fic: if only it were possible
Title: If Only It Were Possible
Rating: PG
Pairing/Characters: Yamashita Tomohisa, Akanishi Jin
Notes: HAPPY (EARLY EARLY) BIRTHDAY soiresque! ♥♥♥♥ ILUSM. You are the part of the watermelon that tastes good. You are Yamapi's right man-boob and I am Yamapi's left man-boob. (This is all code for ILU.)
Summary: And in the end, it should have been a surprise to everyone but you.
1.
You stare at me like you hadn’t seen this coming, like the hints I’d dropped hadn’t been enough, like you hadn’t changed the subject every single time I even tried to bring it up. You stare at me like you don’t understand; you stammer, “Why are you doing this?”
And you visibly flinch when I shrug and say, “For the same reason you left - because I want it.”
You’re quiet after that, mouth turned down in an unconscious pout, but you don’t say anything in response; how could you?
2.
It doesn’t get any easier from there, but I doubt you’d expected it to. Management is furious, of course they are, you’ve been with them for years, you’re 25 years old, for God’s sake, you’ve been here for more than half your life. But it makes no difference, you remain unwavering (and if you had really changed your mind so easily, you wouldn’t deserve leaving), and you bring up university, ambitions, astronomy; you bring up dating, girls, and a normal life - you bring up all the things you’ve always dreamed of having.
You promise them one last month of your life - one final godforsaken month of a 25-year old life that hasn’t been yours for a long, long time.
3.
It’s almost cute how you keep pretending it’s not happening, how hard you’re trying. It’s almost cute how you’re doing everything that didn’t stop you from leaving, almost cute how you think it might stop me. Nothing has to change, you know that? You can’t blame me from wanting what you did, you can’t blame me for following in your footsteps; by all means, you should be flattered. You think you have time, you think all you need is a month to stop me from leaving, you think it’s like a dream state I’ll snap out of eventually, don’t you? That I’ll come to my senses and realize what I’m doing, what I plan on doing, and it’ll take a while, but everyone will forgive me anyways, because they always have. I know and you know it’s not true; that when I mean it like this, I really, really mean it.
“There’s no profit in leaving,” you try to tell me, and all I can answer is that if I was in it for the profit, I would be staying.
“Then stay,” you reply, like it’s that easy. And if it were that simple, it wouldn’t be an issue.
I don’t say anything and you don’t either, but what’s unspoken is that if you had the courage, you would leave with me as well.
4.
In your last month, you release one solo single, one last album as a group, and film a one-episode special. It figures that even in your last moments, you are a workaholic to the very end. It pays off though - your one-episode special has higher ratings than anything you’ve ever acted in, your group album reaches new heights, outselling all the competition, and you’ve never sounded better than you do on your single. You hum bits and pieces of it to me over the phone, and it takes all I have to refrain from yelling at you, from asking you, “Don’t you know this is what you were made for? Do you really think you could make it anywhere else?”
But I don’t, because we’re best friends, and that’s not best friendly behavior. I also don’t ask you because I don’t believe it, and because you have always known me better than I know myself.
“I didn’t go to university for fun,” you tell me, and I couldn’t begrudge you this; I’ve seen the way you study, the way it almost killed you when you were just four credits short of graduating - just four fucking credits. “I’m sure I’ll be okay.”
You are going to be okay. You know it, I know it, and everyone else knows it as well. Who the fuck ever said all you had to your name was a pretty face?
5.
I think you’ve given up trying to convince me to stay. Good for you. You’re selfish, you are, don’t try to deny it, but you’re not stupid. You aren’t anything like what everyone tries to make you out to be, but you play along, because this is what you’re made for. You couldn’t do anything better with that face, that voice, all that charisma of yours. Good for you.
Thank you for coming back. Thank you for reminding me why you’re my best friend. Thank you for reminding me that I should never settle for being satisfied when I could be happier. Thank you for coming home to where you belong, and thank you for showing me that I will never belong here on this stage as well as you do.
You’ll ask why I never told you before. When you ask why, I can only cite selfishness as my excuse - I didn’t want to tell you because I still wanted you to come back. Because I still missed you and I didn’t want you to stay there forever. And maybe it’s also because in a tiny, terrible part of my heart, I didn’t want to give you the chance to leave first without me.
6.
The month passes quickly, and you have probably made some kind of solo/group artist history with the amount of sales (and still counting) your CDs have made, the number of weeks (and still counting) they’ve stayed on the top of the charts and the phenomenon you’ve caused that is currently sweeping through the country, hell, through the world.
I’ve counted letters from Japan to China to Australia to the UK to Canada to Brazil. You’ve received packages from New York to Seoul to Honolulu to Moscow. If you have ever doubted your popularity, please stop doubting now. At this moment, at this minute, at this second, there are thousands of girls thinking of you, probably more. At this moment, I have no doubt at all that you are the most popular young idol on this side of the world.
7.
Maybe if you had begged me to stay - well, no. I still wouldn’t have.
When the month’s over, I leave and you stay.
“Good luck,” you say. “I know you’ll be fine.”
“Thank you,” I reply, smiling with all of my beautiful, straight teeth, the last vestiges of my idol life. “Thank you so much. I’ll call you tonight for drinks?”
You blink, like you forgot I was merely quitting my job, and not dying or going somewhere far away (I think that in a way, you were sorry for that too).
“- yeah,” you finally answer. “Yeah, of course.”
Rating: PG
Pairing/Characters: Yamashita Tomohisa, Akanishi Jin
Notes: HAPPY (EARLY EARLY) BIRTHDAY soiresque! ♥♥♥♥ ILUSM. You are the part of the watermelon that tastes good. You are Yamapi's right man-boob and I am Yamapi's left man-boob. (This is all code for ILU.)
Summary: And in the end, it should have been a surprise to everyone but you.
1.
You stare at me like you hadn’t seen this coming, like the hints I’d dropped hadn’t been enough, like you hadn’t changed the subject every single time I even tried to bring it up. You stare at me like you don’t understand; you stammer, “Why are you doing this?”
And you visibly flinch when I shrug and say, “For the same reason you left - because I want it.”
You’re quiet after that, mouth turned down in an unconscious pout, but you don’t say anything in response; how could you?
2.
It doesn’t get any easier from there, but I doubt you’d expected it to. Management is furious, of course they are, you’ve been with them for years, you’re 25 years old, for God’s sake, you’ve been here for more than half your life. But it makes no difference, you remain unwavering (and if you had really changed your mind so easily, you wouldn’t deserve leaving), and you bring up university, ambitions, astronomy; you bring up dating, girls, and a normal life - you bring up all the things you’ve always dreamed of having.
You promise them one last month of your life - one final godforsaken month of a 25-year old life that hasn’t been yours for a long, long time.
3.
It’s almost cute how you keep pretending it’s not happening, how hard you’re trying. It’s almost cute how you’re doing everything that didn’t stop you from leaving, almost cute how you think it might stop me. Nothing has to change, you know that? You can’t blame me from wanting what you did, you can’t blame me for following in your footsteps; by all means, you should be flattered. You think you have time, you think all you need is a month to stop me from leaving, you think it’s like a dream state I’ll snap out of eventually, don’t you? That I’ll come to my senses and realize what I’m doing, what I plan on doing, and it’ll take a while, but everyone will forgive me anyways, because they always have. I know and you know it’s not true; that when I mean it like this, I really, really mean it.
“There’s no profit in leaving,” you try to tell me, and all I can answer is that if I was in it for the profit, I would be staying.
“Then stay,” you reply, like it’s that easy. And if it were that simple, it wouldn’t be an issue.
I don’t say anything and you don’t either, but what’s unspoken is that if you had the courage, you would leave with me as well.
4.
In your last month, you release one solo single, one last album as a group, and film a one-episode special. It figures that even in your last moments, you are a workaholic to the very end. It pays off though - your one-episode special has higher ratings than anything you’ve ever acted in, your group album reaches new heights, outselling all the competition, and you’ve never sounded better than you do on your single. You hum bits and pieces of it to me over the phone, and it takes all I have to refrain from yelling at you, from asking you, “Don’t you know this is what you were made for? Do you really think you could make it anywhere else?”
But I don’t, because we’re best friends, and that’s not best friendly behavior. I also don’t ask you because I don’t believe it, and because you have always known me better than I know myself.
“I didn’t go to university for fun,” you tell me, and I couldn’t begrudge you this; I’ve seen the way you study, the way it almost killed you when you were just four credits short of graduating - just four fucking credits. “I’m sure I’ll be okay.”
You are going to be okay. You know it, I know it, and everyone else knows it as well. Who the fuck ever said all you had to your name was a pretty face?
5.
I think you’ve given up trying to convince me to stay. Good for you. You’re selfish, you are, don’t try to deny it, but you’re not stupid. You aren’t anything like what everyone tries to make you out to be, but you play along, because this is what you’re made for. You couldn’t do anything better with that face, that voice, all that charisma of yours. Good for you.
Thank you for coming back. Thank you for reminding me why you’re my best friend. Thank you for reminding me that I should never settle for being satisfied when I could be happier. Thank you for coming home to where you belong, and thank you for showing me that I will never belong here on this stage as well as you do.
You’ll ask why I never told you before. When you ask why, I can only cite selfishness as my excuse - I didn’t want to tell you because I still wanted you to come back. Because I still missed you and I didn’t want you to stay there forever. And maybe it’s also because in a tiny, terrible part of my heart, I didn’t want to give you the chance to leave first without me.
6.
The month passes quickly, and you have probably made some kind of solo/group artist history with the amount of sales (and still counting) your CDs have made, the number of weeks (and still counting) they’ve stayed on the top of the charts and the phenomenon you’ve caused that is currently sweeping through the country, hell, through the world.
I’ve counted letters from Japan to China to Australia to the UK to Canada to Brazil. You’ve received packages from New York to Seoul to Honolulu to Moscow. If you have ever doubted your popularity, please stop doubting now. At this moment, at this minute, at this second, there are thousands of girls thinking of you, probably more. At this moment, I have no doubt at all that you are the most popular young idol on this side of the world.
7.
Maybe if you had begged me to stay - well, no. I still wouldn’t have.
When the month’s over, I leave and you stay.
“Good luck,” you say. “I know you’ll be fine.”
“Thank you,” I reply, smiling with all of my beautiful, straight teeth, the last vestiges of my idol life. “Thank you so much. I’ll call you tonight for drinks?”
You blink, like you forgot I was merely quitting my job, and not dying or going somewhere far away (I think that in a way, you were sorry for that too).
“- yeah,” you finally answer. “Yeah, of course.”