Prompt 10: i miss the rush of your skin - Team What If
Title: i miss the rush of your skin
Rating: PG-13 or light R
Pairing: Nishikido Ryo/Sawajiri Erika
Summary: “His entire life adds up to this one singular moment, where he’s standing back, losing the love of his life.” [Five moments in Ryo’s life that lead to the end of a love story.]
Prompt: Diamond Eyes- Shounentai
Warnings: het, hints at sex, light language
Notes: My what if: What if Uchi and Jin never came back? Written to 「 Come On, Get Higher 」by Matt Nathanson.
His entire life adds up to this one singular moment, where he’s standing back, losing the love of his life.
He tells himself he would fight if he could, so he doesn’t feel like such a loser. He tells himself that this is all just the flavor of his life and he can’t change that so he shouldn’t waste his time. He tells himself all sorts of pathetic things to console himself through the vows and the most tragic part about all of this is that he’s probably right.
He has no control over his life. He’s chained. He can’t fight this at all.
He sits back quietly and doesn’t say a thing, even as his heart breaks in a slow-motion shattering that leaves him reeling.
◦◦◦
He pursues Erika because everything is failing apart and he needs a distraction. When he prods, Erika pokes back. When he insults her, she just hurls insults right back into his face. She’s got a reputation on the set for being a bitch and Ryo can kind of see it in her. She’s callous and demanding and angry. She’s stubborn and selfish and painfully honest. Erika doesn’t let anyone change her mind and Ryo tells himself he likes her spirit.
Sometimes, though, in the rare, peaceful moments with Erika, Ryo will admit that he chases after her because he can see himself in the haughty point of her jaw. They are both alone, after all.
Ryo pursues Erika all though filming and she carelessly deflects each and every one of his advances. He just tries harder. He can be just as stubborn as she is and she is not going to win this battle. He won’t stop until he has her. He won’t stop until he has her because he needs this. He needs the chase and the thrill and the challenge and just, just something worth getting out of bed for every morning
He’s sick of his life. He hates all the lights and the bustling efficiency of the jimusho. He hates how he has no time for an actual life or to visit Uchi or to just call his mother to say hi. He hates how he has to watch his each and every step so he doesn’t fuck up like Uchi and did, and how he still has to take the midnight train on his way to and from Osaka. The only thing that kept him sane was the knowledge that Uchi was suffering right there alongside him. Everyday he was ready to quit and if it wasn’t for Uchi being there he would have a long time ago.. But Uchi’s not here now, and the one thing helping Ryo continue living his life is gone.
That’s why he’s dropping Erika hints that she casually ignores. That’s why he’s approaching her, as the streets glow sunset red, waiting for her to finally let go of whatever kept her away from him.
"Oi, Sawajiri” he calls, running after her until they fall into step. He likes how she’s only a few inches shorter than him. It’s just tall enough for him to tuck the top of her head underneath his chin.
She spares him a quick once-over before scoffing and turning her head away. Usually she would receive a typical Ryo-esque remark for that action but tonight is different. Tonight she’s ducking her head to hide the beginnings of a smile and he’s laughing at her failed effort. He likes the way she glares at him for that.
“How about dinner?” he chokes out eventually and knows he’s won when she refuses to look at him.
He takes a step closer and guides her to a simple ramen shop, not too far from the set, with the push of his shoulder. She’s quiet for once and he admires the differences between her and Aya. She’s sharp-edged and bright-eyed and she leaves him vaguely tongue-tied but Erika should be wide-eyed and naïve and soft. He’s glad she’s nothing like that-nothing like Aya. He’s not much like Asou himself, at least not with her. When he’s with her the withdrawn, brooding man he has become disappears in swirl or cockiness and teasing. He likes that about her too, her ability to make him just a little happy for just existing.
She remains quiet through dinner, even slurping her noodles softly. Her silence tonight amuses him though and he chatters and teases until she’s red with fury and something else he’s been holding out in order to find. She turns to him, eyes burning hotly and he wants her to just hand over her heart and stop fighting him. He promises he’ll keep it safe.
“Why don’t you just give up?” He questions her with a hint of a smirk in his voice, interrupting whatever she was just about to say. Her eyes widen for a second before she scoffs at him again
“What? I have no idea what you are talking about.” She glances at the bottle in his hand before measuring his height with her eyes. “I didn’t realize you were such a lightweight Nishikido,” she adds, voice deceptively casual and he grinds his teeth to refrain from replying that he. is. not. short.
“Just give up,” he says instead. “You know you want me.” She’s staring hard at him by the time he finishes, like she can’t believe any of this is happening. He grins a bit at her incredulous look.
That just pisses her off.
“You couldn’t pick up a girl to save your life,” she snaps heatedly, cheeks flushed again and her eyes glitter like mica in the dim light of the ramen shop.
He opens his mouth to protest that he can pick up girls but she cuts him of with a sharp shut up. He swivels the bar stool around so that he can look at her, stare hard as diamond. His eyes start to hurt by the time she acknowledges him.
The next time she opens her mouth he’s pleasantly surprised that she lets him kiss her, just to shut her up.
“I hate you,” she mutters and Ryo even likes her stupid little lies. He likes the way she smells like roses too, when he leans in close, even if she tastes like ramen.
He kisses her again.
◦◦◦
Erika makes him take her out to dinner the day Jin sets off for L.A. It’s cold and Erika doesn’t have a jacket so Ryo dutifully gives Erika his and listens to her ramble about Megu and Keiko with only half an ear. Erika doesn’t seem to be expecting much else though. She holds his hand and leads the way to wherever and Ryo absentmindedly admires the almost-familiar streets, stained red by lamps and tries to forget the memory of Yamapi’s tears.
Jin, Jin had been one of his best friends in the jimusho even if he never said it out loud. Jin had been fat and stupid and one of his best friends and now he’s got two empty spots to fill in the jimusho and no one who could possibly take those places. Yamapi hadn’t cried around Jin, but the moment Jin had boarded the plane Yamapi had crumbled. Ryo could understand why. In this business its too hard trying to keep moving without knowing someone’s got your back. That’s why friendships in the jimusho were so strong. You had to trust your friends and your band mates to be able to pick up all the broken pieces of your life and successfully reassemble them when you shatter. Losing your best friend in the jimusho is a hard thing to survive.
Ryo knows that all to well, and the memory of losing Uchi stings painfully tonight. Usually Erika was enough to dull it, but tonight nothing would be able to.
Erika leads them on, and goose bumps sprout across his skin before they arrive at their destination. Ryo barks out a laugh when he sees it, a sound so low and rough and raw that it hurt to hear it. It’s a simple ramen shop, not far from his apartment. Erika gives him a small smile when he laughs and if he didn’t hurt so much he would tease her for being soft. He files away this memory though, just another reason why he likes Erika, as they enter the restaurant, sit down, and quietly slurp their noodles.
He likes these quiet moments between them too. Fighting with Erika, fighting with her is hard. He loves it sometimes, when all the things they say are inconsequential and petty. Then he can tell her he hates the way her hair curls and tickles his face and eventually he’ll break down all the walls she’s built back up so that they end up curled together on the couch crying through their giggles. That kind of fighting is alright but fighting with Erika, really fighting is painful because they are so much alike and Erika knows just the way to wound him. He likes these quiet moments better where he can like her and not have to worry about keeping himself safe from her pain and claws.
They finish dinner quickly, Erika chatting softly (a reversal of roles since the last time they were here, he thinks distractedly) and Ryo offering hums of agreements when she looks at him expectantly. When they leave her cheeks are pink from alcohol and the streets are slick with a sudden Tokyo shower. They hesitate on the doorstep, both without an umbrella. Then Erika grins, grabs his arm and runs.
The first drops are icy and he’s soaked within a minute. Erika is laughing, high and pure and real, and her eyes are bright when she swings to face him.
“Stop thinking about it,” she tells him, breath warm and stinging on his frozen face. He flicks his soggy hair out of his eyes, annoyed.
“It’s not that easy. You don’t understand. He was-“. She cuts him off with a punch to the shoulder and her eyes flash in warning.
“He was your best friend. I know.” She leans close, exasperated, to look him straight in the eye. “He’ll be back.” She assures him, before stepping away. He vaguely wonders if she’s talking about Uchi or Jin. Probably both, he decides somewhere in his distracted mind. She knows him well enough.
He glances at her through his wet bangs. She’s taken a few steps away from him now, and she looks irritated, standing alone in the rain waiting for him. He gives her a flash of a smile and her eyes turn inviting. He takes a moment to admire her, the way her soaked T-shirt clings to her body, outlining every breath she takes, and the pointy curve of her breasts.
He still can’t forget his pain, but standing in the cold Tokyo rain with Erika, might just help heal it a bit. He smiles a little wider and she grabs his hand again and they run, straight back to his apartment, and his waiting bedroom, laughing.
“You’re such a wooby,” she murmurs somewhere between kissing him and unbuckling his belt because she knows that part of his mind is still thinking about it. He bites her lip.
“Don’t be annoyed,” he manages before he breaks of into a hushed moan, as her cold fingers meet fevered skin. “You’re beautiful,” he adds and swallows the sound of her following laughter.
◦◦◦
Jin isn’t coming back. Uchi still isn’t back either but Jin is never coming back. He’s waited and waited and he’s grown colder and colder and Erika and him just keep fighting and Jin is never coming back.
NEWS and Kanjani∞ keep him so busy he barely has the chance to see Erika and when he finally comes home to his apartment and her all they can do is fight. He’s exhausted and weary and hates his life just like he did when he first met Erika. He keeps waiting for someone to jump out and tell him that this is all a joke- keeps waiting for some stupid fucking fairy to give him a chance to redo his life. Things aren’t supposed to be like this. His world has done enough falling apart.
But wanting things to be different isn’t changing anything. Jin is still gone and Uchi still isn’t back and Erika is still leaving. He yells at her for that.
He had had dreams once, of the two of them, he remembers angrily.
Erika just laughs quietly, bitterly, and tells him she has no choice. She leans against him, head tucked under his chin just like he has always loved and he can feel her forgiveness oozing out of every pore. She doesn’t say it out loud though. She’s still too proud for that, even when she’s leaving him behind to clean-up her image by playing house in London with some guy he knows she can never really love.
Ryo wants to hit something.
“Look, it won’t be that bad,” she tells him that night, as they lay tangled together. The rain is falling in the background, the television is on low and he only has eyes for her and her wild hair. Her eyes sparkle like mica in the dim light of their- his, its just now- apartment. His looks at her for a minute and wants to ask her how. “You’ll be fine on your own,” she continues and she sounds so sure so he tries to believe it. He just can’t.
She’s leaving and he’s only got one more chance to stop her and he’ll do whatever it takes because he can’t survive without her, not anymore. She doesn’t apologize when she turns him down though, after he’s used his last chance offering himself, even if he doesn’t have a ring. The sad thing is he doesn’t have to ask her why she does. She turns him down for all the same reasons she is leaving- because neither of them are in control of their lives and Johnny would never allow Ryo to get married. Not until there are ten new, younger bands debuted and the world had forgotten about him.
He had to ask though, give them one last chance.
The day she boards her plane to London she stops by his apartment. It would be too obvious if he showed up at the airport with her and they have spent so long keeping each other a secret that they can’t ruin it now. Erika stops by and Ryo holds her one last time and it’s like paradise, being together like that. But only if he ignores the voice reminding him that she’s leaving and he can’t stop her.
He can only wait till she returns.
“Will you wait for me Erika?” he asks, before the door swings shut and she walks out of his life. She looks at him for a moment, with her beautiful, big eyes and her sad smile and his heart breaks just a little.
“I’m sorry Ryo,” she whispers and disappears with a swing of her hair, down the stairs and far away, to fly off into the sunset with the wrong prince charming.
He only cries a little.
◦◦◦
She moves back to Tokyo two years later. She’s fresh-faced, wide-eyed and beautiful, and he doesn’t really recognize her in the tabloids that cover her return. A part of him almost wishes she hadn’t come back. He preferred it when she was just out-of-his-reach, not untouchable.
She moves back to Tokyo two years later with a ring on her finger and a fiancée. It’s the same guy she left with and he knows he should have seen this coming but it still kills him when he sees pictures of them holding hands.
She only visits him once. It’s raining and seeing her brings back a thousand memories of the two of them tangled under blankets, hiding from the thunder. He invites her in anyways, and he’s polite if distant while he serves her tea. She fiddles with her hands, a nervous habit he doesn’t remember and he absentmindedly wonders just how much has she changed.
Erika breaks their silence first.
“How have you been, Nishikido-kun?” she asks, and he can hear the hesitation in adding his name. He wonders if he’s still allowed to call her Erika.
“Fine Sawajiri-san,” he tells her childishly, because that’s what she wants to hear. She told him he was going to be fine so he has to be fine.
“Please give Uchi my congratulations for his debut,” she adds voice as polite as ever but she’s watching his face for a crack. He won’t show her his weaknesses this time.
“I’ll pass it along,” he replies before taking a long sip of his tea. The lull in conversation is awkward but Ryo waits it out. Why had she really come?
“Here,” she says after a long moment, fishing out a plain white envelope and thrusting it into his hands. She finishes his tea as he stares at the elegant calligraphy across the front. He glances at her once and wants to hate her for putting him through this. Her wedding is the last thing he wants to attend. “I hope you can make it,” she adds faintly, making for the door.
A distant flash of lightening illuminates her face for a moment, and his heart hurts a little, when he sees the glint of tears in her eyes. He reaches out unthinkingly, and holds her, head tucked under his chin just like he has always loved.
“I can’t,” he manages, voice cracking over all the words he wants to say but knows he can’t. She holds onto his arms and he can see the way her knuckles turn white and hates the world all over again. He wants nothing more than to hold her forever, just like this.
Slowly he spins her around and her face is white and her eyes show that she’s scared but she doesn’t push him away.
He kisses her softly, once, and then again. “I can’t leave you alone anymore.”
◦◦◦
They’ve stolen away, for one last quiet moment alone. She’s a married woman now and Ryo doesn’t make a move to touch her.. He just looks at her instead, pale skin radiant in the dim light of their sanctuary, the white of her dress glowing in the moonlight. Her hair is half-up and curled where it falls down and across her bare shoulders, and her make-up is light, a hint of color and shine around her eyes and lips. She’s never looked so beautiful and she has never been so untouchable and he wants to hold her, and pretend that this was his dream coming true. She smiles at him like she knows what he’s thinking and leans a little against him, head resting on his shoulder. Their backs are to the walls of the ballroom, open door only a few steps away, but their little niche is hidden behind pillars and the dizzying scent of blooming roses.
Being with Erika, even like this, is a certain kind of paradise. Performing is his life- he loves the rush and the lights and the screams even if he hates everything that comes with it- but Erika, Erika is his love. Erika is safe and quiet and real. They have fought and they have broken-up and he has hated her more times than he could count, but in the end, the things he really remembers about those moments are the fire in her eyes and the sharpness in her voice and the angle of her proud chin. He remembers a proud woman that fit puzzle-piece perfect into the shape of his own proud figure. And he remembers the quiet moments after, when they didn’t need words. He remembers evenings of quiet television and hushed conversations and evenings of fancy dinners at high-class restaurants. He remembers a thousand, simple, beautiful memories for every loud, wild, painful one and he knows that he would give anything to spend his lifetime making a thousand more with her.
But that’s not the way the world works, at least not for him.
“I love you, you know.” He figures she does, even if he has never been able to say it. Idly he wonders if telling her would have made a difference- if the universe would have changed and realigned itself so that they could be together if he had just said that simple phrase. He dismisses the notion absently-mindedly, mesmerized by the curl of a tendril of her hair.
She grins at him, something sharp and quiet and familiar and her eyes are dark and bright and just as heartbreakingly gorgeous as he has always remembered. “I know,” she mumbles, lips mere centimeters away from a kiss. He laughs quietly, pained, holds her close and hates this world where he can’t have her.
“You’re selfish,” he mutters because it’s true and he wishes that, more than anything else, time would stop so he didn’t have to let her go. He wants to make her his captive forever. She laughs in response, doesn’t deny it because she knows it’s true too, and darts in for a quick press of lips to the corner of his mouth before she slips away from him, forever.
She throws one last look over her shoulder, a beautiful grin dazzling and heartbreakingly sad. Her mica eyes sparkle with tears for a second before she turns away. He spends the rest of the night silent, cradling a flute of champagne in his hands, the gathered crowd’s knowing eyes washing over him as he watches the swirl of her dress and the lights catch on the pearls in her hair. He gazes at her so hard it hurts and by the end of the night, when he finally turns away and lets her go, his stare has blurred and his eyes glitter like a thousand diamonds in the cold chandelier light.
When he exits the building, a slight sway in his step, he’s leaving her behind and so he enters into a hundred thousand more unremarkable days without her. He’s okay though.
He’s gotten used to losing all the people he loves after all.
Finished reading? Rate this fic!
Poll Team What If - i miss the rush of your skin