Coming Undone (2/2)
Title: Coming Undone, Part 2 of 2
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sakurai Sho/Kitagawa Keiko
Word count: 10,970
Summary: Sho and Keiko unwittingly go on what ends up being a once-in-a-lifetime date. It isn’t all smooth sailing, though. What happens when they get cast together as co-stars in “Nazodi”?
Part 1
All too soon, it’s already the first day of drama taping. The assistant director gathers everyone, and officially announces crank-in. Keiko and Sho bow together to all the staff and the press, as was the custom. Then they all disperse to their positions, with the two of them taking their places in front of the camera to await the first take. She turns towards Sho, lightly bowing to him. “Sakurai-san.”
He bows. “Sho.”
“Excuse me?”
Keiko doesn’t know how she feels exactly. It is their first time to see each other again after the non-date a month ago. She is outfitted in all her heiress glory, and Sho is in his butler uniform, sporting a new haircut. Somehow, it feels unreal to see Sho again, in the flesh. Just like that, she is reminded of that one ride home-transported back to the scent of Sho’s car, the way Sho had insisted that she was to be the dj and handed her his iPod, the way Sho had dorkily sang along to an m-flo song that she picked, the way he laughed when he told her about how Aiba had wooed Shihori (“Let’s just say that it involved a completely pro-bono Arashi performance of the cheesiest song in our repertoire. You see, Aiba-san has no shame.”) Keiko wonders if she made up all of that by herself, because here was Sho being cryptic while being perfectly pleasant. It irks her.
“Well, I just thought that it’d better if you call me Sho, Kitagawa-san,” Sho says, smiling somewhat nervously. “I mean, since we will be working together for quite a while.”
Play it cool, she thinks. Keep your distance. “But you just called me ‘Kitagawa-san’, right?”
His face reddens. “Keiko,” he tries. “Keiko…chan?”
“Keiko is fine,” she says curtly.
“Keiko then. Please take care of me,” he says in his maddeningly polite way, averting his eyes.
She returns the pleasantries. The shoot begins, despite her mind flying away all over the place. They easily nail the short sequences, where she and Sho only had one or two lines to deliver each. But the seventh scene that they had to take is particularly wordy, along with the several subtle changes in blocking that they must keep in mind to accommodate the elaborate set-up of several cameras. It isn’t that Keiko doesn’t deliver her lines properly, but the director is knitting his brows, visibly still not pleased after several takes.
Her mood takes a nosedive, she feels like it’s her fault. Keiko is aware that her concentration isn’t to its full potential. She is taken aback by how much of an effect being around Sho has on her.
The ever-perceptive Sho seems to pick up on her standoffish-ness. During a break, when the production staff had to recalibrate the lighting on the set, Sho gently pulls her aside to one corner. The director, in between giving instructions, gives them a worried look.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She’s breathless at the sudden physical contact. He looks out to make sure that no one is listening on them, even though some of the staff observes them with interested gazes.
“Keiko,” he starts, as if trying to get used to the sound of it. “Is something the matter?” When she shoots him a questioning look, he fidgets a little bit, his hand absentmindedly stroking his bow tie. “I don’t want to offend you, or anything like that. It’s just…I feel like you’re not completely here.”
She stiffens. “What makes you think that?”
Sho chews on his lower lip. “I think, I just think, it’s because of me.”
It feels like an eternity stretching in between them, the silence threatening to swallow her whole. She doesn’t want to say anything, not wanting to betray a single thing she thinks or feels. She has her pride to think about, if Sho is alluding to what she thinks he’s alluding to.
Sho swallows. “I wanted to call,” he says softly, his voice seemingly an octave lower. “I meant to call.”
Her heartbeat races a mile a minute, and she fears that her heart might out-beat itself, imploding on its own power. Did she hear him right? What is she supposed to say?
*
He did mean to call. It had been a wonderful night, and Keiko fascinated him more and more. Somehow, he had gotten the guts to ask for her number, even though he knew that there was a big chance that he could have been turned down. He wasn’t, which bowled him over, and in what seems to be a confident move from Keiko, she had also asked him for his. When he said goodnight to her, she had already definitely worked her charms on him, even if it was all done unconsciously. It is rare for Sho to get so attracted to and worked up over a girl, especially when he got to his late 20s-somehow, dating didn’t seem all that important. But somehow, just in a span of one night, Keiko managed to remind him how wonderful female companionship could be, even without strings attached.
Her face barely registers any kind of emotion. “So why didn’t you?”
So why didn’t he call? He wonders that himself, too. Yet Sho has no reason that could probably justify why he didn’t. The plain truth of it is, simply, that he just didn’t. After that night, he got swamped with work, more than the usual amount-which was already horrendous to begin with. Between recording for a new song (which he didn’t know then would be the theme song for a drama he would be starring in with her), additional Zero assignments, and all the other jobs he regularly took on as an idol, he just couldn’t decide about calling Keiko.
He isn’t making excuses, because he knows a girl like Keiko won’t, and shouldn’t, take shit like that from guys, even from him. Now that he’s seeing her again in the flesh, he couldn’t help but want to shoot his foot, or any part of his body, really, for being so stupid for not calling, and for relegating whatever he and Keiko had brewing to fate.
And so, this is what fate hands him with fiendish glee: a leading role in a drama, where the leading lady is the very girl he failed to call on the aftermath of what was kind of a date of a lifetime. Or non-date, if one was to be accurate about it. Sometimes Sho really feels like an idiot when it comes to relating to women.
“I didn’t think you would have minded,” he sputters.
The look right then on Keiko’s face is careful, as if she herself is treading on dangerous, and thus, potentially more awkward ground. Sho gets the feeling he said the wrong thing-he does seem to have a knack for that, especially during important moments.
“I didn’t mind.”
Sho knows he’s blown any chance he ever had with her, by not calling, and by opening his mouth and saying stupid things he couldn’t expound on. He wants to get along with her, wants to make things right. Not only because they would be working together very closely for the next few months, like it or not, but because for all his stupidity, that night really did mean something to him too. He wishes he could convey that, in the simplest and most straightforward manner he could manage, to Keiko, but he can’t. Something about the unnerving serenity on Keiko’s face deters him.
“Keiko,” he says, in what he notes to be a pathetic tone.
She crosses her arms, scanning their environment and noting the curious glances of the staff. Her eyes are resolute as she affixes them on him. “Look, Sakurai-san-”
“-Sho. Please.”
Keiko takes a deep breath. “Fine. Sho,” she says, her voice amiable yet unfamiliar. “Can we just start over? I don’t care that you didn’t call, just please, let’s not have this kind of talk on set? I don’t appreciate the ogling that we get, and I’m sure your agency wouldn’t appreciate any whisperings about us, no matter how false.”
Along with what feels like discreet icicles stabbing him torturously in the heart, Sho suddenly feels guilty for dragging her off the way he did. “I’m sorry.” He adjusts the glasses he is wearing for his role, not knowing what to do with his hands.
She gives him a weak smile. “I guess I’m sorry too. I promise to concentrate more and not cause hold-ups anymore in the shoot.”
“You weren’t, Keiko. I didn’t mean to accuse you-”
“No, I understand.” She shifts her weight on her other foot. “Look, can we please just…forget, whatever it was? I’m willing to be professional about this, if you are.”
“Of course,” he replies. “Of course.”
He looks at her, trying to read behind her facial expression, yet finds that he couldn’t glean anything else from it other than the fact that she seems to have finished saying what she wanted to say. “Excuse me,” she says politely, turning on her heel to go back to the well-lit part of the set. Just like that, their discussion is finished.
Sho feels really idiotic right then.
*
“You’re too close, Sakurai-san.”
The director’s voice reverberates authoritatively around the whole set. A flushing face awkwardly draws back from her own, neck veins popping out suggestively. Right then she thinks that this must be how it feels to want two opposing things at the same time. She likes the way he hovers over her face, breath warm as he waits to deliver his infamous put-downs as the sharp-tongued butler Kageyema. But she also hates the proximity, wants him far away from her as possible, for the sake of her own sanity. She feels like at any moment, she will break down and reach grab Sho by the lapels…what she’ll do after that is the thought that terrifies her.
They’re taping the fourth episode, and Keiko’s fixation for her co-star is only getting worse. They’ve been friendly, so far, after the little talk they had during that first day, managing even to somehow converse casually, almost like the way they did that night when they went out on that stupid non-date. They aren’t professionals for nothing. Yet somehow, every contact she has with Sho ever since then feels like a war dance-Keiko convinces herself that she’s not just imagining things. There is a silent push and pull going on, nothing she can particularly define nor describe, anyway. But she’ll be damned if she’s the first one to crack.
“Sorry,” Sho shouts out. He turns back to Keiko and smiles apologetically. “You should’ve told me I was too close.”
“Ah.” What else could she say, when Sho is just a breath away?
“What’s wrong?” Sho gives her a strange look, still hovering over her.
“Why?”
Sho adjusts himself accordingly, propping his hand on the table behind Keiko. “How’s this?” He’s not talking to her, he is confirming things with the director and the cinematographer-always the professional, always checking if he’s doing everything properly, she notes. As if that little moment didn’t just happen. How dare he.
Keiko reminds herself that she, too, is a professional actress, and that her stomach should not be in knots just because her co-star has minty, fresh breath. The fact that she even notices that is something worth berating herself for, she thinks. There is just a certain kind of earnestness about Sakurai Sho that bowls her over, the kind of earnestness that makes him brush his teeth just because they were having a scene where their faces are right smack in front of each other, when it wasn’t even a kissing scene (Keiko thinks about how some fans would be appalled to find out that most actors don’t even bother.) It bothers her that she can’t reign in her thoughts when she is supposed to be working.
Sho rests still too close for comfort in front of her face. The director voices out his approval and tells everyone to stand-by for the take. He is looking at her intently, with something more than concentration. Keiko could tell; she isn’t completely oblivious. When allows his stare to quickly drift down to a shady area (it might be her lips, or her bare décolletage,) she cocks an eyebrow. The subtlest of smirks pass over his face, like it might have been just a figment of her imagination, and he merely looks away from her, poker-faced.
Somewhere during the months of shooting, Keiko feels like Sho has taken on the snide, sadistic, and manipulative persona of Kageyama, the character he is acting. She does not know if he’s just practicing or aggravating her on purpose, but either way, it pisses her off as it kind of…turns her on. I must be going crazy, Keiko thinks. She also finds similarities with Hosho Reiko, her character-it drives her absolutely nuts to have to give in and play along with the psychological bullying and seduction of Kageyama.
Or should she say Sho?
He coughs, clearing his throat before the take. She feels the subtle tremor of his body over hers. Closing her eyes, she tries to ignore the onslaught of thoughts in her head and the feelings in between her legs. She steels herself. God, she is so in character right now, ready at any moment to shoot her mouth off as Reiko, and tell Kageyama to shut up and to get the hell out of her sight.
“…and, action!”
*
It is a completely different set from all the other ones he’s had before, may it be a drama set or a movie set. The variable that makes it different is Keiko’s presence, and Sho does not even try to deny it. There is an indescribable flutter in his stomach at being around her-it only worsens every shooting day. Sho struggles to keep his interest and desire in check, to maintain a straight face. It’s pretty much a big ordeal, because looking away from Keiko runs against his instincts. Sometimes just the thought of Keiko’s big, doe eyes make him want to stare at her. Yet he knows he couldn’t, not after they had agreed to be professional, or whatever Keiko had meant when she said that. For the most part, they had been professional, but the familiarity and the closeness of the staff on set seem to have rubbed off on them.
Asides from the not-calling incident, it feels like their brewing chemistry hasn’t been derailed a single bit. Sho wonders if he’s the only one who feels it, but he doubts it. There really is something there, something unaccounted for, something that makes the director look at the two of them with sheer curiosity every time they shoot a scene where they had to be in close proximity. No one on set dare say anything, but Sho can still feel their glances nonetheless.
They have only a couple weeks of shooting left, as they’re finally down to the last two episodes. The two of them had just wrapped for the day after finishing their joint scenes. With the staff and their managers still busy conferring with the director, they find themselves walking back together to the waiting room.
Keiko walks faster than normal, with Sho trailing behind her. Suddenly, she stumbles on a step. Sho thanks his lucky stars that his reflexes seem to be in fine working order that day as he catches her on the elbow, saving her from a potentially nasty fall. Keiko locks eyes with him. “Thank you.”
With regret, Sho lets go. “Your fault for not looking at where you’re going.”
Lately, he finds that he can’t stop teasing Keiko, pushing her buttons a bit. They’ve deteriorated to bantering back and forth like little kids, and Sho enjoys it way too much. The look on her face during those moments absolutely kills Sho in the best way possible.
“I was, okay,” Keiko says, indignant, as they start walking again. “Ugh, I have to get these shoes off. They’re such a pain.”
Sho gives a cursory glance to her shoes. Fine, he might have been scoping out her legs too, just a little bit. “Aren’t you used to wearing heels?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t mean I have to like wearing them.”
“I knew it,” Sho says. “You really must’ve been a man in your past life.”
“Shut up,” Keiko mutters. “I want to see you gallivant around all day in a pair of heels! See if you can accrue some sympathy for the women who wear it just so their legs can look nice. It’s masochism, really.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with your legs.”
To Sho’s credit, he really had meant it sincerely, as it just slipped out of his mouth without thinking better of it. He reddens in an instant, scrambling to take it back. “I mean,” he coughs, “there’s nothing wrong with showing off one’s legs, especially if they happen to be particularly, well, nice-looking.”
Keiko stops in her tracks, her eyebrow raised. “I’m going to let the earlier remark slide for now, since everyone can see us, but I’ll have you know that I won’t stand for you looking at my legs,” she says, “gorgeous as they are.”
Sho grins in relief. “I’ll try my best.”
Keiko starts walking again, and Sho follows. “I should’ve seriously bashed in your head earlier.”
“With the vase?” Sho smirked. “You didn’t have to control yourself, ojou-sama.”
Keiko plasters on a simpering smile on her lips, threatening to wreak havoc on Sho’s relatively peaceful day. “That’s what the script said, ‘accidentally hit Kageyama with the vase’,” she coos. “Only, I have supreme self-control, you see. Even around obnoxious butlers like Kageyama…and the actor playing him.”
Sho smiles. “Hit me as hard as you can, ojou-sama. I can take it.”
“You really are becoming as lecherous as Kageyama, Sho,” Keiko deadpans. The corner of her mouth twitches suspiciously. They reach the door of Keiko’s dressing room. “Well, this is my stop.” She levels Sho with her twinkling eyes before shutting the door.
Sho is grinning like an idiot. He couldn’t help it. He forces his seemingly useless joints to cooperate, so that he can walk to his own dressing room just a few feet away.
She has got some kind of hold on him, alright.
*
Just like that, three months of shooting pass. It is their last day on the set. They are both dressed up in Santa costumes, only Sho looks ridiculous, wearing that stupid bow tie on top of his Santa suit. After they finish with the last take, they hand each other the customary bouquet of flowers, as an official gesture that the shooting is over. The director and staff congratulate them.
“It’s been quite the ride, ojou-sama,” Sho smiles, as they pose for magazine photographers.
“You’re now released from service, Kageyama,” she replies.
When all the fanfare finishes, as has been the custom for a while now, they walk back together to their dressing rooms. She doesn’t know how it came to be that way exactly, only that she can’t help but look forward to exchanging jabs or talking about random things with him during that short walk. Keiko doesn’t know how it happened, but during the months of shooting, she and Sho had only gotten closer, even as she tried to repel him. She cannot deny, not anymore, that she really does like him. Flaws and all. Date of a lifetime and not calling the day after and all.
Sho stretches out his arms. “Finally, we’re done!”
Keiko laughs. “You have no idea how idiotic you look stretching out like that with a bow-tie on, plus that Santa suit.”
Sho tugs his bow tie. “You mean this thing? Tell me with a straight face you don’t find it adorable,” he challenges.
Keiko’s face colors; she can’t help it; she does find it unbearably cute. “I don’t.”
“It’s okay, Keiko, I find you adorable in that Santa outfit, too.”
“I didn’t ask for you to feel that way,” she counters. “You can stare all you want at me right now because this outfit has a shelf-life of…let’s see. About twenty more steps.”
He laughs, that deep, booming laugh that Keiko just finds so attractive, the very definition of music in her ears. “Anyway, I seriously need to duck out soon. This fever is killing me.”
“Ah, yes,” Keiko muses. She had been worriedly looking over him during the shoot, thinking that he might drop from fatigue or dizziness any time. Keiko brings her hand to his forehead, to find that Sho is burning hot, literally. “I thought you said you took some medicine?” she asks, a little hysteria unintentionally creeping into her voice.
“I did, but it was hours ago, before I came over here,” he admits, his eyes fluttering weakly.
Keiko frowns. “I think I have a couple of paracetamols inside my bag.”
“It’s okay, Keiko.”
Keiko frowns. “Go, I’ll bring it to your waiting room.”
“Are you sure that’s advisable?” he says with a smile.
She dismisses him and quickly goes inside her own waiting room, rummaging inside her bag for the medicine. When she finds it, she grabs a bottle of water and rushes to Sho’s waiting room, entering without a knock. Sho is slumped on the couch, looking fuzzy-eyed, the Santa hat drooping on his forehead. He looks up.
Keiko pops the pill out of it’s packaging and hands it to Sho. “Take it.”
“I didn’t know you were so concerned about me,” he manages to say as he is swallowing the pill. “Frankly, I’m touched that ojou-sama cares so much.”
She waits until she’s sure he’s drank the medicine, then she hands him the bottle of water. “We can’t have you fainting around here in that ridiculous outfit, now can we.” She shivers at the way he’s looking at her, as he’s gulping down the water.
“There, all done.”
“Good. I’ll leave you alone to dress up, you need to go home,” Keiko says with authority, turning on her heels to leave.
“Keiko.” Suddenly, a hand is gently encircling her wrist. Her heart feels like it jumped to her throat, beating there, rendering her unable to talk. She doesn’t shake his hand off, even when her brain is telling her to run.
“Yes?” Her own voice sounds foreign to her, her head, suddenly swimming at the contact.
“Thank you.”
She fidgets, feeling Sho’s eyes on her. “It’s nothing.”
Right then, he tugs her close to him. She falls unceremoniously into the couch, almost on Sho’s lap. It renders her breathless. Just like that, Sho’s face is inches away from hers, his breath sweet. She feels the uncanny heat of his skin emanating in waves. From this distance, she can see the way his eyelashes flutter; she doesn’t know if it’s because of his fever, or something else entirely. Or maybe she does.
Words fail her right then and there.
“Keiko,” he breathes, his voice guttural and raspy. He bites on his lower lip.
“Yes?”
“I’m an idiot.”
“You kind of are.”
His eyes search hers, probing. “Can I just…” and this where his voice tapers off, putting a question mark in the air that Keiko doesn’t quite know how to answer. She wants to say something, anything, yet there’s nothing. No words come to her aid.
Instead, she feels Sho’s lips on hers. It is a soft touch, almost fleeting, almost as if it didn’t happen. Somewhere inside her, she feels the chains tethering her to reality slowly unclasping bit by bit. Their breaths mingle in that shortest distance possible between two people. His fingers trace the outline of jaws, gently, too gently. And then he draws her back in again, his lips pillowing hers, slowly, maddeningly. Keiko feels as if she’s falling off the face of the Earth, her feet unable to locate stable ground.
She can’t pinpoint the exact moment when it happens, but she kisses back. With her eyes closed, she hears Sho’s approval, and feels his arm enveloping slowly around her waist. She settles her hand on his nape, the shock of his hot, feverish skin somehow pleasant against hers. There is something unexpectedly deliberate about how Sho fits his lips with her own, with gentleness and a sick, delightful thoroughness that thrills her. Keiko finds herself warming into the kiss, on the brink of losing herself, alternately floating and falling, with no knowledge or clear awareness of where she ends and he begins. Sho slips his tongue in. Within that moment, she only knows blind, searing heat, spreading all the way down to her every extremity. He nudges her even closer, gently pulling on her waist to settle her on his lap.
When Sho places hot lips on her exposed neck, she gasps. “Sho.” She clutches the hair on the base of his neck, her toes curling. He doesn’t stop with the feather-tipped kisses. When he surfaces, his eyes, blindingly clear.
“You don’t even know, Keiko,” he whispers, his fingers playing with the fur trim on her Santa costume, the fingertips skimming on her bare skin.
“Know what?” Her voice is small.
“You don’t know how stupid I felt for not calling, and how absolutely nuts you drive me. You don’t know how I’ve always had a thing for you, even back then, when you were playing that Sailor Mars girl in that evil short skirt,” he says, rambling. Sho affixes his eyes on hers.
“I don’t?”
He shakes his head. “You don’t know how amazing this has been, to spend so much time with you, to get to know how wonderful you’ve become. You don’t know how bad I’m falling for you.” He takes a deep breath. “Have fallen for you.”
In contrast to his hot skin, hers feels like it’s icing over. Keiko shivers. In her life, she’s been confessed to many times, by many people, both men and women (thanks to her exclusive girl’s school upbringing), yet never has a confession made her feel like this, like she is about to explode, her heart beating in an abhorrent and currently unknown rhythm. She rests her forehead against his shoulder. She doesn’t know what to say, not yet, so she chooses not to say anything. Sho’s heaving chest is comforting, and she listens to him breathing in and out.
Sho lifts his shoulders, forcing her to look up at him. He has a troubled look on his face. “Are you…are you seriously going to leave me hanging? After how much I’ve just confessed?”
It is then when she notices the embarrassed flush on Sho’s face. And before she can even think of resisting the urge, she finds herself laughing. She laughs with a mixture of relief and, well, disbelief. She doesn’t know how it sounds to Sho, but she is filled with the need to laugh. She just wants to laugh and laugh and laugh.
“You’re laughing.”
Seeing Sho’s shy, pathetic face gives her her voice back. Smiling, she places her arms around Sho’s neck “Feeling shy?”
When he nods, Keiko is filled with a sudden feeling of softness and warm, fuzzy feelings, feelings that she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, anymore, drive away. She is overwhelmed by what she feels for him.
“I’ll go out with you,” she declares, “so you better call me, this time around.” Without letting him speak or react, she kisses him, her previously antagonistic feelings and her desire for Sho mixing in together potently. How dare he make her wait that long?
When she feels his grip on her waist tightening and his lips curving into a smile as they kiss again, she is begrudgingly certain, more certain than anything, that she would have waited for him anyway. No matter how long it would have taken.
Kitagawa Keiko is deeply, and despite her better judgment, unabashedly in love with Sakurai Sho.
*
Winter is upon Tokyo, the crisp, frigid air producing an ethereal haze all around the city. Sho is at the driveway of an apartment, cold and freezing. Stuffing his unused, gloved hand into his thick coat, he waits for Keiko to answer the phone. Sho sighs, knowing that she’ll pick up eventually. Needless to say, she’s been punishing him bit by bit for the you-didn’t-call-after-that-night-how-dare-you incident. He knows he deserves it, but still. His ass is freezing over and his stuffed nose makes him feel less indulgent than he’d like to be, considering the state of things.
“Hullo,” she says innocently, finally picking up.
“You are killing me,” Sho replies.
“What?” Keiko laughs.
“Nothing,” Sho grumbles. He finds it best to get to the point. “I need you to find your warmest coat and comfiest boots right now. Dress up. Pack some clothes for an overnight stay. Don’t take too long, because I’m waiting! Unless you want me found frozen by the press tomorrow morning.”
“Frozen? Waiting where?”
“Look out your window.”
He sees the white curtain being drawn aside, and sees her wrapped around snugly in a thick terry cloth bathrobe. Something inside Sho instantly thaws when he hears (and sees) Keiko laughing when she spots him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Truth is, Sho himself doesn’t know. All he knows that he’s now dressed up in Santa outfit, minus the white beard and all, praying that no one walking by him recognizes him. He barely outlined his plans for today the previous night, when he was wondering what to do about today. He figures going with something he’s always wanted to do with someone special will do. Plus the Santa outfit, of course, because the season begs for it and Keiko’s kind of…worth it. (And also because the costume department from the drama gifted him with it, saying that it looks becoming on him.)
“I’m your Christmas present.”
Keiko smile is as bright as a summer day, and Sho can feel it, even from a distance. “Then come up here!”
“No, I’m taking you somewhere.”
“Where?”
“It’s a surprise. You better get down here as fast as you can, Kitagawa, because it’s freezing out here!”
Keiko uncharacteristically squeaks in panic. “Wait! Where will we be going? How will I know what to pack?”
“Just bring warm stuff. And oh, maybe your Sailor Mars costume.”
“Sho-”
He cuts off their conversation, grinning up at Keiko. He signals to his watch. And then in a flurry of white cotton robes and curtains, she’s gone. After ten minutes (which is fast, Sho acknowledges, for a girl), she emerges from her apartment’s entrance, looking flushed and harried, bundled up in a coat with a nondescript overnighter bag slung behind her shoulders. Sho smiles at how unfussy she could be-somehow, it’s the most beautiful he’s ever seen her.
“I can’t believe you!” Keiko complains, pushing her bag to Sho. She gives him a once-over. “And you look ridiculous, by the way.”
“Hello to you too.” Sho opens the door for her, after dumping her things on the backseat. When he gets inside the car, Keiko is waiting for him with an expectant look on her face.
“So where are you taking me, Santa Sho?”
He chuckles as he puts on his seatbelt. “Promise you won’t laugh?” She shakes her head. “I was thinking…Yokohama? I’ve always wanted to go there. On a date. With someone special.”
“I’m glad I pass as special then,” she quips, a smile on her face. It is enough to soothe the thread of worry that was beginning to take hold of him-it’s not that he wants their little time-off to be perfect, but he doesn’t want her to hate it, either. “I haven’t been there in ages,” she says, her tone of voice encouraging.
“Same here. I wonder if it’s as great as I’ve built it up in my mind to be,” he wonders out loud. “At least, for a date.”
“Anywhere, with you.” She leans over to him, kissing him so warmly that it feels like he’s melting, even in the low temperature surrounding them. Sho likes the way she isn’t shy with him, not anymore, endlessly thrilled at the easy way she catches his lips with hers. It really does feel like Christmas, even if it’s a day too early.
When they break apart for air, she touches his face fondly. “Let’s go?”
“Before that,” Sho says, rummaging somewhere in front of Keiko in the car’s glove compartment, “there’s this.” He fishes out a matching Santa hat for Keiko.
“You’re really into this thing huh, Sakurai,” she teases.
“Don’t mock me,” he whinges in a hurt tone.
“I bet you’ve planned everything, even the music.”
Sho turns a rich crimson as he guiltily reveals the iPod that he’s been fishing for in his bag. The sound of her laughter fills the car in a decidedly manly volume. He could only muster a small, defensive “shut up” as he places the music player on the dock, looking for the playlist that he had excitedly prepared the night before. Keiko only chortles.
A smoky, comforting voice suddenly fills up the car with sweet music.
“Chestnuts roasting, on an open fire…”
He waits for the expected retort, but there’s none. They look at each other, both with irrepressible grins on their faces. Sho notes with satisfaction that she’s already wearing the white-trimmed, red hat. It’s a good look on her. He is suddenly struck by the thought that this must be what true happiness is-Keiko in a Santa hat, grinning that cheeky grin of hers.
“And although it’s been said, many times, many ways…”
“Merry Christmas,” she murmurs, her eyes on him “to you.”
His heart swoops and dives into a free-fall, his hands closing around hers. Sho promises then, swears, to himself, that regardless of any circumstance, of wherever they both might be or how busy they both get, that he will always call. He will always call and let her know just how much he thinks of her.
Which is always.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sakurai Sho/Kitagawa Keiko
Word count: 10,970
Summary: Sho and Keiko unwittingly go on what ends up being a once-in-a-lifetime date. It isn’t all smooth sailing, though. What happens when they get cast together as co-stars in “Nazodi”?
Part 1
All too soon, it’s already the first day of drama taping. The assistant director gathers everyone, and officially announces crank-in. Keiko and Sho bow together to all the staff and the press, as was the custom. Then they all disperse to their positions, with the two of them taking their places in front of the camera to await the first take. She turns towards Sho, lightly bowing to him. “Sakurai-san.”
He bows. “Sho.”
“Excuse me?”
Keiko doesn’t know how she feels exactly. It is their first time to see each other again after the non-date a month ago. She is outfitted in all her heiress glory, and Sho is in his butler uniform, sporting a new haircut. Somehow, it feels unreal to see Sho again, in the flesh. Just like that, she is reminded of that one ride home-transported back to the scent of Sho’s car, the way Sho had insisted that she was to be the dj and handed her his iPod, the way Sho had dorkily sang along to an m-flo song that she picked, the way he laughed when he told her about how Aiba had wooed Shihori (“Let’s just say that it involved a completely pro-bono Arashi performance of the cheesiest song in our repertoire. You see, Aiba-san has no shame.”) Keiko wonders if she made up all of that by herself, because here was Sho being cryptic while being perfectly pleasant. It irks her.
“Well, I just thought that it’d better if you call me Sho, Kitagawa-san,” Sho says, smiling somewhat nervously. “I mean, since we will be working together for quite a while.”
Play it cool, she thinks. Keep your distance. “But you just called me ‘Kitagawa-san’, right?”
His face reddens. “Keiko,” he tries. “Keiko…chan?”
“Keiko is fine,” she says curtly.
“Keiko then. Please take care of me,” he says in his maddeningly polite way, averting his eyes.
She returns the pleasantries. The shoot begins, despite her mind flying away all over the place. They easily nail the short sequences, where she and Sho only had one or two lines to deliver each. But the seventh scene that they had to take is particularly wordy, along with the several subtle changes in blocking that they must keep in mind to accommodate the elaborate set-up of several cameras. It isn’t that Keiko doesn’t deliver her lines properly, but the director is knitting his brows, visibly still not pleased after several takes.
Her mood takes a nosedive, she feels like it’s her fault. Keiko is aware that her concentration isn’t to its full potential. She is taken aback by how much of an effect being around Sho has on her.
The ever-perceptive Sho seems to pick up on her standoffish-ness. During a break, when the production staff had to recalibrate the lighting on the set, Sho gently pulls her aside to one corner. The director, in between giving instructions, gives them a worried look.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She’s breathless at the sudden physical contact. He looks out to make sure that no one is listening on them, even though some of the staff observes them with interested gazes.
“Keiko,” he starts, as if trying to get used to the sound of it. “Is something the matter?” When she shoots him a questioning look, he fidgets a little bit, his hand absentmindedly stroking his bow tie. “I don’t want to offend you, or anything like that. It’s just…I feel like you’re not completely here.”
She stiffens. “What makes you think that?”
Sho chews on his lower lip. “I think, I just think, it’s because of me.”
It feels like an eternity stretching in between them, the silence threatening to swallow her whole. She doesn’t want to say anything, not wanting to betray a single thing she thinks or feels. She has her pride to think about, if Sho is alluding to what she thinks he’s alluding to.
Sho swallows. “I wanted to call,” he says softly, his voice seemingly an octave lower. “I meant to call.”
Her heartbeat races a mile a minute, and she fears that her heart might out-beat itself, imploding on its own power. Did she hear him right? What is she supposed to say?
*
He did mean to call. It had been a wonderful night, and Keiko fascinated him more and more. Somehow, he had gotten the guts to ask for her number, even though he knew that there was a big chance that he could have been turned down. He wasn’t, which bowled him over, and in what seems to be a confident move from Keiko, she had also asked him for his. When he said goodnight to her, she had already definitely worked her charms on him, even if it was all done unconsciously. It is rare for Sho to get so attracted to and worked up over a girl, especially when he got to his late 20s-somehow, dating didn’t seem all that important. But somehow, just in a span of one night, Keiko managed to remind him how wonderful female companionship could be, even without strings attached.
Her face barely registers any kind of emotion. “So why didn’t you?”
So why didn’t he call? He wonders that himself, too. Yet Sho has no reason that could probably justify why he didn’t. The plain truth of it is, simply, that he just didn’t. After that night, he got swamped with work, more than the usual amount-which was already horrendous to begin with. Between recording for a new song (which he didn’t know then would be the theme song for a drama he would be starring in with her), additional Zero assignments, and all the other jobs he regularly took on as an idol, he just couldn’t decide about calling Keiko.
He isn’t making excuses, because he knows a girl like Keiko won’t, and shouldn’t, take shit like that from guys, even from him. Now that he’s seeing her again in the flesh, he couldn’t help but want to shoot his foot, or any part of his body, really, for being so stupid for not calling, and for relegating whatever he and Keiko had brewing to fate.
And so, this is what fate hands him with fiendish glee: a leading role in a drama, where the leading lady is the very girl he failed to call on the aftermath of what was kind of a date of a lifetime. Or non-date, if one was to be accurate about it. Sometimes Sho really feels like an idiot when it comes to relating to women.
“I didn’t think you would have minded,” he sputters.
The look right then on Keiko’s face is careful, as if she herself is treading on dangerous, and thus, potentially more awkward ground. Sho gets the feeling he said the wrong thing-he does seem to have a knack for that, especially during important moments.
“I didn’t mind.”
Sho knows he’s blown any chance he ever had with her, by not calling, and by opening his mouth and saying stupid things he couldn’t expound on. He wants to get along with her, wants to make things right. Not only because they would be working together very closely for the next few months, like it or not, but because for all his stupidity, that night really did mean something to him too. He wishes he could convey that, in the simplest and most straightforward manner he could manage, to Keiko, but he can’t. Something about the unnerving serenity on Keiko’s face deters him.
“Keiko,” he says, in what he notes to be a pathetic tone.
She crosses her arms, scanning their environment and noting the curious glances of the staff. Her eyes are resolute as she affixes them on him. “Look, Sakurai-san-”
“-Sho. Please.”
Keiko takes a deep breath. “Fine. Sho,” she says, her voice amiable yet unfamiliar. “Can we just start over? I don’t care that you didn’t call, just please, let’s not have this kind of talk on set? I don’t appreciate the ogling that we get, and I’m sure your agency wouldn’t appreciate any whisperings about us, no matter how false.”
Along with what feels like discreet icicles stabbing him torturously in the heart, Sho suddenly feels guilty for dragging her off the way he did. “I’m sorry.” He adjusts the glasses he is wearing for his role, not knowing what to do with his hands.
She gives him a weak smile. “I guess I’m sorry too. I promise to concentrate more and not cause hold-ups anymore in the shoot.”
“You weren’t, Keiko. I didn’t mean to accuse you-”
“No, I understand.” She shifts her weight on her other foot. “Look, can we please just…forget, whatever it was? I’m willing to be professional about this, if you are.”
“Of course,” he replies. “Of course.”
He looks at her, trying to read behind her facial expression, yet finds that he couldn’t glean anything else from it other than the fact that she seems to have finished saying what she wanted to say. “Excuse me,” she says politely, turning on her heel to go back to the well-lit part of the set. Just like that, their discussion is finished.
Sho feels really idiotic right then.
*
“You’re too close, Sakurai-san.”
The director’s voice reverberates authoritatively around the whole set. A flushing face awkwardly draws back from her own, neck veins popping out suggestively. Right then she thinks that this must be how it feels to want two opposing things at the same time. She likes the way he hovers over her face, breath warm as he waits to deliver his infamous put-downs as the sharp-tongued butler Kageyema. But she also hates the proximity, wants him far away from her as possible, for the sake of her own sanity. She feels like at any moment, she will break down and reach grab Sho by the lapels…what she’ll do after that is the thought that terrifies her.
They’re taping the fourth episode, and Keiko’s fixation for her co-star is only getting worse. They’ve been friendly, so far, after the little talk they had during that first day, managing even to somehow converse casually, almost like the way they did that night when they went out on that stupid non-date. They aren’t professionals for nothing. Yet somehow, every contact she has with Sho ever since then feels like a war dance-Keiko convinces herself that she’s not just imagining things. There is a silent push and pull going on, nothing she can particularly define nor describe, anyway. But she’ll be damned if she’s the first one to crack.
“Sorry,” Sho shouts out. He turns back to Keiko and smiles apologetically. “You should’ve told me I was too close.”
“Ah.” What else could she say, when Sho is just a breath away?
“What’s wrong?” Sho gives her a strange look, still hovering over her.
“Why?”
Sho adjusts himself accordingly, propping his hand on the table behind Keiko. “How’s this?” He’s not talking to her, he is confirming things with the director and the cinematographer-always the professional, always checking if he’s doing everything properly, she notes. As if that little moment didn’t just happen. How dare he.
Keiko reminds herself that she, too, is a professional actress, and that her stomach should not be in knots just because her co-star has minty, fresh breath. The fact that she even notices that is something worth berating herself for, she thinks. There is just a certain kind of earnestness about Sakurai Sho that bowls her over, the kind of earnestness that makes him brush his teeth just because they were having a scene where their faces are right smack in front of each other, when it wasn’t even a kissing scene (Keiko thinks about how some fans would be appalled to find out that most actors don’t even bother.) It bothers her that she can’t reign in her thoughts when she is supposed to be working.
Sho rests still too close for comfort in front of her face. The director voices out his approval and tells everyone to stand-by for the take. He is looking at her intently, with something more than concentration. Keiko could tell; she isn’t completely oblivious. When allows his stare to quickly drift down to a shady area (it might be her lips, or her bare décolletage,) she cocks an eyebrow. The subtlest of smirks pass over his face, like it might have been just a figment of her imagination, and he merely looks away from her, poker-faced.
Somewhere during the months of shooting, Keiko feels like Sho has taken on the snide, sadistic, and manipulative persona of Kageyama, the character he is acting. She does not know if he’s just practicing or aggravating her on purpose, but either way, it pisses her off as it kind of…turns her on. I must be going crazy, Keiko thinks. She also finds similarities with Hosho Reiko, her character-it drives her absolutely nuts to have to give in and play along with the psychological bullying and seduction of Kageyama.
Or should she say Sho?
He coughs, clearing his throat before the take. She feels the subtle tremor of his body over hers. Closing her eyes, she tries to ignore the onslaught of thoughts in her head and the feelings in between her legs. She steels herself. God, she is so in character right now, ready at any moment to shoot her mouth off as Reiko, and tell Kageyama to shut up and to get the hell out of her sight.
“…and, action!”
*
It is a completely different set from all the other ones he’s had before, may it be a drama set or a movie set. The variable that makes it different is Keiko’s presence, and Sho does not even try to deny it. There is an indescribable flutter in his stomach at being around her-it only worsens every shooting day. Sho struggles to keep his interest and desire in check, to maintain a straight face. It’s pretty much a big ordeal, because looking away from Keiko runs against his instincts. Sometimes just the thought of Keiko’s big, doe eyes make him want to stare at her. Yet he knows he couldn’t, not after they had agreed to be professional, or whatever Keiko had meant when she said that. For the most part, they had been professional, but the familiarity and the closeness of the staff on set seem to have rubbed off on them.
Asides from the not-calling incident, it feels like their brewing chemistry hasn’t been derailed a single bit. Sho wonders if he’s the only one who feels it, but he doubts it. There really is something there, something unaccounted for, something that makes the director look at the two of them with sheer curiosity every time they shoot a scene where they had to be in close proximity. No one on set dare say anything, but Sho can still feel their glances nonetheless.
They have only a couple weeks of shooting left, as they’re finally down to the last two episodes. The two of them had just wrapped for the day after finishing their joint scenes. With the staff and their managers still busy conferring with the director, they find themselves walking back together to the waiting room.
Keiko walks faster than normal, with Sho trailing behind her. Suddenly, she stumbles on a step. Sho thanks his lucky stars that his reflexes seem to be in fine working order that day as he catches her on the elbow, saving her from a potentially nasty fall. Keiko locks eyes with him. “Thank you.”
With regret, Sho lets go. “Your fault for not looking at where you’re going.”
Lately, he finds that he can’t stop teasing Keiko, pushing her buttons a bit. They’ve deteriorated to bantering back and forth like little kids, and Sho enjoys it way too much. The look on her face during those moments absolutely kills Sho in the best way possible.
“I was, okay,” Keiko says, indignant, as they start walking again. “Ugh, I have to get these shoes off. They’re such a pain.”
Sho gives a cursory glance to her shoes. Fine, he might have been scoping out her legs too, just a little bit. “Aren’t you used to wearing heels?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t mean I have to like wearing them.”
“I knew it,” Sho says. “You really must’ve been a man in your past life.”
“Shut up,” Keiko mutters. “I want to see you gallivant around all day in a pair of heels! See if you can accrue some sympathy for the women who wear it just so their legs can look nice. It’s masochism, really.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with your legs.”
To Sho’s credit, he really had meant it sincerely, as it just slipped out of his mouth without thinking better of it. He reddens in an instant, scrambling to take it back. “I mean,” he coughs, “there’s nothing wrong with showing off one’s legs, especially if they happen to be particularly, well, nice-looking.”
Keiko stops in her tracks, her eyebrow raised. “I’m going to let the earlier remark slide for now, since everyone can see us, but I’ll have you know that I won’t stand for you looking at my legs,” she says, “gorgeous as they are.”
Sho grins in relief. “I’ll try my best.”
Keiko starts walking again, and Sho follows. “I should’ve seriously bashed in your head earlier.”
“With the vase?” Sho smirked. “You didn’t have to control yourself, ojou-sama.”
Keiko plasters on a simpering smile on her lips, threatening to wreak havoc on Sho’s relatively peaceful day. “That’s what the script said, ‘accidentally hit Kageyama with the vase’,” she coos. “Only, I have supreme self-control, you see. Even around obnoxious butlers like Kageyama…and the actor playing him.”
Sho smiles. “Hit me as hard as you can, ojou-sama. I can take it.”
“You really are becoming as lecherous as Kageyama, Sho,” Keiko deadpans. The corner of her mouth twitches suspiciously. They reach the door of Keiko’s dressing room. “Well, this is my stop.” She levels Sho with her twinkling eyes before shutting the door.
Sho is grinning like an idiot. He couldn’t help it. He forces his seemingly useless joints to cooperate, so that he can walk to his own dressing room just a few feet away.
She has got some kind of hold on him, alright.
*
Just like that, three months of shooting pass. It is their last day on the set. They are both dressed up in Santa costumes, only Sho looks ridiculous, wearing that stupid bow tie on top of his Santa suit. After they finish with the last take, they hand each other the customary bouquet of flowers, as an official gesture that the shooting is over. The director and staff congratulate them.
“It’s been quite the ride, ojou-sama,” Sho smiles, as they pose for magazine photographers.
“You’re now released from service, Kageyama,” she replies.
When all the fanfare finishes, as has been the custom for a while now, they walk back together to their dressing rooms. She doesn’t know how it came to be that way exactly, only that she can’t help but look forward to exchanging jabs or talking about random things with him during that short walk. Keiko doesn’t know how it happened, but during the months of shooting, she and Sho had only gotten closer, even as she tried to repel him. She cannot deny, not anymore, that she really does like him. Flaws and all. Date of a lifetime and not calling the day after and all.
Sho stretches out his arms. “Finally, we’re done!”
Keiko laughs. “You have no idea how idiotic you look stretching out like that with a bow-tie on, plus that Santa suit.”
Sho tugs his bow tie. “You mean this thing? Tell me with a straight face you don’t find it adorable,” he challenges.
Keiko’s face colors; she can’t help it; she does find it unbearably cute. “I don’t.”
“It’s okay, Keiko, I find you adorable in that Santa outfit, too.”
“I didn’t ask for you to feel that way,” she counters. “You can stare all you want at me right now because this outfit has a shelf-life of…let’s see. About twenty more steps.”
He laughs, that deep, booming laugh that Keiko just finds so attractive, the very definition of music in her ears. “Anyway, I seriously need to duck out soon. This fever is killing me.”
“Ah, yes,” Keiko muses. She had been worriedly looking over him during the shoot, thinking that he might drop from fatigue or dizziness any time. Keiko brings her hand to his forehead, to find that Sho is burning hot, literally. “I thought you said you took some medicine?” she asks, a little hysteria unintentionally creeping into her voice.
“I did, but it was hours ago, before I came over here,” he admits, his eyes fluttering weakly.
Keiko frowns. “I think I have a couple of paracetamols inside my bag.”
“It’s okay, Keiko.”
Keiko frowns. “Go, I’ll bring it to your waiting room.”
“Are you sure that’s advisable?” he says with a smile.
She dismisses him and quickly goes inside her own waiting room, rummaging inside her bag for the medicine. When she finds it, she grabs a bottle of water and rushes to Sho’s waiting room, entering without a knock. Sho is slumped on the couch, looking fuzzy-eyed, the Santa hat drooping on his forehead. He looks up.
Keiko pops the pill out of it’s packaging and hands it to Sho. “Take it.”
“I didn’t know you were so concerned about me,” he manages to say as he is swallowing the pill. “Frankly, I’m touched that ojou-sama cares so much.”
She waits until she’s sure he’s drank the medicine, then she hands him the bottle of water. “We can’t have you fainting around here in that ridiculous outfit, now can we.” She shivers at the way he’s looking at her, as he’s gulping down the water.
“There, all done.”
“Good. I’ll leave you alone to dress up, you need to go home,” Keiko says with authority, turning on her heels to leave.
“Keiko.” Suddenly, a hand is gently encircling her wrist. Her heart feels like it jumped to her throat, beating there, rendering her unable to talk. She doesn’t shake his hand off, even when her brain is telling her to run.
“Yes?” Her own voice sounds foreign to her, her head, suddenly swimming at the contact.
“Thank you.”
She fidgets, feeling Sho’s eyes on her. “It’s nothing.”
Right then, he tugs her close to him. She falls unceremoniously into the couch, almost on Sho’s lap. It renders her breathless. Just like that, Sho’s face is inches away from hers, his breath sweet. She feels the uncanny heat of his skin emanating in waves. From this distance, she can see the way his eyelashes flutter; she doesn’t know if it’s because of his fever, or something else entirely. Or maybe she does.
Words fail her right then and there.
“Keiko,” he breathes, his voice guttural and raspy. He bites on his lower lip.
“Yes?”
“I’m an idiot.”
“You kind of are.”
His eyes search hers, probing. “Can I just…” and this where his voice tapers off, putting a question mark in the air that Keiko doesn’t quite know how to answer. She wants to say something, anything, yet there’s nothing. No words come to her aid.
Instead, she feels Sho’s lips on hers. It is a soft touch, almost fleeting, almost as if it didn’t happen. Somewhere inside her, she feels the chains tethering her to reality slowly unclasping bit by bit. Their breaths mingle in that shortest distance possible between two people. His fingers trace the outline of jaws, gently, too gently. And then he draws her back in again, his lips pillowing hers, slowly, maddeningly. Keiko feels as if she’s falling off the face of the Earth, her feet unable to locate stable ground.
She can’t pinpoint the exact moment when it happens, but she kisses back. With her eyes closed, she hears Sho’s approval, and feels his arm enveloping slowly around her waist. She settles her hand on his nape, the shock of his hot, feverish skin somehow pleasant against hers. There is something unexpectedly deliberate about how Sho fits his lips with her own, with gentleness and a sick, delightful thoroughness that thrills her. Keiko finds herself warming into the kiss, on the brink of losing herself, alternately floating and falling, with no knowledge or clear awareness of where she ends and he begins. Sho slips his tongue in. Within that moment, she only knows blind, searing heat, spreading all the way down to her every extremity. He nudges her even closer, gently pulling on her waist to settle her on his lap.
When Sho places hot lips on her exposed neck, she gasps. “Sho.” She clutches the hair on the base of his neck, her toes curling. He doesn’t stop with the feather-tipped kisses. When he surfaces, his eyes, blindingly clear.
“You don’t even know, Keiko,” he whispers, his fingers playing with the fur trim on her Santa costume, the fingertips skimming on her bare skin.
“Know what?” Her voice is small.
“You don’t know how stupid I felt for not calling, and how absolutely nuts you drive me. You don’t know how I’ve always had a thing for you, even back then, when you were playing that Sailor Mars girl in that evil short skirt,” he says, rambling. Sho affixes his eyes on hers.
“I don’t?”
He shakes his head. “You don’t know how amazing this has been, to spend so much time with you, to get to know how wonderful you’ve become. You don’t know how bad I’m falling for you.” He takes a deep breath. “Have fallen for you.”
In contrast to his hot skin, hers feels like it’s icing over. Keiko shivers. In her life, she’s been confessed to many times, by many people, both men and women (thanks to her exclusive girl’s school upbringing), yet never has a confession made her feel like this, like she is about to explode, her heart beating in an abhorrent and currently unknown rhythm. She rests her forehead against his shoulder. She doesn’t know what to say, not yet, so she chooses not to say anything. Sho’s heaving chest is comforting, and she listens to him breathing in and out.
Sho lifts his shoulders, forcing her to look up at him. He has a troubled look on his face. “Are you…are you seriously going to leave me hanging? After how much I’ve just confessed?”
It is then when she notices the embarrassed flush on Sho’s face. And before she can even think of resisting the urge, she finds herself laughing. She laughs with a mixture of relief and, well, disbelief. She doesn’t know how it sounds to Sho, but she is filled with the need to laugh. She just wants to laugh and laugh and laugh.
“You’re laughing.”
Seeing Sho’s shy, pathetic face gives her her voice back. Smiling, she places her arms around Sho’s neck “Feeling shy?”
When he nods, Keiko is filled with a sudden feeling of softness and warm, fuzzy feelings, feelings that she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, anymore, drive away. She is overwhelmed by what she feels for him.
“I’ll go out with you,” she declares, “so you better call me, this time around.” Without letting him speak or react, she kisses him, her previously antagonistic feelings and her desire for Sho mixing in together potently. How dare he make her wait that long?
When she feels his grip on her waist tightening and his lips curving into a smile as they kiss again, she is begrudgingly certain, more certain than anything, that she would have waited for him anyway. No matter how long it would have taken.
Kitagawa Keiko is deeply, and despite her better judgment, unabashedly in love with Sakurai Sho.
*
Winter is upon Tokyo, the crisp, frigid air producing an ethereal haze all around the city. Sho is at the driveway of an apartment, cold and freezing. Stuffing his unused, gloved hand into his thick coat, he waits for Keiko to answer the phone. Sho sighs, knowing that she’ll pick up eventually. Needless to say, she’s been punishing him bit by bit for the you-didn’t-call-after-that-night-how-dare-you incident. He knows he deserves it, but still. His ass is freezing over and his stuffed nose makes him feel less indulgent than he’d like to be, considering the state of things.
“Hullo,” she says innocently, finally picking up.
“You are killing me,” Sho replies.
“What?” Keiko laughs.
“Nothing,” Sho grumbles. He finds it best to get to the point. “I need you to find your warmest coat and comfiest boots right now. Dress up. Pack some clothes for an overnight stay. Don’t take too long, because I’m waiting! Unless you want me found frozen by the press tomorrow morning.”
“Frozen? Waiting where?”
“Look out your window.”
He sees the white curtain being drawn aside, and sees her wrapped around snugly in a thick terry cloth bathrobe. Something inside Sho instantly thaws when he hears (and sees) Keiko laughing when she spots him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Truth is, Sho himself doesn’t know. All he knows that he’s now dressed up in Santa outfit, minus the white beard and all, praying that no one walking by him recognizes him. He barely outlined his plans for today the previous night, when he was wondering what to do about today. He figures going with something he’s always wanted to do with someone special will do. Plus the Santa outfit, of course, because the season begs for it and Keiko’s kind of…worth it. (And also because the costume department from the drama gifted him with it, saying that it looks becoming on him.)
“I’m your Christmas present.”
Keiko smile is as bright as a summer day, and Sho can feel it, even from a distance. “Then come up here!”
“No, I’m taking you somewhere.”
“Where?”
“It’s a surprise. You better get down here as fast as you can, Kitagawa, because it’s freezing out here!”
Keiko uncharacteristically squeaks in panic. “Wait! Where will we be going? How will I know what to pack?”
“Just bring warm stuff. And oh, maybe your Sailor Mars costume.”
“Sho-”
He cuts off their conversation, grinning up at Keiko. He signals to his watch. And then in a flurry of white cotton robes and curtains, she’s gone. After ten minutes (which is fast, Sho acknowledges, for a girl), she emerges from her apartment’s entrance, looking flushed and harried, bundled up in a coat with a nondescript overnighter bag slung behind her shoulders. Sho smiles at how unfussy she could be-somehow, it’s the most beautiful he’s ever seen her.
“I can’t believe you!” Keiko complains, pushing her bag to Sho. She gives him a once-over. “And you look ridiculous, by the way.”
“Hello to you too.” Sho opens the door for her, after dumping her things on the backseat. When he gets inside the car, Keiko is waiting for him with an expectant look on her face.
“So where are you taking me, Santa Sho?”
He chuckles as he puts on his seatbelt. “Promise you won’t laugh?” She shakes her head. “I was thinking…Yokohama? I’ve always wanted to go there. On a date. With someone special.”
“I’m glad I pass as special then,” she quips, a smile on her face. It is enough to soothe the thread of worry that was beginning to take hold of him-it’s not that he wants their little time-off to be perfect, but he doesn’t want her to hate it, either. “I haven’t been there in ages,” she says, her tone of voice encouraging.
“Same here. I wonder if it’s as great as I’ve built it up in my mind to be,” he wonders out loud. “At least, for a date.”
“Anywhere, with you.” She leans over to him, kissing him so warmly that it feels like he’s melting, even in the low temperature surrounding them. Sho likes the way she isn’t shy with him, not anymore, endlessly thrilled at the easy way she catches his lips with hers. It really does feel like Christmas, even if it’s a day too early.
When they break apart for air, she touches his face fondly. “Let’s go?”
“Before that,” Sho says, rummaging somewhere in front of Keiko in the car’s glove compartment, “there’s this.” He fishes out a matching Santa hat for Keiko.
“You’re really into this thing huh, Sakurai,” she teases.
“Don’t mock me,” he whinges in a hurt tone.
“I bet you’ve planned everything, even the music.”
Sho turns a rich crimson as he guiltily reveals the iPod that he’s been fishing for in his bag. The sound of her laughter fills the car in a decidedly manly volume. He could only muster a small, defensive “shut up” as he places the music player on the dock, looking for the playlist that he had excitedly prepared the night before. Keiko only chortles.
A smoky, comforting voice suddenly fills up the car with sweet music.
“Chestnuts roasting, on an open fire…”
He waits for the expected retort, but there’s none. They look at each other, both with irrepressible grins on their faces. Sho notes with satisfaction that she’s already wearing the white-trimmed, red hat. It’s a good look on her. He is suddenly struck by the thought that this must be what true happiness is-Keiko in a Santa hat, grinning that cheeky grin of hers.
“And although it’s been said, many times, many ways…”
“Merry Christmas,” she murmurs, her eyes on him “to you.”
His heart swoops and dives into a free-fall, his hands closing around hers. Sho promises then, swears, to himself, that regardless of any circumstance, of wherever they both might be or how busy they both get, that he will always call. He will always call and let her know just how much he thinks of her.
Which is always.