "Any particular dish? Because I don't think 'Anything' is on the menu tonight."
Once again, Ryo curses Nino in his head before opening the menu to some random page and hoping he can choose quickly. But he doesn't really have his heart in it, especially when all he can think about is if Matsujun will kill him if he maims his bandmate just a little.
~*~
"Oh, come on," Nino says over the phone. "It was an overbooking. I’m a very busy person, you know, Taisuke."
Ryo's eyes narrow and he wishes Nino was standing in front of him so he could glare properly like he can’t over the phone. "Don't call me Taisuke," he hisses.
Nino's tone is amused. "Why? Get more than enough of that from Erika-chan?"
"Shut up, okay. I know you well enough to know this wasn't an accident."
"Why, Nishikido. I don't quite understand what you mean. Why would I ever plan to leave you and Erika-chan alone together? Unless something about that makes you uncomfortable." Ryo swears that Nino grinning right now.
He can't find the words to retort so the only thing he can think to do instead is hang up.
The only problem with his cell phone is that angrily sliding it closed is not as cathartic as slamming a handset into its console.
~*~
Nino tricks him more than once. Ryo wonders if it's because Nino's a deceptive bastard, or because Ryo's just that gullible, or if it’s a combination of the two. No matter what the reason might be, all it equals is Ryo feeling like a fool whenever he’s left alone with Toda Erika.
"Isn't it just strange how many times Onii cancels?" she asks before her lips cover her straw.
"Strange, huh." Ryo says darkly. Erika blinks at him.
"Something the matter, Tai-nii?" The twitch that follows is almost like a habit now.
Ryo shakes his head, taking a sip from his own drink. "Nothing, nothing. Ready to eat?"
“Always." She toys with the top of her straw before angling a smirk at him. "Are you going pick your own this time? Or are you just going to say 'Same as her?'"
He wonders if his face looks as red as it feels it is. "The dishes you choose sound good, what's wrong with that?"
She seems to be muffling laughter when she replies, "Nothing, of course."
~*~
Somehow it doesn't surprise him when Yamapi realizes Ryo's annoyingly persistent crush on Toda Erika.
"Should I invite her out too?" Yamapi asks, flipping open his cell phone.
Ryo glares at him over his bottle of beer. "You fucking do that, I swear. I hope you're not attached to that damn phone." Ryo finds it a bit of an accomplishment that Yamapi actually cringes a little at his words-before scoffing lightly. Yamapi still puts it away.
"I'm just saying. I could set you up. Toda-chan and I get along well enough."
Ryo rolls his eyes. "I get enough of match-maker from Ninomiya-kun. I don't need you to get in on that, too."
Yamapi chuckles.
In hindsight, Ryo really should've known better.
~*~
"Tai-nii?" Erika greets when he walks into the yakiniku place. He blinks for a second, wondering if this is a coincidence, but groans mentally because shit, Yamapi is going to fucking get it.
"Hey, Toda-chan" he greets weakly, stuffing his hands into his pockets before sliding into the booth across from Erika. "Are you here to meet up with Yamashita?"
Erika nods, smiling at him. "Wouldn't it be funny if he canceled too?"
Ryo snorts, glancing up at the approaching waitress and giving his drink order. "I don't know if funny's the word."
"Well if not funny, then don't you think it's a sign?"
He blinks at her, then wonders if the frantic beating of his heart is also a sign. A sign that he's about to have a fucking heart attack due to shitty friends. "What do you mean?" he says instead.
She shrugs without a word and takes a sip of her soda. There’s a hint of a smirk on her lips that Ryo can’t quite read. It actually makes him a little nervous; his fingers rap against the table.
His phone goes off and Ryo doesn't have to look to know it's a message from Yamapi. "Have fun tonight!" the text reads and Ryo resists from the desire to somehow slam his phone shut
"Looks like it's just us," he says, meeting her eyes.
Erika grins. "At least I know I'm in good company."
Ryo swears his heart doesn't flutter at her words.
~*~
"I hate you," Ryo says to Yamapi's cheerful "Moshi moshi." He doesn’t give Yamapi any time to respond before he hangs up.
"As much as you love Toda-chan?" Yamapi texts to him. Ryo stares at the message before deleting it.
"Don't you deny your mushy, romantic heart, Ryo-chan!" is his second message. Ryo scowls, deleting it again.
"You can delete these as much as you want, but we both know the truth~!"
Ryo wants to kill whoever invented the cell phone and texting. Instead he settles for just shutting it off.
He regrets the decision when he turns it back on the next morning and finds about 20 new messages from Yamapi.
~*~
He doesn't quite understand why Erika never seems to question their nights together. It always starts out with plans that include someone else, but ends up being them two. Not just sometimes, always. "It's work," Erika says with a shrug. "You can't tell me people don't just cancel sometimes."
Ryo raises an eyebrow. "Key word there is sometimes."
"Tai-nii, if I didn't know any better, I'd think you just didn't like being alone with me." The words are playful, but they hit Ryo hard. He looks away from her face, forcing himself to breathe normally.
"Of course that's not it," Ryo says, fumbling with the words more than he'd like.
Erika doesn't seem to mind, judging by the grin he just manages to catch before she takes a sip of beer. "Maybe we should just make plans of our own then."
Ryo blinks. "Huh?" He looks up then and her gaze is sharp, stealing the breath he’d work so hard to regain.
"Why should we invite them if they never come?"
The thudding of his heart is so loud that Ryo doesn't quite understand why she isn't saying anything about it. "True," he croaks. "Th-that's very true."
She smiles at him. "Then it's a plan. Next time, it'll just be the two of us."
"It already is," Ryo points out.
"Doesn't count," Erika says. "It wasn't intended to be the two of us. Now, it will be."
"Right." He doesn't know what to think anymore, so instead he just focuses on Erika's smile.
~*~
Except the days before the "date," as Yamapi has taken to calling it, are murder on his nerves. "Will you shut up already?" Ryo hisses to a still-talking Yamapi.
Yamapi's lips shut closed and his eyebrows furrow before he suddenly starts to laugh.
"What now?" Ryo grits out, looking through his closet for something to wear.
"You're seriously shaken up about this," he says, shaking his head. "It's not like you haven't been alone with Toda-chan before."
"But there was always a chance someone would show up to join us."
"You don't believe that anymore than I do."
Ryo groans before joining Yamapi on his bed, lying back to stare at his ceiling. "It's just different, okay?"
There's a snort of laughter before Yamapi lies back on the bed beside Ryo. "It's only different if you start to think it is."
Ryo takes a breath before saying, "But it is different."
"And why's that?"
Ryo knows what he's doing, is slightly offended Yamapi seems to think he needs help in this matter, but altogether is just glad his friend is here. He shuts his eyes. "Because I like her."
He doesn't have to look to know that Yamapi's smiling. "Maybe she should hear that." Even though that's the scariest thing Ryo's heard in a long while, it also makes his heart race at the idea of possibilities.
~*~
It's not as though Ryo has never asked a girl out or confessed or really just more. If anything, he's had more than enough of these experiences to be able to do all of this sufficiently. Except something about Toda Erika scares him witless. It's not like she's scary herself, but something makes him want to avert his eyes and not stare directly at her. Like she'll realize things if she looks into his eyes for too long.
"Tai-nii?" she asks when Ryo doesn't speak for a while, his eyes focused on the menu on the table.
"Huh?"
"You okay? You seemed to daze off a little." Ryo feels himself continue to blink. An obnoxious amount. An amount that would make anyone suspicious. He forces his body to listen to him.
"I'm okay," Ryo says, voice croaking. He resists from cringing-one thing gets fixed, another gets broken. Somehow, he thinks it just figures. His leg bounces underneath the table.
Erika raises an eyebrow, obviously not believing him, but she doesn't push it. "What are you in the mood for, Tai-nii?" She turns back to the menu.
Ryo swallows, staring at her, before he says, "Ryo." He watches as her eyes widen, her gaze shifts from the menu and onto him.
"What?" she asks.
"I think you should call me Ryo."
Erika's surprise turns to something more gentle, more warm. "Okay," she breathes. "I'd like that... Ryo-kun.” She licks her lips before saying, “And you should call me Erika.”
He inhales sharply, wanting to look away from her, but he forces himself to breathe. “Okay. I can do that.” Ryo bites his lower lip before he tacks on, “Erika-chan.”
She grins brightly and Ryo thinks his body is pushing it, grinning so hard-his heart’s pounding matching it, but he thinks that it's okay just this one time.
~*~
The night doesn't go as terribly as Ryo had been playing up in his head. Not that that should really surprise him as he's spent more than enough nights alone with Erika and none of them had gone terribly. "This was fun, Ryo-kun," Erika says as they're walking down the street towards her place. Ryo's heart skips a beat at the sound of his name coming from her lips. She's put his request to practice so many times throughout the night that he's mildly surprised he's still standing.
"It was," Ryo replies, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
The words linger in the air as silence overtakes them. Ryo can feel the request he wants to make in his chest, wondering if they can make the journey to his lips. They can. "We should do this again."
Through his peripheral, Ryo can catch the slow raise of Erika's lips into a smile. "Just us two?"
"Yes," Ryo says with no hesitation.
The laugh that comes out of Erika's mouth is unexpected, but not unwelcome; Ryo practically basks in the warmth of it. "Are you asking me out, Ryo-chan?"
The words take his breath away, but Ryo manages to say a confident "Yes."
She stops walking at this point and Ryo stops with her, facing her, giving him full exposure to her bright smile. "Took you long enough," she says. Which then confuses him.
"Wha-?" he manages.
"I mean, Onii had no faith in you, saying it'd take you another month to break. Yamashita-kun was a little kinder, saying that it would be a little sooner. But I thought you would’ve caught on much earlier." The words are easy to understand, but Ryo finds he has to take a bit of time to wrap his head around them.
He blinks at her unwavering smile. "You planned this," he says. He almost wants to burst into laughter, because really, he owes both Nino and Yamapi a bit of an apology.
"I wouldn't say plan as much as suggested. They may have taken a little of it into their own hands."
Ryo laughs at this point. "Slightly devious."
"Only if I had terrible intentions," she says.
"Oh, but you had intentions," Ryo retorts. He wonders if he's smirking as wildly as he thinks he is.
"Yes, I did. Don't you?"
"Possibly. How do we know they're the same, though?"
Erika laughs. "You're a smart man. I'm sure you can figure it out." He thinks her smirk matches his right now and something about the thought makes his heart pound a little more.
Ryo grins, allowing himself to faintly think Shit, he's going to have to owe Nino and Yamapi for this before he gets distracted by better and more interesting things.
From: tinyangl
Title: Three's a Crowd
Pairing: Nishikido Ryo/Toda Erika
Rating: PG-13 but only for cursing.
Summary: Ryo thinks his friends are the shittiest ever for constantly setting him up to be alone with Toda Erika.
A/N: For sweetgelato! I hope you enjoy this, dear. Thanks to my beta’s C and R for their hard-work in this. You both were invaluable to making this actually work.
Nino tricks him.
Which, of course he does, Ryo thinks, because Nino is a bastard who sticks his nose into people's businesses a little too much.
"What are you in the mood for, Tai-nii?" Erika asks, her attention focused on the menu in front of her instead of the jittery man whose hands will not stay still. Ryo cringes at the use of a nickname that should've died out two years ago with Ryuusei no Kizuna’s end.
"Anything would be good," Ryo mumbles.
Erika laughs, taking her eyes off the menu and locking them with his. Ryo makes sure not to look away too sharply, casually glancing down at his menu. "Any particular dish? Because I don't think 'Anything' is on the menu tonight."
Once again, Ryo curses Nino in his head before opening the menu to some random page and hoping he can choose quickly. But he doesn't really have his heart in it, especially when all he can think about is if Matsujun will kill him if he maims his bandmate just a little.
~*~
"Oh, come on," Nino says over the phone. "It was an overbooking. I’m a very busy person, you know, Taisuke."
Ryo's eyes narrow and he wishes Nino was standing in front of him so he could glare properly like he can’t over the phone. "Don't call me Taisuke," he hisses.
Nino's tone is amused. "Why? Get more than enough of that from Erika-chan?"
"Shut up, okay. I know you well enough to know this wasn't an accident."
"Why, Nishikido. I don't quite understand what you mean. Why would I ever plan to leave you and Erika-chan alone together? Unless something about that makes you uncomfortable." Ryo swears that Nino grinning right now.
He can't find the words to retort so the only thing he can think to do instead is hang up.
The only problem with his cell phone is that angrily sliding it closed is not as cathartic as slamming a handset into its console.
~*~
Nino tricks him more than once. Ryo wonders if it's because Nino's a deceptive bastard, or because Ryo's just that gullible, or if it’s a combination of the two. No matter what the reason might be, all it equals is Ryo feeling like a fool whenever he’s left alone with Toda Erika.
"Isn't it just strange how many times Onii cancels?" she asks before her lips cover her straw.
"Strange, huh." Ryo says darkly. Erika blinks at him.
"Something the matter, Tai-nii?" The twitch that follows is almost like a habit now.
Ryo shakes his head, taking a sip from his own drink. "Nothing, nothing. Ready to eat?"
“Always." She toys with the top of her straw before angling a smirk at him. "Are you going pick your own this time? Or are you just going to say 'Same as her?'"
He wonders if his face looks as red as it feels it is. "The dishes you choose sound good, what's wrong with that?"
She seems to be muffling laughter when she replies, "Nothing, of course."
~*~
Somehow it doesn't surprise him when Yamapi realizes Ryo's annoyingly persistent crush on Toda Erika.
"Should I invite her out too?" Yamapi asks, flipping open his cell phone.
Ryo glares at him over his bottle of beer. "You fucking do that, I swear. I hope you're not attached to that damn phone." Ryo finds it a bit of an accomplishment that Yamapi actually cringes a little at his words-before scoffing lightly. Yamapi still puts it away.
"I'm just saying. I could set you up. Toda-chan and I get along well enough."
Ryo rolls his eyes. "I get enough of match-maker from Ninomiya-kun. I don't need you to get in on that, too."
Yamapi chuckles.
In hindsight, Ryo really should've known better.
~*~
"Tai-nii?" Erika greets when he walks into the yakiniku place. He blinks for a second, wondering if this is a coincidence, but groans mentally because shit, Yamapi is going to fucking get it.
"Hey, Toda-chan" he greets weakly, stuffing his hands into his pockets before sliding into the booth across from Erika. "Are you here to meet up with Yamashita?"
Erika nods, smiling at him. "Wouldn't it be funny if he canceled too?"
Ryo snorts, glancing up at the approaching waitress and giving his drink order. "I don't know if funny's the word."
"Well if not funny, then don't you think it's a sign?"
He blinks at her, then wonders if the frantic beating of his heart is also a sign. A sign that he's about to have a fucking heart attack due to shitty friends. "What do you mean?" he says instead.
She shrugs without a word and takes a sip of her soda. There’s a hint of a smirk on her lips that Ryo can’t quite read. It actually makes him a little nervous; his fingers rap against the table.
His phone goes off and Ryo doesn't have to look to know it's a message from Yamapi. "Have fun tonight!" the text reads and Ryo resists from the desire to somehow slam his phone shut
"Looks like it's just us," he says, meeting her eyes.
Erika grins. "At least I know I'm in good company."
Ryo swears his heart doesn't flutter at her words.
~*~
"I hate you," Ryo says to Yamapi's cheerful "Moshi moshi." He doesn’t give Yamapi any time to respond before he hangs up.
"As much as you love Toda-chan?" Yamapi texts to him. Ryo stares at the message before deleting it.
"Don't you deny your mushy, romantic heart, Ryo-chan!" is his second message. Ryo scowls, deleting it again.
"You can delete these as much as you want, but we both know the truth~!"
Ryo wants to kill whoever invented the cell phone and texting. Instead he settles for just shutting it off.
He regrets the decision when he turns it back on the next morning and finds about 20 new messages from Yamapi.
~*~
He doesn't quite understand why Erika never seems to question their nights together. It always starts out with plans that include someone else, but ends up being them two. Not just sometimes, always. "It's work," Erika says with a shrug. "You can't tell me people don't just cancel sometimes."
Ryo raises an eyebrow. "Key word there is sometimes."
"Tai-nii, if I didn't know any better, I'd think you just didn't like being alone with me." The words are playful, but they hit Ryo hard. He looks away from her face, forcing himself to breathe normally.
"Of course that's not it," Ryo says, fumbling with the words more than he'd like.
Erika doesn't seem to mind, judging by the grin he just manages to catch before she takes a sip of beer. "Maybe we should just make plans of our own then."
Ryo blinks. "Huh?" He looks up then and her gaze is sharp, stealing the breath he’d work so hard to regain.
"Why should we invite them if they never come?"
The thudding of his heart is so loud that Ryo doesn't quite understand why she isn't saying anything about it. "True," he croaks. "Th-that's very true."
She smiles at him. "Then it's a plan. Next time, it'll just be the two of us."
"It already is," Ryo points out.
"Doesn't count," Erika says. "It wasn't intended to be the two of us. Now, it will be."
"Right." He doesn't know what to think anymore, so instead he just focuses on Erika's smile.
~*~
Except the days before the "date," as Yamapi has taken to calling it, are murder on his nerves. "Will you shut up already?" Ryo hisses to a still-talking Yamapi.
Yamapi's lips shut closed and his eyebrows furrow before he suddenly starts to laugh.
"What now?" Ryo grits out, looking through his closet for something to wear.
"You're seriously shaken up about this," he says, shaking his head. "It's not like you haven't been alone with Toda-chan before."
"But there was always a chance someone would show up to join us."
"You don't believe that anymore than I do."
Ryo groans before joining Yamapi on his bed, lying back to stare at his ceiling. "It's just different, okay?"
There's a snort of laughter before Yamapi lies back on the bed beside Ryo. "It's only different if you start to think it is."
Ryo takes a breath before saying, "But it is different."
"And why's that?"
Ryo knows what he's doing, is slightly offended Yamapi seems to think he needs help in this matter, but altogether is just glad his friend is here. He shuts his eyes. "Because I like her."
He doesn't have to look to know that Yamapi's smiling. "Maybe she should hear that." Even though that's the scariest thing Ryo's heard in a long while, it also makes his heart race at the idea of possibilities.
~*~
It's not as though Ryo has never asked a girl out or confessed or really just more. If anything, he's had more than enough of these experiences to be able to do all of this sufficiently. Except something about Toda Erika scares him witless. It's not like she's scary herself, but something makes him want to avert his eyes and not stare directly at her. Like she'll realize things if she looks into his eyes for too long.
"Tai-nii?" she asks when Ryo doesn't speak for a while, his eyes focused on the menu on the table.
"Huh?"
"You okay? You seemed to daze off a little." Ryo feels himself continue to blink. An obnoxious amount. An amount that would make anyone suspicious. He forces his body to listen to him.
"I'm okay," Ryo says, voice croaking. He resists from cringing-one thing gets fixed, another gets broken. Somehow, he thinks it just figures. His leg bounces underneath the table.
Erika raises an eyebrow, obviously not believing him, but she doesn't push it. "What are you in the mood for, Tai-nii?" She turns back to the menu.
Ryo swallows, staring at her, before he says, "Ryo." He watches as her eyes widen, her gaze shifts from the menu and onto him.
"What?" she asks.
"I think you should call me Ryo."
Erika's surprise turns to something more gentle, more warm. "Okay," she breathes. "I'd like that... Ryo-kun.” She licks her lips before saying, “And you should call me Erika.”
He inhales sharply, wanting to look away from her, but he forces himself to breathe. “Okay. I can do that.” Ryo bites his lower lip before he tacks on, “Erika-chan.”
She grins brightly and Ryo thinks his body is pushing it, grinning so hard-his heart’s pounding matching it, but he thinks that it's okay just this one time.
~*~
The night doesn't go as terribly as Ryo had been playing up in his head. Not that that should really surprise him as he's spent more than enough nights alone with Erika and none of them had gone terribly. "This was fun, Ryo-kun," Erika says as they're walking down the street towards her place. Ryo's heart skips a beat at the sound of his name coming from her lips. She's put his request to practice so many times throughout the night that he's mildly surprised he's still standing.
"It was," Ryo replies, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
The words linger in the air as silence overtakes them. Ryo can feel the request he wants to make in his chest, wondering if they can make the journey to his lips. They can. "We should do this again."
Through his peripheral, Ryo can catch the slow raise of Erika's lips into a smile. "Just us two?"
"Yes," Ryo says with no hesitation.
The laugh that comes out of Erika's mouth is unexpected, but not unwelcome; Ryo practically basks in the warmth of it. "Are you asking me out, Ryo-chan?"
The words take his breath away, but Ryo manages to say a confident "Yes."
She stops walking at this point and Ryo stops with her, facing her, giving him full exposure to her bright smile. "Took you long enough," she says. Which then confuses him.
"Wha-?" he manages.
"I mean, Onii had no faith in you, saying it'd take you another month to break. Yamashita-kun was a little kinder, saying that it would be a little sooner. But I thought you would’ve caught on much earlier." The words are easy to understand, but Ryo finds he has to take a bit of time to wrap his head around them.
He blinks at her unwavering smile. "You planned this," he says. He almost wants to burst into laughter, because really, he owes both Nino and Yamapi a bit of an apology.
"I wouldn't say plan as much as suggested. They may have taken a little of it into their own hands."
Ryo laughs at this point. "Slightly devious."
"Only if I had terrible intentions," she says.
"Oh, but you had intentions," Ryo retorts. He wonders if he's smirking as wildly as he thinks he is.
"Yes, I did. Don't you?"
"Possibly. How do we know they're the same, though?"
Erika laughs. "You're a smart man. I'm sure you can figure it out." He thinks her smirk matches his right now and something about the thought makes his heart pound a little more.
Ryo grins, allowing himself to faintly think Shit, he's going to have to owe Nino and Yamapi for this before he gets distracted by better and more interesting things.