Gift fic for travelingpsycho
Title: Circles
Pairing/Characters: Uchi and Ryo
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Canon… and AU. Yes.
Notes: I thought of five hundred different plots, but this is the one I most wanted to write. I hope that you like it, Ilana <3
Summary: Uchi’s life has been a series of ‘what-if’s’, but somehow, no matter what choice he makes, it always ends up back at Ryo.
ON WEDNESDAY, JULY 25th, 2012, UCHI HIROKI WISHES THINGS WERE DIFFERENT.
Uchi wakes up on a Wednesday morning with a headache and a cramp in his left arm. He’s got filming in a few hours. It’s just a bit part in a drama meant to showcase juniors, but hell, Uchi is still a junior. Sort of.
He rolls over in bed, and his top sheet is sweaty. It sticks to his skin, but the bottom sheet, over on the empty other side of the bed, is cool against his belly. Uchi doesn’t really know why he bought a bed so big, only that sometimes, he thinks about what it would be like to roll over and feel someone else’s arm wrap around his waist and whisper “good morning,” or “it’s too early for you to be on my side of the bed.”
But for now, Uchi just enjoys the morning-cool cotton against his bare stomach for the minute or so it lasts, and then gets up.
Uchi gets dressed, pulling on jeans and a t-shirt that’s seen better days, that he can’t bring himself to throw out. Yasu had given it to him on his twenty-first birthday with a hopeful smile, and Uchi had taken a long look at the bright, terrible colors for a few moments, before he had pretended to like it so he wouldn’t hurt Yasu’s feelings. Later, Ryo had smiled at him in that secretly soppy way that Ryo saved for when no one but Uchi was looking, and Uchi’d felt his heart shake a little in his chest the way it’d been doing a lot since he’d realized just how pretty Ryo’s eyes were when the light reflected just so; this terrifying feeling that Uchi was pretty sure wasn’t supposed to exist when one looked at their best friend who was also a man. “That was nice,” Ryo’d said. “You’re always so nice.” Uchi’d blinked, and said ”You’re just too mean,” and he’d stuck out his tongue, and Ryo’d tried to grab it, and the feeling had retreated, burying itself deep inside Uchi, so it could return later, when Uchi was alone.
In the end, Uchi had grown to actually like the shirt, and he tries not to panic when he notices the holes around the collar and the hem, where the threads have pulled loose. Uchi knows that soon enough, he won’t be able to sew them closed any longer.
The air is unbearably hot when he finally makes it outside. The humidity is high, creating a sticky wet sheen along his skin that makes him want to get in the shower and stay there, so at least it would feel fresh. Tokyo summers are cooler than Osaka summers, but it’s the humidity that kills. In Tokyo, the hottest month is August, and they aren’t there yet.
Uchi shoves his hands into his pockets as he walks, his grey hat pulled over his ears despite the heat, and his sunglasses perched on his nose. Uchi doesn’t need to disguise himself, really; not like he does if he’s out with his friends, who are all significantly more famous than he is. But still, Uchi takes precautions, because at the end of the day, he’s still a Johnny, even if he’s a Johnny that’s been shoved into the back of the closet like a pair of shoes Matsumoto thinks are slightly off trend.
Out of the corner of his eye, Uchi sees the posters. The Eito Ranger movie opens next week, and a fresh barrage of movie posters have been put up in store windows, and stuck to walls, and sometimes, Uchi will look up and the entire side of a building will be the faces of his former band mates; the faces are so big that sometimes Uchi walks up to them and it’s like he could fit his whole body inside Hina’s nostril, which he knows would make Hina laugh if he told him.
But Uchi won’t tell him, because when they talk, they don’t really talk about Eito. It seems like some unwritten rule that Eito’s successes aren’t a topic for conversation, because Eito is seven people and one of them isn’t Uchi. Uchi didn’t make up this rule, but still, everyone seems to adhere to it with some sort of fanatical devotion. Sometimes Ryo will slip up, when Uchi calls him in the middle of the night to check on him because Ryo is always so busy that Uchi worries that one day he’ll dazedly wander out into the middle of the street and get hit by a bus or something morbid like that. He’ll say something like “and then Eito is going to do a show about-“ and then he’ll go quiet and Uchi will swallow around his suddenly dry throat, and suddenly they’re talking about something else, and Uchi slowly loosens his too-tight grip on his mobile phone. It doesn’t have to be that awkward, but it always is.
Uchi gets lost in the shuffle of the crowd as he crosses streets when the crosswalk light flickers white, and before he even realizes it, he’s at the studio, bowing to the staff as he pulls off his hat.
“Good morning,” he says cheerfully to everyone, and it is, Uchi thinks, a pretty good morning. He sits still as a make-up artist carefully lines his eyes and powders his face; it’s a half-an-hour of preparation for what will amount to basically two minutes on screen, but Uchi is pretty used to stuff like this so it’s not really a big deal. Back when Uchi was filming Yamanade, Tegoshi and Kamenashi used to chatter incessantly about make-up tricks and what made their eyes look better, and all that sort of stuff, but as effeminate as Uchi is, he’d never really gotten into that sort of thing. Still, after that experience, getting his make-up done for this is no sweat.
The director is friendly, smiling at Uchi as Uchi easily does his cameo part, and Uchi sort of relaxes into himself as they finish, stretching his shoulders and watching, for a little while, as baby Tanaka flubs his lines three times, flushing angrily at himself until he nails a perfect delivery. It reminds him of the way Ryo used to be; so conscious of the camera that he scowled when he was supposed to smile, or snapped at people when they corrected him so they wouldn’t know he was scared.
It’s like no time at all before Uchi is walking out of the studio the same way he came in, back in his jeans and neon t-shirt, glasses obscuring his now lined, mascara-dark eyes.
On a whim, he pulls out his phone and dials Ryo.
“Hey,” says the tired voice at the other end of the line. “You’re done filming already?”
“Of course,” Uchi replies lightly, sidestepping a mother with a stroller who isn’t paying attention, eyes locking on a store window about a meter behind her. Handbags, Uchi notices, and there’s a green one he sort of likes because it’s the same color as Ariel’s tail in The Little Mermaid, and he thinks it would suit his mom. “Have you slept?”
“Not really,” Ryo says, and his voice is a bit rough, like dress shoes scraping against cement, and Uchi winces. “I know, I know,” Ryo adds, before Uchi can nag him. “I’ll sleep tonight. It’s just really busy right now.”
Of course it is, what with Eito having such a jam-packed year. “It’s always really busy,” Uchi says, softly, stepping into a convenience store and grabbing a couple of onigiri off the cooler shelf. He grabs a caramel ice-coffee, too, and digs the yen out of his pocket to pay the cashier as Ryo breathes a little to heavily into the phone.
“I can’t really talk right now,” Ryo says, regretfully, and Uchi likes the way Ryo’s voice softens, even if he doesn’t necessarily like what Ryo is saying. “But I can call you back later?” There’s a press conference today for the movie. Uchi had forgotten, but it must be soon, he realizes. Ryo shouldn’t have answered the phone, but he had, because it was Uchi. Uchi’s stomach does a tiny flip of pleasure, and he sucks his lower lip into his mouth, biting down as he makes an understanding noise of agreement.
“Okay,” Uchi says. “If you have time.”
“I always have time for my best friend,” Ryo says, and Uchi smiles because he can’t help it. “I’ll give you a ring when we’re done with this. If you’re free today, obviously.” Ryo’s voice catches, in that way it’s been doing lately that Uchi doesn’t quite understand but makes his heart beat a little faster.
“I am,” Uchi says. Uchi’s free a lot these days, when he’s not doing shows. Ryo is never free. “If you have time, I definitely have time, Ryo-chan.”
“Great,” Ryo says, sounding more awake. “Then I’ll talk to you later.”
Ryo ends the call, and Uchi takes a bite of his onigiri. The rice is a little sweet. He hadn’t paid attention to the flavor in the store, but it’s all right.
Uchi’s mobile buzzes in his hand just as he’s starting to put it back in his pocket. It’s an SMS from Yasu. Thanks for cheering up grumpy-face, the message says, and Uchi sends a smiling emoticon as a response, and a grin teases at his lips as he imagines everyone taunting a glowering Ryo.
Ryo does call later, around five in the evening, right after Uchi’d hung up from talking to his sister about the latest chapter of Nijiiro Prism Girl, as he’s cooking peppers and beef to put on top of the rice he’s had in the rice cooker since yesterday that is probably a little dry.
They talk about nothing, as usual, both of them eating as they talk and understanding each other around large mouthfuls of food because they’ve had so much practice at it. Ryo talks circles around Eito’s numerous projects and Uchi tries to convince Leon to stop biting at his toes without kicking him.
“I wish-“ Ryo says, all of a sudden, and Uchi swallows the bit of beef he’d just eaten and listens. “Never mind.” He mumbles the ‘never mind’, the way he always does when he has lots to say but no idea how to say it.
“You wish what?” Uchi asks, licking a bit of soy sauce from the corner of his lips and scrunching his nose.
“I wish you were still-“ Ryo goes quiet again, and Uchi, this time, understands the unsaid part of the sentence.
“Yeah,” Uchi says, and Leon clamps down on his pinky toe and Uchi doesn’t really react, even though it kind of hurts and he’s usually more of a wuss about pain. “Me too.” Uchi sets his chopsticks in his bowl, but the bowl is too shallow so they fall out and onto the floor. He doesn’t pick them up. “I think about the choices I’ve made, a lot. The consequences they’ve had.”
“We all do that,” Ryo says, a little distantly, and Uchi wonders, sometimes, what decisions Ryo regrets. ‘Think about the things we might have done differently.”
Uchi thinks, as he listens to Ryo’s voice, still gravelly and thick in a way that speaks of overuse, that it would be nice if Ryo were here, sitting next to him on the floor, so they could eat this slightly overcooked beef together. Afterwards, Ryo would tease him about the shirt he’s still wearing, and maybe he’d have his guitar in his lap, strumming on it absently the way he does sometimes when he’s thinking too much about all the stuff he has to do instead of paying attention to Uchi, and maybe Uchi would tickle his ankle to get his attention. Ryo would set the guitar aside, and tackle Uchi the way he’s done since they were kids, and Uchi would wish he had the courage to lean up and kiss him.
Uchi is usually straightforward, but he’s already lost a lot and he’d prefer to keep Ryo.
“Probably not as often as I do,” Uchi jokes. “I’ve got countless moments I would change, if I had the chance.”
“You’d be surprised,” Ryo says, and then Uchi hears someone laughing obnoxiously in the background.
“Are you still at work?”
“Always,” Ryo says, and then he’s swearing, loudly, and there’s rustling.
“Hello, Ryo-chan’s girlfriend,” says a voice into phone, and Uchi can hear Maruyama snickering in the background.
“Hi Yoko, it’s Uchi.”
“Hello, Ryo-chan’s girlfriend,” Yoko repeats, before Ryo manages, Uchi thinks, to get his phone back.
“I’m gonna go now,” Ryo mumbles into the phone, and Uchi nods, before remembering it’s a call.
“Right,” Uchi says, and Leon has finally managed to get into Uchi’s bowl, happily eating food that’s definitely going to make him sick and cause Uchi lots of problems. Uchi thinks about what else he can say, but Ryo’s already gone.
Uchi gives up on dinner as a bad job all around.
When Uchi goes to bed that night, hair still wet from the shower and silk pajama pants soft against his thighs, he spreads his body out in the center of the bed, stretching his arms and his legs as far as he can. Uchi’s tall, so his left foot hangs off the side of the bed and both his hands reach the edges. Still, the bed feels too empty, and it’s hard for Uchi to go to sleep.
When he finally does, it’s a little uneasy.
ON JULY 14th, 2005, UCHI DOESN’T ACCEPT A DRINK FROM THAT HOT GIRL WITH THE NOSE RING.
Uchi wakes up on a Wednesday morning with a headache and a cramp in his left arm. He’s got a press conference in a few hours, and he should probably get out of bed and shower so he can make himself look presentable enough that Tacchon doesn’t do that slow head-to-toe look of judgment that he reserves just for Uchi’s particularly harrowing mornings.
He rolls over in bed, and his top sheet is sweaty. His arm hits soft flesh, and Uchi’s eyes quickly open. He takes in the breast that’s eye-level with his face as memories come flitting back to him. He’d gone out last night with Ryo and Yasu, he recalls, and Ryo’d been really into that taller girl with the long soft hair, and Yasu’d tried not to look at Uchi sympathetically as Uchi’d ordered drink after drink.
He vaguely thinks the warm, naked girl next to him might be named Sayaka, but Uchi admits he’d been really drunk by the time she’d sidled over to him, squeezing into their booth and bringing him another glass of beer. He remembered liking her blue top, and the way she’d smiled wide in a way that created those little lines around her mouth just like-
Her face is smooth in sleep, though, and Uchi has to go to work.
Uchi takes a cold shower, and it both wakes him up and settles his stomach; he’s still a little nauseous, but luckily he’s escaped the most crippling side effects of a hangover. When he walks back into his bedroom, naked and dripping with his towel around his waist, the girl, and maybe it was Sayuri, actually, is sitting up and lazily casting her gaze around for her underwear. Uchi spots them in the corner of the room, by his laundry, and picks them up, handing them to her.
“I take it you’ve got to be somewhere?” She asks, and Uchi smiles at her and nods. She smiles back, and her short, boyish hair is sticking up in the back. Uchi walks a little closer and combs his fingers through it, just like he does for Ryo when Ryo drowsily shows up at a music show rehearsal looking the worse for wear, and she flicks his belly-button ring in retaliation. “This is a bit gay,” she says, and Uchi rolls his eyes.
“I still like it,” he replies, and shrugs. He’s always been a bit feminine, anyway, and he doesn’t really care what people think about his jewelry choices.
She’s quiet after that, getting dressed at the same time he does. He combs his hair as she refastens her necklace around her neck. “Thanks for the good night,” she says, and stands on her tippy toes to kiss his cheek. Then she’s gone, and Uchi is only a few minutes behind her, pulling a hat low on his head and down over his ears to hide his hair, and putting a pair of nondescript sunglasses on to cover his face.
It’s a hot and humid July, but it’s hotter in Osaka, and disguises are a necessary evil when your face is on posters the size of your childhood home on the sides of half the buildings in Tokyo. Plus, Suzuki Anne had said hats were in fashion this season, when they’d had lunch together last week, and he trusted her far more than he trusted Ryo’s friend Akanishi, who always thought terrible hats were in fashion.
Uchi calls a cab, because braving the streets seems foolish, even in a hat and sunglasses, and because the nausea is worse than he’d thought. It does get him to the jimusho on time, though, so he thinks all in all, it was worth it.
“You’re alive!” Yasu says cheerfully, and Uchi smiles at him as he divests himself of his hat. “I admit I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.” He’s wearing neon green glasses today, with no lenses, and his smile seems bright enough that Uchi debates whether or not he should actually take off his sunglasses.
“Of course I am,” Uchi says, flashing a ‘v’ for victory at his friend. “How about Ryo-chan?”
“Stop talking so loud,” Ryo grumbles from his seat on the small sofa in the corner of the meeting room.
“Oh, somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Uchi says, quickly walking over to sit next to Ryo.
Ryo’s skin is so warm when their bare arms press together, and Uchi ignores the way his pulse quickens at the contact. ‘There’s no wrong side to my bed,” Ryo grumbles. “It’s a twin bed. It’s so small I wake up on both sides of the bed every day.”
“I thought,” Uchi says, and his tongue stumbles a bit on the words, “maybe you’d woken up in someone else’s bed, this morning.”
Ryo swallows, hard, and Uchi’s eyes follow the way his adam’s apple shifts under the skin, shiny with a bit of perspiration. “No,” Ryo says. “I woke up by myself.”
“Oh,” Uchi says, throat suddenly as dry and rough as sandpaper. “Okay.”
Ryo slumps even further down in his seat, and Uchi looks away from him for a moment to see that everyone is involved in their own conversations. Uchi thinks Yasu might be pointedly not looking in their direction, and Uchi regrets having slipped up and told Yasu about all the things he wasn’t supposed to feel. “I was too busy watching you make a fool out of yourself to go home with anyone,” Ryo says darkly, and he’s looking everywhere but at Uchi, tired eyes fixing on a blank stretch of wall.
His thigh is pressed up against Uchi’s, and Uchi can feel the flex of muscle even through the denim of both of their jeans. “I only went home with her because you-“ Uchi stops himself, pushing his lips together to hold the words in, and Ryo’s gaze flicks over to look at him, startled. “You were ignoring me.”
Ryo runs a hand through his hair, fingers leaving weird parts in the bangs. It looks dumb anyway; the stupid blond-ish stripes look like those of a futuristic skunk shot through the black. It’s for their movie, and Uchi usually doesn’t pass up on a chance to tease him about it, enjoying the way Ryo squirms self-consciously when anyone brings it up, but...
“I wasn’t ignoring you. It was just-“ He stops, too, and Uchi wonders when it became so hard for them to just talk to each other, except he thinks the answer might be the day Uchi looked down at Ryo and thought he might like Ryo to press him up against a wall and kiss him senseless.
“Aw, are the lovebirds fighting?” Yoko coos, and Hina grabs a handful of Yoko’s tank top and drags him physically back into the conversation they were having with Maruyama, and Uchi curls his hands into fists on his thighs.
Ryo looks equally tense, and there’s… Well, Uchi thinks there’s a flush to his cheeks, and the way he’s looking at the floor in embarrassment makes Uchi want to wrap an arm around Ryo’s shoulder and pull him into his side. Ryo’s callused fingers are tapping an anxious pattern into the arm of the sofa, and Uchi frowns, because it’s the sort of thing Ryo does when he has a crush on a girl. Uchi knows, because Uchi knows everything about Ryo.
“I was…” Ryo’s eyes flicker up again, and his blush gets darker, and Uchi’s stomach folds in on itself as he watches him.
Then they’re talking to the press. Ryo speaks so earnestly about acting, even as he pretends to be less invested than he is, and Uchi has always loved that about him- the way Ryo, even when he tries to act like he doesn’t care, is so shockingly transparent to anyone who bothers to really look at him. There’s this glow of excitement in his eyes when he’s asked about the script, and Uchi knows they all notice it, but they won’t call him for it on camera. There’re plenty of other things to tease him about, anyway.
“And everyone thinks I’m the bully,” Ryo grouches, when the conference is over, and Uchi fluffs his hair as he laughs.
“That’s because you think you’re so witty,” Uchi says. “We all have to make sure you know you aren’t.”
“I am witty,” Ryo replies, trying to flatten his hair. “I’m also a grown man, so if you’d stop taking advantage of your height to ruin my hair-“
Uchi laughs even louder as the tension from earlier melts away, and they all have an enjoyable lunch. Uchi eats all of his food and half of Ryo’s, because Ryo eats so slow, and Ryo acts like he’s upset about it but Uchi knows he isn’t.
Yasu claims the seat next to Uchi on the drive back to the jimusho. “Ryo was really sad,” Yasu says softly, pitched so only Uchi can hear. Uchi studies his fingernails instead of looking at the back of the seat in front of him, where Ryo is sitting with his headphones in, probably listening to that awful mix-tape Yamapi had sent him of that trashy Euro-pop he’s into these days. “When you left the bar, last night.”
“Why? He didn’t even notice I was there.”
“Except that he spent the whole time looking at you.” Yasu’s expression is strange, almost like he’s willing Uchi to read his mind, which Uchi obviously can’t do, but…
“Are you saying-“
“I’m not saying anything,” Yasu clarifies, and he looks down and his glasses fall off his face. They bang against his seatbelt buckle, and Yoko looks back when he hears he noise, and then cackles as he watches Yasu feel around for them. Uchi just picks up the glasses, still turning Yasu’s words over in his mind.
When they’re all splitting up to go their separate ways, Ryo elbows him in the ribs. “Wanna get dinner?” He asks, over the sound of Uchi’s yelp.
“Only if we can watch it with beers and a kid’s movie, or something,” Uchi counters, and Ryo’s grin is natural and easy and Uchi sometimes thinks he’s going to burst out of his own skin because he feels too much to possibly fit inside of it.
They argue playfully over whether to get Chinese or packed dinner boxes, and Uchi wins with puppy-eyes and a promise that Ryo gets to choose “the next time we decide to rot our brains”, and they get Chinese. Ryo complains about Shige demanding he read drafts of some novel he’s working on, and Uchi talks about how he thinks Kusano’s dating this really gross celebutant, because he keeps getting upset whenever Tegoshi mentions her terrible fake nails, and he’s started saying senseless things like “you just don’t understand her as a person,” and Ryo laughs so loud strangers turn to stare, and they have to run before they get recognized.
When they’ve slowed, panting, in front of Ryo’s apartment building, Ryo chuckles again, and Uchi punches him none-too-gently in the arm. “Oh, ow,” Ryo says, and despite the sarcasm of his words, there’s something in his eyes, something that Uchi thinks, maybe, he should have noticed before, because Ryo is so transparent if you bother to really look at him.
Yasu’s words echo in his head, and Uchi screws up his courage. Ryo is his best friend, and he hopes he’s not about to ruin everything, since they’re in two bands together and it would be really awkward if Ryo kicked Uchi to the curb just because Uchi is madly in love with him.
“She looked kind of like you,” Uchi says, as Ryo walks into the flat, carrying their take-out. Uchi stops in the doorway. His heart is in his throat as he waits.
“What?” Ryo is paused in the genkan, considering Uchi’s words, and Uchi can see them sinking in. Uchi’s palms are sweaty.
“The girl from last night,” Uchi says, and doesn’t elaborate further. Ryo looks at him, eyes wide, and he looks so young, like he looked when Uchi first met him all those years ago, mouth slightly parted in surprise.
Then Ryo smiles, a little incredulously, and a little like he thinks he’s dreaming, too, and those lines around his mouth, the ones that Uchi has memorized because he loves the way Ryo’s face transforms when he smiles, gives Uchi the courage to enter. Uchi walks in, and shuts the door behind him.
ON MAY 13th, 2005, UCHI HIROKI LEAVES J&A, AND ONLY LOOKS BACK SOMETIMES.
Uchi wakes up on a Wednesday morning with a headache and a cramp in his left arm. It’s three AM, but there are things Uchi has to do, long before customers start arriving at his tiny shop around seven, and headache or no headache, Uchi’s got to get out of bed.
He rolls over in bed, and his top sheet is sweaty. It sticks to his skin, but the bottom sheet, over on the empty other side of the bed, is cool against his belly. Uchi doesn’t really know why he bought a bed so big, only that sometimes, he thinks about what it would be like to roll over and feel someone else’s arm wrap around his waist and whisper “good morning,” or “it’s too early for you to be on my side of the bed.”
But for now, Uchi just enjoys the morning-cool cotton against his bare stomach for the minute or so it lasts, and then gets up.
Uchi grimaces at the heat, and checks his humidifier after he climbs out of bed. It’s important that he keeps the air clear, here in his flat, and at the shop, too, because his lungs aren’t the best, and Uchi tries to take care of them as best he can.
He gets dressed, pulling on jeans and a t-shirt that’s seen better days, that he can’t bring himself to throw out, because it had been one of the last things Yasu had given him. They’d naturally grown apart, because Uchi’d left Johnny and Associates due to his health, but sometimes Uchi sees Yasu on television, when he watches the Kanjani8 television show, and thinks that if Yasu were to give Uchi a shirt now, he’d still pick the exact same one.
It feels like that was a different life, and a different Uchi.
The Uchi he is now is content enough, wearing too many earrings in his ears and smiling at old ladies as he serves them coffee and muffins he’d baked only a few hours earlier, and accepting their pleased sighs as they take a sip or a bite and it tastes exactly as they had imagined. When Uchi had found out he wasn’t going to be able to live the rigorous lifestyle of a Johnny anymore, right after he’d had those surgeries on his lungs, he’d been crushed. Pulmonary pneumothorax, tiny holes in the lining of his lungs, was supposed to be fixed with a few simple, routine surgeries. But afterwards, Uchi’d had a lot of trouble catching his breath, and the doctors had ‘hmm’d and ‘haaa’d, and Uchi had tried to swallow around the lump of fear that kept growing progressively larger in his throat.
Uchi had been unsure, then, what he was going to do with the rest of his life. He’d thought it was always going to be like it was, walking around with his hand linked with Ryo’s, singing and dancing and smiling for people screaming his name. Uchi likes making people happy, and he’d really liked being an idol, too. Besides, Ryo was an idol, and they got to be together.
But when that was out, Uchi had taken his meager savings, and thought about the other things he liked to do, and all he could think about was eating, and one thing had led to another, and…
Uchi blinks as he realizes he’s in front of his shop. It’s four in the morning now, and no one in his right mind should be awake. But there’s a hunched figure beside the door, a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and an ugly baseball hat pulled low on his brow. As soon as he sees Uchi, he drops the cigarette and stamps it out thoroughly. Uchi appreciates the thought, but the air in Tokyo is shit with or without his lone cigarette.
“I could use a cup of coffee,” he says in a gruff voice, and Uchi grins.
“Good morning to you too, Ryo-chan,” Uchi says, because it’s safe to say Ryo’s name out here on the street, when no one in the city is awake except the drunk salary men still making their way home from whatever wild night they’d just survived.
Ryo only drops by when he knows he won’t be seen. It’s their little secret. Ryo mumbles in his groggy morning voice about how Eito is doing, and about how Koyama still won’t speak to him since he’d left NEWS, and Uchi listens, leaning forward on the counter and occasionally refilling Ryo’s cup, face resting against his open palm as his elbow digs into the wood.
Today isn’t any different. Yamapi’s new concert is coming up, and Uchi mumbles about having plans to see it, and Ryo nods.
“I wonder if the other guys will go,” Ryo muses, and he taps his fingers against his mug, and Uchi tilts his head questioningly. “Tegoshi and Shige and Koyama and Massu.”
“You don’t have to be in the same group to stay friends,” Uchi says quietly, and Ryo looks up at him in surprise. “Look at us.”
“This is a bit different,” Ryo says. “Because you-“
Because Uchi hadn’t had a choice. Not really. He wonders if that’s what Ryo’s going to say, or if there’s something completely different on his mind. Ryo feels a lot of things, Uchi knows, but he’s always totally sucked at expressing them.
Koyama had come to visit Uchi in the hospital, back then. He’d sat by Uchi’s bed, and told him all the Johnny gossip and had wished him a speedy recovery when he’d left, and Uchi had thought the hospital food tasted extra terrible and he’d wished Ryo were there so he could make him taste it and they could complain about it together. Then Ryo would have climbed up into the hospital bed with him, and they would have set off some alarm or another, and they both would have gotten bitched out by a nurse because eighteen year old boys should know better than that.
But Ryo hadn’t come, and Uchi hadn’t gotten better for a long while. Ryo finally showed up at Uchi’s rather new Tokyo flat, the day after Uchi had checked out of the hospital. Uchi had forced himself to answer the door, and Ryo had stood in the doorway, scuffing the toes of his ugly boots as he kicked at the hallway tile.
“I couldn’t bear to look at you in a hospital bed,” Ryo had said, and on his face was written a lot of things he hadn’t said; would probably never say, and Uchi had invited him in, because he’d always known Ryo wasn’t the best at talking, and he loved him anyway.
Ryo’d become, or stayed, hugely famous. Uchi’d bought a coffee shop. Uchi thinks that they’re both teetering right on the edge of happiness, but Ryo’s got a few more lines around his eyes than Uchi does.
“Are you even listening?” Ryo asks, and Uchi shakes his head to clear it.
“It’s still early,” he says, and Ryo offers him a half-smile.
“Who are you telling?” Ryo gulps the last bit of his coffee. “I don’t know why I’m awake.” He flushes a bit as he says it, and runs his right hand across the calluses on his left.
“Can you repeat the last bit?”
“I’m having a party at my apartment for Pi,” Ryo says. “To celebrate the tour and the full length album. I was going to make that deadbeat Akanishi help me, but he’s too busy hiding away in Okinawa and trying to pretend like no one is mad at him for his antics.” He speaks fondly, Uchi notes.
“Oh,” Uchi says, and suddenly Ryo’s eyes go round.
“I’d invite you over,” Ryo says quickly, apologetically, “but I’ve been smoking in the house. I don’t want to make you sick.”
“Right,” Uchi says, and his smile feels cracked and bitter. “Of course.” Uchi’s not sure why he’d forgotten that he and Ryo live in different worlds now, even if they’ve somehow managed to hold onto their friendship through years of constant separation. It hurts, just a little, to be reminded, sometimes, of the things that have been taken away from him. Of the world he’s no longer a part of.
The days of photo shoots with Ryo’s arms firmly around his waist are long past.
Ryo drops enough change to pay for his coffee on the table, and Uchi packs him a muffin because Ryo’s been looking too thin lately. Uchi doesn’t charge him for it.
“But,” Ryo says, as he takes the brown paper from Uchi’s proffered hand, “I’ve been thinking about quitting. Smoking, I mean.” Where their fingers brush, it’s electric, and Ryo’s words sneak up on him, twisting in his stomach in a way that Uchi tries to avoid, with Ryo, because it’s a pointless sort of wish.
“Oh yeah?” Uchi asks, and he wets his lips with an anxious tongue.
“Yeah,” Ryo says, and he doesn’t meet Uchi’s eyes, looking down at his shoes instead, and Uchi likes the way there’s a redness to the back of Ryo’s neck, a tick of his embarrassment that he hasn’t managed to shed since he was fourteen. Uchi loves that he’s still close enough to Ryo to see it. That it’s something he doesn’t have to share with the world. “There’s someone I’d like to invite over, you see, but he’s sensitive to smoke.” Uchi thinks, to himself, that despite everything, Ryo’s so transparent if you ever really look at him.
“You should make sure to invite him, then, when you’ve managed it,” Uchi says, and Ryo looks up, and Uchi thinks, for some reason, when he sees the warm, hesitant look in Ryo’s eyes, that he might manage it soon.
“You think he’d come?”
Uchi would like to bridge the gap.
“I know he would.”
UCHI HIROKI BUYS NISHIKIDO RYO A CACTUS FOR HIS 25th BIRTHDAY.
Uchi wakes up on a Wednesday morning with a headache and a cramp in his left arm. His phone is obnoxiously buzzing, and Uchi grumbles as he reaches for it.
“What?” he says, and Ryo is on the other end of the line, mumbling too quickly about sunlight and death and can Uchi come help? And Uchi isn’t quite sure what’s going on.
“What are you talking about, Ryo-chan?” Uchi groans, rubbing his palm on his face.
His top sheet is sweaty. It sticks to his skin, but the bottom sheet, over on the empty other side of the bed, is cool against his belly. Uchi doesn’t really know why he bought a bed so big, only that sometimes, he thinks about what it would be like to roll over and feel someone else’s arm wrap around his waist and whisper “good morning,” or “it’s too early for you to be on my side of the bed.”
But for now, Uchi just enjoys the morning-cool cotton against his bare stomach for the minute or so it lasts, as Ryo takes a deep breath and starts all over again.
“I think my cactus is dying,” Ryo says. “Or it’s already dead.”
“What cactus?” Uchi says.
“The one you gave me,” Ryo says miserably, and Uchi tries not to laugh.
“It’s just a cactus, Ryo-chan.”
“It’s not just a cactus,” Ryo snaps. “You gave it to me, and I let it die.” Ryo’s voice is a little shaky.
“It’s not like it represents our friendship,” Uchi says slowly; carefully. “It’s okay.”
“You don’t understand,” Ryo says, and he hangs up the phone.
Uchi listens to the beeping for a minute, and then throws his phone to the foot of the bed, stretching himself out. “Stupid Ryo,” Uchi says, and resolves to forget the conversation.
But he thinks about it all during preparation for filming that morning, which feels endless even though the actual filming takes all of six minutes before Uchi is free, and something about Ryo’s voice keeps nagging at Uchi until he scowls and marches determinedly into a flower shop, emerging twenty minutes later with a painstakingly selected cactus.
He takes it home and sets it on his kitchen counter, and then stares at it. “What do you represent to Ryo?” Uchi asks it, but of course it doesn’t answer, because it’s a cactus, and cactuses don’t talk, and Ryo is constantly making Uchi do dumb things.
Around eight, when Uchi knows Ryo is home, Uchi packs up the cactus and clutches it to his side, and walks the thirty minutes it takes to get to Ryo’s apartment.
Ryo answer the door, shirtless as usual, and Uchi holds the cactus out in front of him with both hands.
“What is it?”
“A cactus, dumbass,” Uchi says, and Ryo takes it tentatively.
“You still don’t get it,” Ryo says miserably, and Uchi runs a hand through his hair and sighs. He’s been sighing a lot today.
“Then why don’t you explain it to me,” he says, and Ryo sticks out his lower lip stubbornly, and the muscle in his jaw tightens, and Uchi wonders if this is going to be like pulling teeth.
“That time,” Ryo says, “when you told me I wasn’t mature enough. For…”
Oh, Uchi thinks, and he remembers the way Ryo had smelled like beer, sloppy and drunk and insistent as he pressed into Uchi’s space. ”I like you,” he’d said, and Uchi had pushed him away.
”You’re drunk” Uchi had replied, and Ryo had rested his head in the hollow between Uchi’s neck and shoulder, and his breath had been sticky and wet. ”And you’re too old to drunkenly say things like that.”
Ryo had been grumpy and irritated the next morning, angry at everything and refusing to look at Uchi at all. Uchi had felt stretched so thin that he’d snapped when Ryo had refused to answer a question, and told Ryo he wasn’t mature enough to like anyone.
Then Uchi’d stomped out of Ryo’s apartment, and two weeks later, he’d given Ryo a cactus for his birthday, and they’d both feigned like the confession incident had never happened.
“I remember,” Uchi says, and Ryo’s hands clutch at fistfuls of his oversized jeans, and he’s sucked his lower lip into his mouth.
“It’s like the cactus was a test,” Ryo says, when Uchi thinks the silence is so thick it’s starting to suffocate them both. “I know you didn’t mean it as a test, but that’s how I…”
“I see,” Uchi says, because it makes stupid, mind-numbing, Nishikido Ryo sense.
“And if I can’t even keep a goddamn cactus alive, how am I supposed to prove I’m mature enough that you can trust me with-“ Ryo’s knuckles are white, and Uchi’s still holding the cactus in both of his hands, and Ryo still looks moments away from melting into a puddle of all sorts of complicated feelings he probably doesn’t even understand on the floor.
“Here,” Uchi says again, holding the cactus out into Ryo’s face so that Ryo can’t ignore it, and Ryo reaches up and takes it without thinking. He stares down at it, and then glances up. Uchi catches his gaze, and holds it. “First of all, you’re an idiot.”
“Hey!”
“Second of all, we all deserve another chance, don’t you think?”
Ryo blinks at him twice, and his fingers tighten around the pot, and Uchi thinks Ryo is so transparent if you bother to really look at him. Maybe next time, he’ll let Ryo press that kiss on his ready mouth.
AFTER UCHI HIROKI’S 21st BIRTHDAY, HE DOESN’T SECOND-GUESS THE WAY RYO’S TOUCH MAKES HIS HEART SKIP A BEAT.
Uchi wakes up on a Wednesday morning with a headache and a cramp in his left arm. Of course, all that is secondary to the feeling of Ryo’s fingers, dragging across his stomach, lingering at the stud in his belly button, toying with it until Uchi none-too-subtly lifts his hips.
“Good morning,” Ryo says, and Uchi is about to reply, but then Ryo is pressing a gentle kiss to the inside of his thigh, thumbs rubbing small, soothing circles into Uchi’s hip bones. Ryo’s humming, and he drops another kiss against the sensitive skin there, and Uchi shivers, before he groans.
“Always so impatient,” Ryo says, and Uchi sits up on his elbows and glares down at Ryo, who’s looking up at him with that big smile that always, always melts Uchi’s heart.
“Yes,” Uchi agrees. “So if you already know that-“ And then Ryo’s lips are around his cock, just the tip, and Ryo’s eyes are looking up at him carefully as he slowly slides down, mouth slick and hot, and it’s only sheer will that keeps Uchi’s eyes open.
Ryo runs the flat of his tongue up the underside of Uchi’s erection, and it is, indeed, a good morning, Uchi thinks.
This is far from the first time Ryo’s woken him up like this, but Uchi never takes it for granted.
The first time Uchi had woken up to lips against his skin in inspiring places, he’d been twenty-one, and he and Ryo had been… more than friends for maybe four months already.
Uchi had started this whole thing between them, leaning forward, and down, one day in December, pressing Ryo against his own kitchen counter and kissing him until neither of them could deny the need to breathe any longer, Ryo’s elbow clanging against the pot he’d just taken out of the cabinet and fingers gripping desperately to Uchi’s waist Uchi hadn’t planned on kissing him, then, but Ryo had seemed so tempting, and Uchi hadn’t been able to tell himself no. Afterwards, Ryo had looked at him with wide, disbelieving eyes, lips swollen and a little shiny, and Uchi had started to apologize, tripping over words that probably didn’t sound very sincere, because he wasn’t actually sorry, and trying to slow his heart rate enough that he would be able to step back without his knees buckling. But Ryo’s brain had finally caught up with him, and had slid his fingers into Uchi’s hair and yanked him back down, kissing him even harder, and that had been that.
But even though Uchi had made the first move, Ryo could still be painfully shy, and he had approached learning Uchi’s body like he approached getting to know new people; with a hesitance that bordered on terror. Ryo had never initiated anything, and Uchi had been starting to wonder if Ryo was actually interested in Uchi the same way Uchi was interested in Ryo.
Then one day Uchi’d woken up to Ryo’s tongue swirling around the crown of Uchi’s cock, with an anxious, eager to please look in his eyes, and Uchi hadn’t really asked himself any more questions.
Sort of like now, actually, except Ryo’s confident these days, because he knows what Uchi likes and Uchi’s never, ever, been bad at telling him something is good, because he likes the way Ryo still blushes like a virgin even though he fucks Uchi into the mattress so hard sometimes that Uchi’s afraid his mattress springs aren’t going to make it much longer. He’d upgraded to a bigger bed five years ago, even though Ryo’s thin frame doesn’t take up that much room, especially because he usually curls so tightly into Uchi’s side that Uchi can’t tell where he ends and Ryo begins.
Ryo wraps a hand around the base of Uchi’s erection, making up for the spaces he doesn’t reach on every downward bob of his head, and flicks his tongue up and under the foreskin as a cool, slick finger circles the ring of muscle right behind his balls.
The finger isn’t demanding; more slow and taunting, and soon Uchi is pressing up toward it, as if the upward motion of his hips will force that finger to sink into him slow and deep. Ryo laughs around Uchi’s cock, and that feels good, great, and Ryo’s left hand is pressing up on Uchi’s thigh, forcing Uchi’s legs further apart. Then, finally, Ryo’s slicked finger is slipping inside of him, crooking his first finger as he tries to stretch Uchi open. Uchi whines, demanding more, and Ryo lifts his head and slaps the back of his thigh. “I’ve got an hour before I have to get up for work,” Ryo says. “So wait just a minute, Hime-chan.”
Uchi reaches down and pulls too hard on Ryo’s hair, and Ryo yelps, and adds a second finger, bending them sharply in revenge.
Uchi’s skin is covered in a thin sheen of perspiration, and Ryo is so warm as he moves, pulling his fingers free and coming to rest above Uchi, arms supporting his own weight. Uchi looks up at him. Ryo’s bangs are clinging to his forehead with sweat, and Uchi is so, so glad that he’d taken that chance, that day in Ryo’s kitchen, because his whole life has become better for it.
Ryo kisses him, and it’s needy, and their teeth clang together because Ryo, secretly, is not all that patient either, and Uchi loves the way Ryo shakes. The way Ryo wants him as bad as he wants Ryo.
And then Ryo is inside of him, and Uchi watches Ryo through half-lidded eyes, and thinks this, right now, is kind of perfect.
Later, after, as Ryo twines their legs together, their skin sticking to each other’s in a way that’s uncomfortable but familiar enough that Uchi doesn’t mind, Uchi turns onto his side so he can look at Ryo, who seems moments away from going back to sleep, even though he’s got a press conference in about two hours, and has to meet up with the rest of Eito in less than one.
Ryo’s eyes flicker open again, maybe from the weight of Uchi’s gaze, and he grins, and lifts one of his hands, finding Uchi’s and twining their fingers together. “I like you a little,” Ryo says, and Uchi feels the laugh that escapes him all the way down to his bones. “Sort of.”
“I love you, too,” he says, and his best friend’s eyelashes flutter against the golden skin of his cheeks, and yes, Uchi thinks, perhaps it was always meant to end up like this.
ON THURSDAY, JULY 26th, 2012, UCHI HIROKI TAKES A CHANCE.
Uchi wakes up on a Thursday morning without a headache, or a cramp in his arm. He’s still stretched out across his bed, and his back feels nice, and he can tell, without moving, that his hair has dried in what is probably something incredibly disastrous, but Uchi doesn’t have to be anywhere today.
He’d had weird dreams, while he was sleeping, but they’ve already slipped away, leaving behind only faint impressions of having existed at all. He curls up into a ball as Leon yaps at him from the foot of the bed, white fur probably leaving fuzz on Uchi’s blue sheets, and Uchi feels like there’s something he has to do.
He licks his lips, and rubs the sleep out of his eyes, and a fragment of his dreams lingers behind his eyelids.
It’s Ryo, laughing drowsily as he laces their fingers together.
Uchi opens his eyes and stares at the wall, running his tongue over his filmy teeth and listening to his own heartbeat as he remembers.
His phone is by his bedside, next to the alarm he hadn’t set and his air conditioner remote, and Uchi’s long enough that he doesn’t need to try very hard to reach it.
It’s silly that he’s scrolling through his contacts, selecting Ryo’s name and pushing dial. It’s silly because he knows Ryo is busy. He has a movie coming out in two days, and Uchi is just being selfish, because hadn’t he just talked to Ryo last night?
It’s even sillier that Ryo answers, just because it’s Uchi, and he always answers when Uchi calls.
“Hello?” Ryo says, breathlessly, into the phone, almost like he’d run to pick it up, and that would be the silliest thing of all.
“Last night,” Uchi says, “I told you I had countless moments I would change, if I could change the past.”
“I told you that I did, too,” Ryo says, slowly, like he’s trying to figure out where Uchi’s going with this. Uchi’s not quite sure either, so he doesn’t blame Ryo for being confused. But Ryo’s voice makes Uchi think about all the quiet moments where he’d wanted Ryo so much it hurt, and laced together fingers, and a friendship that has never and will never die, and Uchi figures it out.
“Do you have any time at all tonight?” Uchi asks, and Ryo pauses for a moment, and Uchi knows he’s thinking through his schedule.
“Yeah,” Ryo says. “I could come over around nine. Is something… wrong?”
Uchi’s hands are shaking, just a little, but he’s feeling shockingly brave. “I’ve got something I’ve been meaning to say for a while now, and I might actually be insane enough to say it, tonight.”
“Oh yeah?” Ryo asks, and it’s… his tone is strangely… it’s hopeful, and Uchi can imagine the way Ryo would be looking at him, if he were sitting on the edge of Uchi’s bed right now, in one of his white t-shirts that’s not quite white anymore, and a pair of jeans with the legs rolled up to just below the knee.
“Yeah,” Uchi says, and he’s hopeful, too.
Uchi thinks he’s about ready to be happy.
ON FRIDAY, JULY 27th, 2012, UCHI HIROKI LOOKS OVER AT NISHIKIDO RYO’S SWEET, SLUMBERING FACE, AND THINKS THAT, ACTUALLY, HE WOULDN’T CHANGE ANYTHING AT ALL.
Pairing/Characters: Uchi and Ryo
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Canon… and AU. Yes.
Notes: I thought of five hundred different plots, but this is the one I most wanted to write. I hope that you like it, Ilana <3
Summary: Uchi’s life has been a series of ‘what-if’s’, but somehow, no matter what choice he makes, it always ends up back at Ryo.
ON WEDNESDAY, JULY 25th, 2012, UCHI HIROKI WISHES THINGS WERE DIFFERENT.
Uchi wakes up on a Wednesday morning with a headache and a cramp in his left arm. He’s got filming in a few hours. It’s just a bit part in a drama meant to showcase juniors, but hell, Uchi is still a junior. Sort of.
He rolls over in bed, and his top sheet is sweaty. It sticks to his skin, but the bottom sheet, over on the empty other side of the bed, is cool against his belly. Uchi doesn’t really know why he bought a bed so big, only that sometimes, he thinks about what it would be like to roll over and feel someone else’s arm wrap around his waist and whisper “good morning,” or “it’s too early for you to be on my side of the bed.”
But for now, Uchi just enjoys the morning-cool cotton against his bare stomach for the minute or so it lasts, and then gets up.
Uchi gets dressed, pulling on jeans and a t-shirt that’s seen better days, that he can’t bring himself to throw out. Yasu had given it to him on his twenty-first birthday with a hopeful smile, and Uchi had taken a long look at the bright, terrible colors for a few moments, before he had pretended to like it so he wouldn’t hurt Yasu’s feelings. Later, Ryo had smiled at him in that secretly soppy way that Ryo saved for when no one but Uchi was looking, and Uchi’d felt his heart shake a little in his chest the way it’d been doing a lot since he’d realized just how pretty Ryo’s eyes were when the light reflected just so; this terrifying feeling that Uchi was pretty sure wasn’t supposed to exist when one looked at their best friend who was also a man. “That was nice,” Ryo’d said. “You’re always so nice.” Uchi’d blinked, and said ”You’re just too mean,” and he’d stuck out his tongue, and Ryo’d tried to grab it, and the feeling had retreated, burying itself deep inside Uchi, so it could return later, when Uchi was alone.
In the end, Uchi had grown to actually like the shirt, and he tries not to panic when he notices the holes around the collar and the hem, where the threads have pulled loose. Uchi knows that soon enough, he won’t be able to sew them closed any longer.
The air is unbearably hot when he finally makes it outside. The humidity is high, creating a sticky wet sheen along his skin that makes him want to get in the shower and stay there, so at least it would feel fresh. Tokyo summers are cooler than Osaka summers, but it’s the humidity that kills. In Tokyo, the hottest month is August, and they aren’t there yet.
Uchi shoves his hands into his pockets as he walks, his grey hat pulled over his ears despite the heat, and his sunglasses perched on his nose. Uchi doesn’t need to disguise himself, really; not like he does if he’s out with his friends, who are all significantly more famous than he is. But still, Uchi takes precautions, because at the end of the day, he’s still a Johnny, even if he’s a Johnny that’s been shoved into the back of the closet like a pair of shoes Matsumoto thinks are slightly off trend.
Out of the corner of his eye, Uchi sees the posters. The Eito Ranger movie opens next week, and a fresh barrage of movie posters have been put up in store windows, and stuck to walls, and sometimes, Uchi will look up and the entire side of a building will be the faces of his former band mates; the faces are so big that sometimes Uchi walks up to them and it’s like he could fit his whole body inside Hina’s nostril, which he knows would make Hina laugh if he told him.
But Uchi won’t tell him, because when they talk, they don’t really talk about Eito. It seems like some unwritten rule that Eito’s successes aren’t a topic for conversation, because Eito is seven people and one of them isn’t Uchi. Uchi didn’t make up this rule, but still, everyone seems to adhere to it with some sort of fanatical devotion. Sometimes Ryo will slip up, when Uchi calls him in the middle of the night to check on him because Ryo is always so busy that Uchi worries that one day he’ll dazedly wander out into the middle of the street and get hit by a bus or something morbid like that. He’ll say something like “and then Eito is going to do a show about-“ and then he’ll go quiet and Uchi will swallow around his suddenly dry throat, and suddenly they’re talking about something else, and Uchi slowly loosens his too-tight grip on his mobile phone. It doesn’t have to be that awkward, but it always is.
Uchi gets lost in the shuffle of the crowd as he crosses streets when the crosswalk light flickers white, and before he even realizes it, he’s at the studio, bowing to the staff as he pulls off his hat.
“Good morning,” he says cheerfully to everyone, and it is, Uchi thinks, a pretty good morning. He sits still as a make-up artist carefully lines his eyes and powders his face; it’s a half-an-hour of preparation for what will amount to basically two minutes on screen, but Uchi is pretty used to stuff like this so it’s not really a big deal. Back when Uchi was filming Yamanade, Tegoshi and Kamenashi used to chatter incessantly about make-up tricks and what made their eyes look better, and all that sort of stuff, but as effeminate as Uchi is, he’d never really gotten into that sort of thing. Still, after that experience, getting his make-up done for this is no sweat.
The director is friendly, smiling at Uchi as Uchi easily does his cameo part, and Uchi sort of relaxes into himself as they finish, stretching his shoulders and watching, for a little while, as baby Tanaka flubs his lines three times, flushing angrily at himself until he nails a perfect delivery. It reminds him of the way Ryo used to be; so conscious of the camera that he scowled when he was supposed to smile, or snapped at people when they corrected him so they wouldn’t know he was scared.
It’s like no time at all before Uchi is walking out of the studio the same way he came in, back in his jeans and neon t-shirt, glasses obscuring his now lined, mascara-dark eyes.
On a whim, he pulls out his phone and dials Ryo.
“Hey,” says the tired voice at the other end of the line. “You’re done filming already?”
“Of course,” Uchi replies lightly, sidestepping a mother with a stroller who isn’t paying attention, eyes locking on a store window about a meter behind her. Handbags, Uchi notices, and there’s a green one he sort of likes because it’s the same color as Ariel’s tail in The Little Mermaid, and he thinks it would suit his mom. “Have you slept?”
“Not really,” Ryo says, and his voice is a bit rough, like dress shoes scraping against cement, and Uchi winces. “I know, I know,” Ryo adds, before Uchi can nag him. “I’ll sleep tonight. It’s just really busy right now.”
Of course it is, what with Eito having such a jam-packed year. “It’s always really busy,” Uchi says, softly, stepping into a convenience store and grabbing a couple of onigiri off the cooler shelf. He grabs a caramel ice-coffee, too, and digs the yen out of his pocket to pay the cashier as Ryo breathes a little to heavily into the phone.
“I can’t really talk right now,” Ryo says, regretfully, and Uchi likes the way Ryo’s voice softens, even if he doesn’t necessarily like what Ryo is saying. “But I can call you back later?” There’s a press conference today for the movie. Uchi had forgotten, but it must be soon, he realizes. Ryo shouldn’t have answered the phone, but he had, because it was Uchi. Uchi’s stomach does a tiny flip of pleasure, and he sucks his lower lip into his mouth, biting down as he makes an understanding noise of agreement.
“Okay,” Uchi says. “If you have time.”
“I always have time for my best friend,” Ryo says, and Uchi smiles because he can’t help it. “I’ll give you a ring when we’re done with this. If you’re free today, obviously.” Ryo’s voice catches, in that way it’s been doing lately that Uchi doesn’t quite understand but makes his heart beat a little faster.
“I am,” Uchi says. Uchi’s free a lot these days, when he’s not doing shows. Ryo is never free. “If you have time, I definitely have time, Ryo-chan.”
“Great,” Ryo says, sounding more awake. “Then I’ll talk to you later.”
Ryo ends the call, and Uchi takes a bite of his onigiri. The rice is a little sweet. He hadn’t paid attention to the flavor in the store, but it’s all right.
Uchi’s mobile buzzes in his hand just as he’s starting to put it back in his pocket. It’s an SMS from Yasu. Thanks for cheering up grumpy-face, the message says, and Uchi sends a smiling emoticon as a response, and a grin teases at his lips as he imagines everyone taunting a glowering Ryo.
Ryo does call later, around five in the evening, right after Uchi’d hung up from talking to his sister about the latest chapter of Nijiiro Prism Girl, as he’s cooking peppers and beef to put on top of the rice he’s had in the rice cooker since yesterday that is probably a little dry.
They talk about nothing, as usual, both of them eating as they talk and understanding each other around large mouthfuls of food because they’ve had so much practice at it. Ryo talks circles around Eito’s numerous projects and Uchi tries to convince Leon to stop biting at his toes without kicking him.
“I wish-“ Ryo says, all of a sudden, and Uchi swallows the bit of beef he’d just eaten and listens. “Never mind.” He mumbles the ‘never mind’, the way he always does when he has lots to say but no idea how to say it.
“You wish what?” Uchi asks, licking a bit of soy sauce from the corner of his lips and scrunching his nose.
“I wish you were still-“ Ryo goes quiet again, and Uchi, this time, understands the unsaid part of the sentence.
“Yeah,” Uchi says, and Leon clamps down on his pinky toe and Uchi doesn’t really react, even though it kind of hurts and he’s usually more of a wuss about pain. “Me too.” Uchi sets his chopsticks in his bowl, but the bowl is too shallow so they fall out and onto the floor. He doesn’t pick them up. “I think about the choices I’ve made, a lot. The consequences they’ve had.”
“We all do that,” Ryo says, a little distantly, and Uchi wonders, sometimes, what decisions Ryo regrets. ‘Think about the things we might have done differently.”
Uchi thinks, as he listens to Ryo’s voice, still gravelly and thick in a way that speaks of overuse, that it would be nice if Ryo were here, sitting next to him on the floor, so they could eat this slightly overcooked beef together. Afterwards, Ryo would tease him about the shirt he’s still wearing, and maybe he’d have his guitar in his lap, strumming on it absently the way he does sometimes when he’s thinking too much about all the stuff he has to do instead of paying attention to Uchi, and maybe Uchi would tickle his ankle to get his attention. Ryo would set the guitar aside, and tackle Uchi the way he’s done since they were kids, and Uchi would wish he had the courage to lean up and kiss him.
Uchi is usually straightforward, but he’s already lost a lot and he’d prefer to keep Ryo.
“Probably not as often as I do,” Uchi jokes. “I’ve got countless moments I would change, if I had the chance.”
“You’d be surprised,” Ryo says, and then Uchi hears someone laughing obnoxiously in the background.
“Are you still at work?”
“Always,” Ryo says, and then he’s swearing, loudly, and there’s rustling.
“Hello, Ryo-chan’s girlfriend,” says a voice into phone, and Uchi can hear Maruyama snickering in the background.
“Hi Yoko, it’s Uchi.”
“Hello, Ryo-chan’s girlfriend,” Yoko repeats, before Ryo manages, Uchi thinks, to get his phone back.
“I’m gonna go now,” Ryo mumbles into the phone, and Uchi nods, before remembering it’s a call.
“Right,” Uchi says, and Leon has finally managed to get into Uchi’s bowl, happily eating food that’s definitely going to make him sick and cause Uchi lots of problems. Uchi thinks about what else he can say, but Ryo’s already gone.
Uchi gives up on dinner as a bad job all around.
When Uchi goes to bed that night, hair still wet from the shower and silk pajama pants soft against his thighs, he spreads his body out in the center of the bed, stretching his arms and his legs as far as he can. Uchi’s tall, so his left foot hangs off the side of the bed and both his hands reach the edges. Still, the bed feels too empty, and it’s hard for Uchi to go to sleep.
When he finally does, it’s a little uneasy.
ON JULY 14th, 2005, UCHI DOESN’T ACCEPT A DRINK FROM THAT HOT GIRL WITH THE NOSE RING.
Uchi wakes up on a Wednesday morning with a headache and a cramp in his left arm. He’s got a press conference in a few hours, and he should probably get out of bed and shower so he can make himself look presentable enough that Tacchon doesn’t do that slow head-to-toe look of judgment that he reserves just for Uchi’s particularly harrowing mornings.
He rolls over in bed, and his top sheet is sweaty. His arm hits soft flesh, and Uchi’s eyes quickly open. He takes in the breast that’s eye-level with his face as memories come flitting back to him. He’d gone out last night with Ryo and Yasu, he recalls, and Ryo’d been really into that taller girl with the long soft hair, and Yasu’d tried not to look at Uchi sympathetically as Uchi’d ordered drink after drink.
He vaguely thinks the warm, naked girl next to him might be named Sayaka, but Uchi admits he’d been really drunk by the time she’d sidled over to him, squeezing into their booth and bringing him another glass of beer. He remembered liking her blue top, and the way she’d smiled wide in a way that created those little lines around her mouth just like-
Her face is smooth in sleep, though, and Uchi has to go to work.
Uchi takes a cold shower, and it both wakes him up and settles his stomach; he’s still a little nauseous, but luckily he’s escaped the most crippling side effects of a hangover. When he walks back into his bedroom, naked and dripping with his towel around his waist, the girl, and maybe it was Sayuri, actually, is sitting up and lazily casting her gaze around for her underwear. Uchi spots them in the corner of the room, by his laundry, and picks them up, handing them to her.
“I take it you’ve got to be somewhere?” She asks, and Uchi smiles at her and nods. She smiles back, and her short, boyish hair is sticking up in the back. Uchi walks a little closer and combs his fingers through it, just like he does for Ryo when Ryo drowsily shows up at a music show rehearsal looking the worse for wear, and she flicks his belly-button ring in retaliation. “This is a bit gay,” she says, and Uchi rolls his eyes.
“I still like it,” he replies, and shrugs. He’s always been a bit feminine, anyway, and he doesn’t really care what people think about his jewelry choices.
She’s quiet after that, getting dressed at the same time he does. He combs his hair as she refastens her necklace around her neck. “Thanks for the good night,” she says, and stands on her tippy toes to kiss his cheek. Then she’s gone, and Uchi is only a few minutes behind her, pulling a hat low on his head and down over his ears to hide his hair, and putting a pair of nondescript sunglasses on to cover his face.
It’s a hot and humid July, but it’s hotter in Osaka, and disguises are a necessary evil when your face is on posters the size of your childhood home on the sides of half the buildings in Tokyo. Plus, Suzuki Anne had said hats were in fashion this season, when they’d had lunch together last week, and he trusted her far more than he trusted Ryo’s friend Akanishi, who always thought terrible hats were in fashion.
Uchi calls a cab, because braving the streets seems foolish, even in a hat and sunglasses, and because the nausea is worse than he’d thought. It does get him to the jimusho on time, though, so he thinks all in all, it was worth it.
“You’re alive!” Yasu says cheerfully, and Uchi smiles at him as he divests himself of his hat. “I admit I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.” He’s wearing neon green glasses today, with no lenses, and his smile seems bright enough that Uchi debates whether or not he should actually take off his sunglasses.
“Of course I am,” Uchi says, flashing a ‘v’ for victory at his friend. “How about Ryo-chan?”
“Stop talking so loud,” Ryo grumbles from his seat on the small sofa in the corner of the meeting room.
“Oh, somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Uchi says, quickly walking over to sit next to Ryo.
Ryo’s skin is so warm when their bare arms press together, and Uchi ignores the way his pulse quickens at the contact. ‘There’s no wrong side to my bed,” Ryo grumbles. “It’s a twin bed. It’s so small I wake up on both sides of the bed every day.”
“I thought,” Uchi says, and his tongue stumbles a bit on the words, “maybe you’d woken up in someone else’s bed, this morning.”
Ryo swallows, hard, and Uchi’s eyes follow the way his adam’s apple shifts under the skin, shiny with a bit of perspiration. “No,” Ryo says. “I woke up by myself.”
“Oh,” Uchi says, throat suddenly as dry and rough as sandpaper. “Okay.”
Ryo slumps even further down in his seat, and Uchi looks away from him for a moment to see that everyone is involved in their own conversations. Uchi thinks Yasu might be pointedly not looking in their direction, and Uchi regrets having slipped up and told Yasu about all the things he wasn’t supposed to feel. “I was too busy watching you make a fool out of yourself to go home with anyone,” Ryo says darkly, and he’s looking everywhere but at Uchi, tired eyes fixing on a blank stretch of wall.
His thigh is pressed up against Uchi’s, and Uchi can feel the flex of muscle even through the denim of both of their jeans. “I only went home with her because you-“ Uchi stops himself, pushing his lips together to hold the words in, and Ryo’s gaze flicks over to look at him, startled. “You were ignoring me.”
Ryo runs a hand through his hair, fingers leaving weird parts in the bangs. It looks dumb anyway; the stupid blond-ish stripes look like those of a futuristic skunk shot through the black. It’s for their movie, and Uchi usually doesn’t pass up on a chance to tease him about it, enjoying the way Ryo squirms self-consciously when anyone brings it up, but...
“I wasn’t ignoring you. It was just-“ He stops, too, and Uchi wonders when it became so hard for them to just talk to each other, except he thinks the answer might be the day Uchi looked down at Ryo and thought he might like Ryo to press him up against a wall and kiss him senseless.
“Aw, are the lovebirds fighting?” Yoko coos, and Hina grabs a handful of Yoko’s tank top and drags him physically back into the conversation they were having with Maruyama, and Uchi curls his hands into fists on his thighs.
Ryo looks equally tense, and there’s… Well, Uchi thinks there’s a flush to his cheeks, and the way he’s looking at the floor in embarrassment makes Uchi want to wrap an arm around Ryo’s shoulder and pull him into his side. Ryo’s callused fingers are tapping an anxious pattern into the arm of the sofa, and Uchi frowns, because it’s the sort of thing Ryo does when he has a crush on a girl. Uchi knows, because Uchi knows everything about Ryo.
“I was…” Ryo’s eyes flicker up again, and his blush gets darker, and Uchi’s stomach folds in on itself as he watches him.
Then they’re talking to the press. Ryo speaks so earnestly about acting, even as he pretends to be less invested than he is, and Uchi has always loved that about him- the way Ryo, even when he tries to act like he doesn’t care, is so shockingly transparent to anyone who bothers to really look at him. There’s this glow of excitement in his eyes when he’s asked about the script, and Uchi knows they all notice it, but they won’t call him for it on camera. There’re plenty of other things to tease him about, anyway.
“And everyone thinks I’m the bully,” Ryo grouches, when the conference is over, and Uchi fluffs his hair as he laughs.
“That’s because you think you’re so witty,” Uchi says. “We all have to make sure you know you aren’t.”
“I am witty,” Ryo replies, trying to flatten his hair. “I’m also a grown man, so if you’d stop taking advantage of your height to ruin my hair-“
Uchi laughs even louder as the tension from earlier melts away, and they all have an enjoyable lunch. Uchi eats all of his food and half of Ryo’s, because Ryo eats so slow, and Ryo acts like he’s upset about it but Uchi knows he isn’t.
Yasu claims the seat next to Uchi on the drive back to the jimusho. “Ryo was really sad,” Yasu says softly, pitched so only Uchi can hear. Uchi studies his fingernails instead of looking at the back of the seat in front of him, where Ryo is sitting with his headphones in, probably listening to that awful mix-tape Yamapi had sent him of that trashy Euro-pop he’s into these days. “When you left the bar, last night.”
“Why? He didn’t even notice I was there.”
“Except that he spent the whole time looking at you.” Yasu’s expression is strange, almost like he’s willing Uchi to read his mind, which Uchi obviously can’t do, but…
“Are you saying-“
“I’m not saying anything,” Yasu clarifies, and he looks down and his glasses fall off his face. They bang against his seatbelt buckle, and Yoko looks back when he hears he noise, and then cackles as he watches Yasu feel around for them. Uchi just picks up the glasses, still turning Yasu’s words over in his mind.
When they’re all splitting up to go their separate ways, Ryo elbows him in the ribs. “Wanna get dinner?” He asks, over the sound of Uchi’s yelp.
“Only if we can watch it with beers and a kid’s movie, or something,” Uchi counters, and Ryo’s grin is natural and easy and Uchi sometimes thinks he’s going to burst out of his own skin because he feels too much to possibly fit inside of it.
They argue playfully over whether to get Chinese or packed dinner boxes, and Uchi wins with puppy-eyes and a promise that Ryo gets to choose “the next time we decide to rot our brains”, and they get Chinese. Ryo complains about Shige demanding he read drafts of some novel he’s working on, and Uchi talks about how he thinks Kusano’s dating this really gross celebutant, because he keeps getting upset whenever Tegoshi mentions her terrible fake nails, and he’s started saying senseless things like “you just don’t understand her as a person,” and Ryo laughs so loud strangers turn to stare, and they have to run before they get recognized.
When they’ve slowed, panting, in front of Ryo’s apartment building, Ryo chuckles again, and Uchi punches him none-too-gently in the arm. “Oh, ow,” Ryo says, and despite the sarcasm of his words, there’s something in his eyes, something that Uchi thinks, maybe, he should have noticed before, because Ryo is so transparent if you bother to really look at him.
Yasu’s words echo in his head, and Uchi screws up his courage. Ryo is his best friend, and he hopes he’s not about to ruin everything, since they’re in two bands together and it would be really awkward if Ryo kicked Uchi to the curb just because Uchi is madly in love with him.
“She looked kind of like you,” Uchi says, as Ryo walks into the flat, carrying their take-out. Uchi stops in the doorway. His heart is in his throat as he waits.
“What?” Ryo is paused in the genkan, considering Uchi’s words, and Uchi can see them sinking in. Uchi’s palms are sweaty.
“The girl from last night,” Uchi says, and doesn’t elaborate further. Ryo looks at him, eyes wide, and he looks so young, like he looked when Uchi first met him all those years ago, mouth slightly parted in surprise.
Then Ryo smiles, a little incredulously, and a little like he thinks he’s dreaming, too, and those lines around his mouth, the ones that Uchi has memorized because he loves the way Ryo’s face transforms when he smiles, gives Uchi the courage to enter. Uchi walks in, and shuts the door behind him.
ON MAY 13th, 2005, UCHI HIROKI LEAVES J&A, AND ONLY LOOKS BACK SOMETIMES.
Uchi wakes up on a Wednesday morning with a headache and a cramp in his left arm. It’s three AM, but there are things Uchi has to do, long before customers start arriving at his tiny shop around seven, and headache or no headache, Uchi’s got to get out of bed.
He rolls over in bed, and his top sheet is sweaty. It sticks to his skin, but the bottom sheet, over on the empty other side of the bed, is cool against his belly. Uchi doesn’t really know why he bought a bed so big, only that sometimes, he thinks about what it would be like to roll over and feel someone else’s arm wrap around his waist and whisper “good morning,” or “it’s too early for you to be on my side of the bed.”
But for now, Uchi just enjoys the morning-cool cotton against his bare stomach for the minute or so it lasts, and then gets up.
Uchi grimaces at the heat, and checks his humidifier after he climbs out of bed. It’s important that he keeps the air clear, here in his flat, and at the shop, too, because his lungs aren’t the best, and Uchi tries to take care of them as best he can.
He gets dressed, pulling on jeans and a t-shirt that’s seen better days, that he can’t bring himself to throw out, because it had been one of the last things Yasu had given him. They’d naturally grown apart, because Uchi’d left Johnny and Associates due to his health, but sometimes Uchi sees Yasu on television, when he watches the Kanjani8 television show, and thinks that if Yasu were to give Uchi a shirt now, he’d still pick the exact same one.
It feels like that was a different life, and a different Uchi.
The Uchi he is now is content enough, wearing too many earrings in his ears and smiling at old ladies as he serves them coffee and muffins he’d baked only a few hours earlier, and accepting their pleased sighs as they take a sip or a bite and it tastes exactly as they had imagined. When Uchi had found out he wasn’t going to be able to live the rigorous lifestyle of a Johnny anymore, right after he’d had those surgeries on his lungs, he’d been crushed. Pulmonary pneumothorax, tiny holes in the lining of his lungs, was supposed to be fixed with a few simple, routine surgeries. But afterwards, Uchi’d had a lot of trouble catching his breath, and the doctors had ‘hmm’d and ‘haaa’d, and Uchi had tried to swallow around the lump of fear that kept growing progressively larger in his throat.
Uchi had been unsure, then, what he was going to do with the rest of his life. He’d thought it was always going to be like it was, walking around with his hand linked with Ryo’s, singing and dancing and smiling for people screaming his name. Uchi likes making people happy, and he’d really liked being an idol, too. Besides, Ryo was an idol, and they got to be together.
But when that was out, Uchi had taken his meager savings, and thought about the other things he liked to do, and all he could think about was eating, and one thing had led to another, and…
Uchi blinks as he realizes he’s in front of his shop. It’s four in the morning now, and no one in his right mind should be awake. But there’s a hunched figure beside the door, a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and an ugly baseball hat pulled low on his brow. As soon as he sees Uchi, he drops the cigarette and stamps it out thoroughly. Uchi appreciates the thought, but the air in Tokyo is shit with or without his lone cigarette.
“I could use a cup of coffee,” he says in a gruff voice, and Uchi grins.
“Good morning to you too, Ryo-chan,” Uchi says, because it’s safe to say Ryo’s name out here on the street, when no one in the city is awake except the drunk salary men still making their way home from whatever wild night they’d just survived.
Ryo only drops by when he knows he won’t be seen. It’s their little secret. Ryo mumbles in his groggy morning voice about how Eito is doing, and about how Koyama still won’t speak to him since he’d left NEWS, and Uchi listens, leaning forward on the counter and occasionally refilling Ryo’s cup, face resting against his open palm as his elbow digs into the wood.
Today isn’t any different. Yamapi’s new concert is coming up, and Uchi mumbles about having plans to see it, and Ryo nods.
“I wonder if the other guys will go,” Ryo muses, and he taps his fingers against his mug, and Uchi tilts his head questioningly. “Tegoshi and Shige and Koyama and Massu.”
“You don’t have to be in the same group to stay friends,” Uchi says quietly, and Ryo looks up at him in surprise. “Look at us.”
“This is a bit different,” Ryo says. “Because you-“
Because Uchi hadn’t had a choice. Not really. He wonders if that’s what Ryo’s going to say, or if there’s something completely different on his mind. Ryo feels a lot of things, Uchi knows, but he’s always totally sucked at expressing them.
Koyama had come to visit Uchi in the hospital, back then. He’d sat by Uchi’s bed, and told him all the Johnny gossip and had wished him a speedy recovery when he’d left, and Uchi had thought the hospital food tasted extra terrible and he’d wished Ryo were there so he could make him taste it and they could complain about it together. Then Ryo would have climbed up into the hospital bed with him, and they would have set off some alarm or another, and they both would have gotten bitched out by a nurse because eighteen year old boys should know better than that.
But Ryo hadn’t come, and Uchi hadn’t gotten better for a long while. Ryo finally showed up at Uchi’s rather new Tokyo flat, the day after Uchi had checked out of the hospital. Uchi had forced himself to answer the door, and Ryo had stood in the doorway, scuffing the toes of his ugly boots as he kicked at the hallway tile.
“I couldn’t bear to look at you in a hospital bed,” Ryo had said, and on his face was written a lot of things he hadn’t said; would probably never say, and Uchi had invited him in, because he’d always known Ryo wasn’t the best at talking, and he loved him anyway.
Ryo’d become, or stayed, hugely famous. Uchi’d bought a coffee shop. Uchi thinks that they’re both teetering right on the edge of happiness, but Ryo’s got a few more lines around his eyes than Uchi does.
“Are you even listening?” Ryo asks, and Uchi shakes his head to clear it.
“It’s still early,” he says, and Ryo offers him a half-smile.
“Who are you telling?” Ryo gulps the last bit of his coffee. “I don’t know why I’m awake.” He flushes a bit as he says it, and runs his right hand across the calluses on his left.
“Can you repeat the last bit?”
“I’m having a party at my apartment for Pi,” Ryo says. “To celebrate the tour and the full length album. I was going to make that deadbeat Akanishi help me, but he’s too busy hiding away in Okinawa and trying to pretend like no one is mad at him for his antics.” He speaks fondly, Uchi notes.
“Oh,” Uchi says, and suddenly Ryo’s eyes go round.
“I’d invite you over,” Ryo says quickly, apologetically, “but I’ve been smoking in the house. I don’t want to make you sick.”
“Right,” Uchi says, and his smile feels cracked and bitter. “Of course.” Uchi’s not sure why he’d forgotten that he and Ryo live in different worlds now, even if they’ve somehow managed to hold onto their friendship through years of constant separation. It hurts, just a little, to be reminded, sometimes, of the things that have been taken away from him. Of the world he’s no longer a part of.
The days of photo shoots with Ryo’s arms firmly around his waist are long past.
Ryo drops enough change to pay for his coffee on the table, and Uchi packs him a muffin because Ryo’s been looking too thin lately. Uchi doesn’t charge him for it.
“But,” Ryo says, as he takes the brown paper from Uchi’s proffered hand, “I’ve been thinking about quitting. Smoking, I mean.” Where their fingers brush, it’s electric, and Ryo’s words sneak up on him, twisting in his stomach in a way that Uchi tries to avoid, with Ryo, because it’s a pointless sort of wish.
“Oh yeah?” Uchi asks, and he wets his lips with an anxious tongue.
“Yeah,” Ryo says, and he doesn’t meet Uchi’s eyes, looking down at his shoes instead, and Uchi likes the way there’s a redness to the back of Ryo’s neck, a tick of his embarrassment that he hasn’t managed to shed since he was fourteen. Uchi loves that he’s still close enough to Ryo to see it. That it’s something he doesn’t have to share with the world. “There’s someone I’d like to invite over, you see, but he’s sensitive to smoke.” Uchi thinks, to himself, that despite everything, Ryo’s so transparent if you ever really look at him.
“You should make sure to invite him, then, when you’ve managed it,” Uchi says, and Ryo looks up, and Uchi thinks, for some reason, when he sees the warm, hesitant look in Ryo’s eyes, that he might manage it soon.
“You think he’d come?”
Uchi would like to bridge the gap.
“I know he would.”
UCHI HIROKI BUYS NISHIKIDO RYO A CACTUS FOR HIS 25th BIRTHDAY.
Uchi wakes up on a Wednesday morning with a headache and a cramp in his left arm. His phone is obnoxiously buzzing, and Uchi grumbles as he reaches for it.
“What?” he says, and Ryo is on the other end of the line, mumbling too quickly about sunlight and death and can Uchi come help? And Uchi isn’t quite sure what’s going on.
“What are you talking about, Ryo-chan?” Uchi groans, rubbing his palm on his face.
His top sheet is sweaty. It sticks to his skin, but the bottom sheet, over on the empty other side of the bed, is cool against his belly. Uchi doesn’t really know why he bought a bed so big, only that sometimes, he thinks about what it would be like to roll over and feel someone else’s arm wrap around his waist and whisper “good morning,” or “it’s too early for you to be on my side of the bed.”
But for now, Uchi just enjoys the morning-cool cotton against his bare stomach for the minute or so it lasts, as Ryo takes a deep breath and starts all over again.
“I think my cactus is dying,” Ryo says. “Or it’s already dead.”
“What cactus?” Uchi says.
“The one you gave me,” Ryo says miserably, and Uchi tries not to laugh.
“It’s just a cactus, Ryo-chan.”
“It’s not just a cactus,” Ryo snaps. “You gave it to me, and I let it die.” Ryo’s voice is a little shaky.
“It’s not like it represents our friendship,” Uchi says slowly; carefully. “It’s okay.”
“You don’t understand,” Ryo says, and he hangs up the phone.
Uchi listens to the beeping for a minute, and then throws his phone to the foot of the bed, stretching himself out. “Stupid Ryo,” Uchi says, and resolves to forget the conversation.
But he thinks about it all during preparation for filming that morning, which feels endless even though the actual filming takes all of six minutes before Uchi is free, and something about Ryo’s voice keeps nagging at Uchi until he scowls and marches determinedly into a flower shop, emerging twenty minutes later with a painstakingly selected cactus.
He takes it home and sets it on his kitchen counter, and then stares at it. “What do you represent to Ryo?” Uchi asks it, but of course it doesn’t answer, because it’s a cactus, and cactuses don’t talk, and Ryo is constantly making Uchi do dumb things.
Around eight, when Uchi knows Ryo is home, Uchi packs up the cactus and clutches it to his side, and walks the thirty minutes it takes to get to Ryo’s apartment.
Ryo answer the door, shirtless as usual, and Uchi holds the cactus out in front of him with both hands.
“What is it?”
“A cactus, dumbass,” Uchi says, and Ryo takes it tentatively.
“You still don’t get it,” Ryo says miserably, and Uchi runs a hand through his hair and sighs. He’s been sighing a lot today.
“Then why don’t you explain it to me,” he says, and Ryo sticks out his lower lip stubbornly, and the muscle in his jaw tightens, and Uchi wonders if this is going to be like pulling teeth.
“That time,” Ryo says, “when you told me I wasn’t mature enough. For…”
Oh, Uchi thinks, and he remembers the way Ryo had smelled like beer, sloppy and drunk and insistent as he pressed into Uchi’s space. ”I like you,” he’d said, and Uchi had pushed him away.
”You’re drunk” Uchi had replied, and Ryo had rested his head in the hollow between Uchi’s neck and shoulder, and his breath had been sticky and wet. ”And you’re too old to drunkenly say things like that.”
Ryo had been grumpy and irritated the next morning, angry at everything and refusing to look at Uchi at all. Uchi had felt stretched so thin that he’d snapped when Ryo had refused to answer a question, and told Ryo he wasn’t mature enough to like anyone.
Then Uchi’d stomped out of Ryo’s apartment, and two weeks later, he’d given Ryo a cactus for his birthday, and they’d both feigned like the confession incident had never happened.
“I remember,” Uchi says, and Ryo’s hands clutch at fistfuls of his oversized jeans, and he’s sucked his lower lip into his mouth.
“It’s like the cactus was a test,” Ryo says, when Uchi thinks the silence is so thick it’s starting to suffocate them both. “I know you didn’t mean it as a test, but that’s how I…”
“I see,” Uchi says, because it makes stupid, mind-numbing, Nishikido Ryo sense.
“And if I can’t even keep a goddamn cactus alive, how am I supposed to prove I’m mature enough that you can trust me with-“ Ryo’s knuckles are white, and Uchi’s still holding the cactus in both of his hands, and Ryo still looks moments away from melting into a puddle of all sorts of complicated feelings he probably doesn’t even understand on the floor.
“Here,” Uchi says again, holding the cactus out into Ryo’s face so that Ryo can’t ignore it, and Ryo reaches up and takes it without thinking. He stares down at it, and then glances up. Uchi catches his gaze, and holds it. “First of all, you’re an idiot.”
“Hey!”
“Second of all, we all deserve another chance, don’t you think?”
Ryo blinks at him twice, and his fingers tighten around the pot, and Uchi thinks Ryo is so transparent if you bother to really look at him. Maybe next time, he’ll let Ryo press that kiss on his ready mouth.
AFTER UCHI HIROKI’S 21st BIRTHDAY, HE DOESN’T SECOND-GUESS THE WAY RYO’S TOUCH MAKES HIS HEART SKIP A BEAT.
Uchi wakes up on a Wednesday morning with a headache and a cramp in his left arm. Of course, all that is secondary to the feeling of Ryo’s fingers, dragging across his stomach, lingering at the stud in his belly button, toying with it until Uchi none-too-subtly lifts his hips.
“Good morning,” Ryo says, and Uchi is about to reply, but then Ryo is pressing a gentle kiss to the inside of his thigh, thumbs rubbing small, soothing circles into Uchi’s hip bones. Ryo’s humming, and he drops another kiss against the sensitive skin there, and Uchi shivers, before he groans.
“Always so impatient,” Ryo says, and Uchi sits up on his elbows and glares down at Ryo, who’s looking up at him with that big smile that always, always melts Uchi’s heart.
“Yes,” Uchi agrees. “So if you already know that-“ And then Ryo’s lips are around his cock, just the tip, and Ryo’s eyes are looking up at him carefully as he slowly slides down, mouth slick and hot, and it’s only sheer will that keeps Uchi’s eyes open.
Ryo runs the flat of his tongue up the underside of Uchi’s erection, and it is, indeed, a good morning, Uchi thinks.
This is far from the first time Ryo’s woken him up like this, but Uchi never takes it for granted.
The first time Uchi had woken up to lips against his skin in inspiring places, he’d been twenty-one, and he and Ryo had been… more than friends for maybe four months already.
Uchi had started this whole thing between them, leaning forward, and down, one day in December, pressing Ryo against his own kitchen counter and kissing him until neither of them could deny the need to breathe any longer, Ryo’s elbow clanging against the pot he’d just taken out of the cabinet and fingers gripping desperately to Uchi’s waist Uchi hadn’t planned on kissing him, then, but Ryo had seemed so tempting, and Uchi hadn’t been able to tell himself no. Afterwards, Ryo had looked at him with wide, disbelieving eyes, lips swollen and a little shiny, and Uchi had started to apologize, tripping over words that probably didn’t sound very sincere, because he wasn’t actually sorry, and trying to slow his heart rate enough that he would be able to step back without his knees buckling. But Ryo’s brain had finally caught up with him, and had slid his fingers into Uchi’s hair and yanked him back down, kissing him even harder, and that had been that.
But even though Uchi had made the first move, Ryo could still be painfully shy, and he had approached learning Uchi’s body like he approached getting to know new people; with a hesitance that bordered on terror. Ryo had never initiated anything, and Uchi had been starting to wonder if Ryo was actually interested in Uchi the same way Uchi was interested in Ryo.
Then one day Uchi’d woken up to Ryo’s tongue swirling around the crown of Uchi’s cock, with an anxious, eager to please look in his eyes, and Uchi hadn’t really asked himself any more questions.
Sort of like now, actually, except Ryo’s confident these days, because he knows what Uchi likes and Uchi’s never, ever, been bad at telling him something is good, because he likes the way Ryo still blushes like a virgin even though he fucks Uchi into the mattress so hard sometimes that Uchi’s afraid his mattress springs aren’t going to make it much longer. He’d upgraded to a bigger bed five years ago, even though Ryo’s thin frame doesn’t take up that much room, especially because he usually curls so tightly into Uchi’s side that Uchi can’t tell where he ends and Ryo begins.
Ryo wraps a hand around the base of Uchi’s erection, making up for the spaces he doesn’t reach on every downward bob of his head, and flicks his tongue up and under the foreskin as a cool, slick finger circles the ring of muscle right behind his balls.
The finger isn’t demanding; more slow and taunting, and soon Uchi is pressing up toward it, as if the upward motion of his hips will force that finger to sink into him slow and deep. Ryo laughs around Uchi’s cock, and that feels good, great, and Ryo’s left hand is pressing up on Uchi’s thigh, forcing Uchi’s legs further apart. Then, finally, Ryo’s slicked finger is slipping inside of him, crooking his first finger as he tries to stretch Uchi open. Uchi whines, demanding more, and Ryo lifts his head and slaps the back of his thigh. “I’ve got an hour before I have to get up for work,” Ryo says. “So wait just a minute, Hime-chan.”
Uchi reaches down and pulls too hard on Ryo’s hair, and Ryo yelps, and adds a second finger, bending them sharply in revenge.
Uchi’s skin is covered in a thin sheen of perspiration, and Ryo is so warm as he moves, pulling his fingers free and coming to rest above Uchi, arms supporting his own weight. Uchi looks up at him. Ryo’s bangs are clinging to his forehead with sweat, and Uchi is so, so glad that he’d taken that chance, that day in Ryo’s kitchen, because his whole life has become better for it.
Ryo kisses him, and it’s needy, and their teeth clang together because Ryo, secretly, is not all that patient either, and Uchi loves the way Ryo shakes. The way Ryo wants him as bad as he wants Ryo.
And then Ryo is inside of him, and Uchi watches Ryo through half-lidded eyes, and thinks this, right now, is kind of perfect.
Later, after, as Ryo twines their legs together, their skin sticking to each other’s in a way that’s uncomfortable but familiar enough that Uchi doesn’t mind, Uchi turns onto his side so he can look at Ryo, who seems moments away from going back to sleep, even though he’s got a press conference in about two hours, and has to meet up with the rest of Eito in less than one.
Ryo’s eyes flicker open again, maybe from the weight of Uchi’s gaze, and he grins, and lifts one of his hands, finding Uchi’s and twining their fingers together. “I like you a little,” Ryo says, and Uchi feels the laugh that escapes him all the way down to his bones. “Sort of.”
“I love you, too,” he says, and his best friend’s eyelashes flutter against the golden skin of his cheeks, and yes, Uchi thinks, perhaps it was always meant to end up like this.
ON THURSDAY, JULY 26th, 2012, UCHI HIROKI TAKES A CHANCE.
Uchi wakes up on a Thursday morning without a headache, or a cramp in his arm. He’s still stretched out across his bed, and his back feels nice, and he can tell, without moving, that his hair has dried in what is probably something incredibly disastrous, but Uchi doesn’t have to be anywhere today.
He’d had weird dreams, while he was sleeping, but they’ve already slipped away, leaving behind only faint impressions of having existed at all. He curls up into a ball as Leon yaps at him from the foot of the bed, white fur probably leaving fuzz on Uchi’s blue sheets, and Uchi feels like there’s something he has to do.
He licks his lips, and rubs the sleep out of his eyes, and a fragment of his dreams lingers behind his eyelids.
It’s Ryo, laughing drowsily as he laces their fingers together.
Uchi opens his eyes and stares at the wall, running his tongue over his filmy teeth and listening to his own heartbeat as he remembers.
His phone is by his bedside, next to the alarm he hadn’t set and his air conditioner remote, and Uchi’s long enough that he doesn’t need to try very hard to reach it.
It’s silly that he’s scrolling through his contacts, selecting Ryo’s name and pushing dial. It’s silly because he knows Ryo is busy. He has a movie coming out in two days, and Uchi is just being selfish, because hadn’t he just talked to Ryo last night?
It’s even sillier that Ryo answers, just because it’s Uchi, and he always answers when Uchi calls.
“Hello?” Ryo says, breathlessly, into the phone, almost like he’d run to pick it up, and that would be the silliest thing of all.
“Last night,” Uchi says, “I told you I had countless moments I would change, if I could change the past.”
“I told you that I did, too,” Ryo says, slowly, like he’s trying to figure out where Uchi’s going with this. Uchi’s not quite sure either, so he doesn’t blame Ryo for being confused. But Ryo’s voice makes Uchi think about all the quiet moments where he’d wanted Ryo so much it hurt, and laced together fingers, and a friendship that has never and will never die, and Uchi figures it out.
“Do you have any time at all tonight?” Uchi asks, and Ryo pauses for a moment, and Uchi knows he’s thinking through his schedule.
“Yeah,” Ryo says. “I could come over around nine. Is something… wrong?”
Uchi’s hands are shaking, just a little, but he’s feeling shockingly brave. “I’ve got something I’ve been meaning to say for a while now, and I might actually be insane enough to say it, tonight.”
“Oh yeah?” Ryo asks, and it’s… his tone is strangely… it’s hopeful, and Uchi can imagine the way Ryo would be looking at him, if he were sitting on the edge of Uchi’s bed right now, in one of his white t-shirts that’s not quite white anymore, and a pair of jeans with the legs rolled up to just below the knee.
“Yeah,” Uchi says, and he’s hopeful, too.
Uchi thinks he’s about ready to be happy.
ON FRIDAY, JULY 27th, 2012, UCHI HIROKI LOOKS OVER AT NISHIKIDO RYO’S SWEET, SLUMBERING FACE, AND THINKS THAT, ACTUALLY, HE WOULDN’T CHANGE ANYTHING AT ALL.