Fic: To End All Illusions (Ryo/Yamapil) [1/3]

[zukkokya]

—

Pi yells, “Ryo-chan, where are you going? And why am I going, too?”

There’s a bathroom somewhere around—

Ryo feels the doorknob stab into his back and opens it with the hand that isn’t gripping the belt loop of Yamapi’s jeans.

“Ryo-chan, wait,” Pi laughs. He tries to force Ryo’s hand away, scanning the crowd of people who don’t care and aren’t looking at them.

Ryo grins, shouts, “I’ll wait ‘til the door’s locked,” and hauls Pi into the bathroom.

After the door’s closed and locked and Ryo’s got Pi shoved up against it, he mouths the taste of vodka off Pi’s wrist because it’s a seductive thing to do and then laughs because Pi’s laughing at him so hard he’s snorting and then one of them is moving closer and their mouths press together and Ryo’s still holding Yamapi’s wrist close to his face and then Pi’s hand finds Ryo’s hair, and Ryo’s palm settles on Pi’s cheek, and then there’s another kiss, this one more focused, and Pi swaps places with him and Ryo stumbles because he can’t hold himself upright and needs both the door, now behind him, and Pi’s arms around him to keep his balance and Pi’s lost so much muscle recently that Ryo can feel the impression of ribs under his hands when he slides them up the back of Pi’s shirt and the jutted curve of Pi’s hipbone drags against his cheek as Ryo goes to his knees.

The song’s bass, someone’s fist, and Pi’s head all pound the door so hard that it creaks and splinters like it’s about to shatter.

Pi shouts, “Wait,” and fists Ryo’s hair.

Ryo murmurs, “Can’t,” and touches his forehead to Pi’s navel.

—

Outside, an hour later, there are cabs and Ryo spills into one by himself. Gives his address to the driver and lists sideways when the car veers away from the curb. Sees Pi in front of the club talking to someone Ryo doesn’t recognize.

Not talking. Yelling.

Ryo tries to tell the driver to stop and go back, but he fumbles with the words and by the time the driver figures out what Ryo wants him to do, they’re pretty far from the bar. So Ryo says, “Never mind, keep going,” and sends an email to Pi instead.

He probably should have stayed and helped somehow.

Actually, no. Two idols arguing would make things worse.

He slumps down and closes his eyes and tastes the roof of his mouth, entirely coated with vodka even though Ryo hasn’t had a drop all night but for what was on Pi’s tongue.

The taxi eventually stops, Ryo pays the driver, struggles with the lock on the lobby door, closes his eyes as he leans against the elevator wall, doesn’t realize he’s arrived at his floor until the doors have opened, shut, and he’s been carried back down to the lobby. Twenty seconds after that, he’s pulling his shirt off while falling into bed, and seven seconds after that, he remembers a camera flash.

—

Ryo calls Yamapi six times, feeling increasingly stupid for feeling so panicked and yet—

He’s mostly sober when Pi answers his seventh call.

“He wasn’t taking shots of us,” Pi tells him. “He wasn’t even with the paparazzi. He was just on a date with his girlfriend.”

“Did you check his camera?” Ryo’s dressed to go back out. He’s hovering in front of his door in socked feet.

“Yeah. Shirota checked his phone, too. He took some shots of us, but not of—”

“Yeah.”

“Right. After you left I heard him say something and he had a camera and—”

“Yeah. Good.”

“Yeah.”

“What about the girlfriend?” Ryo asks.

“What about her?”

“Did you check her phone?”

“No, but she didn’t look interested in us.”

“Was there…do you remember seeing anyone else who could have…?” Ryo’s throat feels white hot.

“No one,” Yamapi says.

“You don’t sound sure,” Ryo says.

“I’m not.”

Ryo clenches his teeth, makes his open hand into a fist.

Pi says nothing.

“Shit.”

“I told you not to,” Pi murmurs.

“No, you didn’t,” Ryo snaps. “You said, ‘wait,’ and that’s it. You were pretty okay with it after that from what I remember.” Ryo props one shoulder on the bathroom door. He hears light traffic through the phone. “Where are you?” he asks.

“My apartment.”

Pi’s apartment is on the ninth floor of a building in a very quiet neighborhood, and even so, he never opens the windows.

“Well,” Ryo says. It doesn’t matter where Yamapi is, or why he doesn’t want Ryo to know. Ryo’s hand is already tensing to close his phone. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, okay. Bye.”

Ryo hangs up, pockets the phone, and massages his eyes against the ridges of his knuckles. He doesn’t stop until he can feel his corneas burn.

Last year, the paparazzi spotted him and his girlfriend walking hand-in-hand through a crowd in Tokyo, and the shots appeared in some gossip rag. She broke up with him two days later, gave him some flimsy reason—his schedule or something—and they parted ways. Pretty typical. He missed her company for a while, but then all he felt was embarrassed for having told her some personal details he should have kept to himself.

This situation is different because he and Pi don’t have the option of parting ways. Not without repercussions.

But. Well. It’s not like he and Pi are even…. What they are—it’s different. It’s different with guys. Guys don’t ask for labels. Or at least Pi hasn’t. Ryo knows they’re probably both a little bit gay. Not quite on Yasu’s level, but considering how comfortable they are with kissing each other…and other…. Yeah.

Ryo likes Pi. A lot. To the point where he doesn’t know if he’ll ever feel as comfortable with someone he hasn’t known as long or as well as he’s known Pi.

Ryo recognizes that his thoughts are turning maudlin, and he realizes in the same moment that he’s put his shoes on and has pushed the door handle down with the intention of…nothing.

He shucks off his shoes, strips off his clothes, and turns off his phone. Gets into bed, changes his mind, and turns his phone back on. Closes his phone, then closes his eyes.

—

The guy was telling the truth; he isn’t a paparazzo. He’s just a guy with a camera who likes to play with the color settings and photograph things through half-empty glasses of beer. He doesn’t even know who Yamapi is (that guy from the cologne ads in the subway?), and he probably couldn’t tell NEWS apart from UVERworld if he had a gun to his head.

When he confesses his ignorance, his girlfriend pulls out her phone to show him NEWS for the hundredth time since they started going out last month. “This is Yamapi. He has dead eyes, see? And he always looks so smug. And that’s Ryo-chan.” She presses a kiss to her finger and her finger to Ryo-chan’s lips. “He’s gorgeous.”

“They look like women,” he tells her.

She scowls at him. “Which one?”

“What do you mean which one? Both of them. All of them. And they’re all smug. All famous people get like that eventually. They get wildly disproportionate senses of self-importance, and then they start to think everyone around them is an enemy. They forget how to trust in people.”

She says, “I guess so,” but she doesn’t seem to be listening anymore. He peers over her shoulder and watches her upload a string of photos from her phone’s library onto her blog.

“When did you take those?” he asks. “Who are those guys?”

She shoves him away, says, “It’s none of your business,” and closes her phone.

—

Jin’s apartment and Ryo’s are almost equidistant from where Yamapi is now. Walk seventeen minutes to the left and he’d be at Jin’s, fifteen minutes straight ahead and he’d be at Ryo’s.

Or he could get a cab and go home. He should just do that.

Instead, without knowing why, he stops in a convenience store and buys bottled tea and cigarettes. He hasn’t smoked in a while, not since before he began filming his last drama, but he’s tired and still mostly drunk and smoking just one isn’t a big deal.

He goes into the park across the street and sits on a swing. Sips the tea, opens the cigarette box and realizes he doesn’t have a lighter on him. He forgot to buy one because he forgot that he doesn’t carry one anymore. But the convenience store’s too far away, the swing too comfortable, so Yamapi pockets the box, picks up his feet and lets the breeze push him listlessly back and forth, sips his tea.

The park is typical, just an assortment of painted playground equipment on a wide patch of dirt with only a few tufts of browning grass sticking up out of the ground. In the light, it’s probably more cheerful-looking, but Yamapi likes it the way it is right now. Relaxing, quiet. He’s facing the street, though, where a line of cars waits for the streetlight to turn green, so Yamapi puts one foot on the ground to still the swing and make himself less apparent to the drivers. It’s nice to be invisible right now.

The guy had seemed freaked out after Yamapi shouted at him. But Yamapi had heard the guy say something indistinct, something vulgar, and when Yamapi turned around, he’d seen the camera, and the panic he’d been carrying since Ryo—the panic whited out everything else, every rational impulse, every reasonable word. Then Morioka got involved, got up close to the guy and made a swipe for the camera. That’s when Shirota stepped in, significantly less drunk than both of them, and explained to the guy that he might have photos of a certain person that he couldn’t keep. The guy got angry then, shoved Shirota, and that ended negotiations. Morioka got the camera, Shirota got the phone, and Yamapi hung back, saying and doing nothing to either help or hinder the situation.

“In front of my girlfriend, too,” the guy had groaned. Said girl had glanced at Yamapi and then away, expression tight, lips drawn in between her teeth. She must have been embarrassed.

A few passersby on the street and a couple of people from the club had gathered to watch by that point, and one woman pulled out her cell phone and snapped a photo. Yamapi pretended not to see, too caught up in a single line of thought.

One he can’t stop, even now.

Ryo’s hair between his fingers…tongue hot and quick…warm breaths on his stomach….

Ryo’s…not a good subject to focus on right now.

Jin’s supposed to be coming back from Hawaii sometime this week. Yamapi leaves the park and turns left at the crosswalk, typing out an email instead of a phone mail just in case Jin’s still abroad.

—

Ryo doesn’t fall asleep, not even after two hours of keeping his eyes closed and breathing deep, so he opens his phone and scours every gossip site he knows for anything that might—

EVERYONE, SOMEONE SAW RYO-CHAN AND YAMAPI TONIGHT GOING INTO—words, hysterics, whatever, then a link. Ryo clicks on it and sits up in bed, eyes fixed to the page that’s slowly loading. The blogger’s default icon is an image of Ryo with purikura stars in his hair.

The first photo is pretty grainy and tinted purple from the club lighting, but Pi is unmistakable. Ryo has his back to the camera. The two of them are standing very, very close to each other. The blogger’s caption reads, Look how forward Yamapi gets when he’s drunk!

That’s fine.

But then there’s a second shot of Pi holding Ryo’s wrist to his mouth (VERY forward!!!); a third of Pi’s hand curled around Ryo’s hip, thumb tucked inside the waist of Ryo’s jeans and pressing into his skin (WHERE IS HIS HAND GOING????); and a fourth of Pi smiling affectionately and trying to close his teeth on Ryo’s ear, his chest against Ryo’s back, one arm around Ryo’s waist (SO MANY FANS MUST HAVE THIS FACE: ;___;).

Ryo cringes, thinks quickly, knows he can play it off, even if it’ll be a pain in the ass to—

Wait.

He skims the post again and realizes that he isn’t named even once and in every photo his face has been smeared out with some kind of digital editing tool. Only Yamapi is named, and only Yamapi is recognizable.

But the post is longer still and contains one more photo. It’s preceded by a comment from the blogger in large blinking font: GAY FOR REAL!!!!!

It could be a cartoon. A manipulation. Art by a fan. Anything but—

A photo of Ryo pulling Yamapi into the bathroom by his belt loop while the other hand grips the back of Pi’s neck. As in the other photos, Ryo’s face is blurred out, but Pi—shit. He’s looking over his shoulder, almost in the direction of the camera, and his most recognizable features—mouth wet and gleaming, eyes dark and guarded—are caught in the light and make his face impossible not to recognize. He looks hunted, nervous, and Ryo doesn’t remember seeing that at all.

He closes the page and stares at his inbox. There’s already a horde of emails and messages, and as he’s scanning the names of the senders—manager, Shirota, Hina, Yoko, Uchi, fuck even Jin in Hawaii? Who told him?—his manager’s number appears on the screen.

Ryo closes his phone. He should call Pi. Or maybe just email Pi. And…what?

He opens his phone. Shuts it. Opens it. Opens an email. Hey—no, use his name—Tomo—no, too much—Pi—no. Fuck it. He almost chucks his phone at the floor.

Thinks, Where are you? Where did you go?

He doesn’t write it, though. It’s too…possessive.

Instead, he closes the email draft and reads through some of his most recent messages.

From his manager: Please return my call as soon as possible.

Shirota: I didn’t think to check the girl’s phone too. I’m so sorry.

Hina: Answer your phone.

Yoko: Answer your phone. I keep calling and you won’t pick up. Is it really you in those pictures? It looks like you, but….

Uchi’s voicemail: “Call me right now.”

Jin’s email, with a link to to the photos attached: Is that you? Was it a joke?

Ryo stares at the question, then hits “reply.”

From: Nishikido Ryo
To: Akanishi Jin
Received: 5:10
No.

—

The photos are removed from the original blog at 5:49, and the blog itself is shut down around 5:52, but copies have already spread across a number of different social network services worldwide. Yamapi’s counted seven so far.

He watches from the sidewalk as the sun, orange and quiet, rises behind Jin’s building. He pretends he doesn’t know that his inbox is filling up and that nothing is certain now. Nothing is fixed.

Least of all whatever it is he has (or had) with Ryo.

The time of Jin’s last Twitter post (waiting in the plane now!) would put him close to an arrival time in Japan, so as long as Yamapi continues to ignore his incoming messages, he can stay here and wait and honestly not know that he has anywhere else to be.

While the sun crests over Jin’s building, Yamapi refreshes his inbox over and over, but he doesn’t see Jin’s name or Ryo’s among the senders there.

—

Jin has been in Japan for thirty seconds—literally thirty, he hasn’t even gotten off the plane yet—when he gets Yamapi’s email.

Are you home yet? I’m near your apartment.

Jin hesitates before responding.

One of his followers on Twitter sent him links to the photos ten minutes before he boarded his plane in Hawaii, and he’s been thinking about Pi almost constantly for the last seven and a half hours. Wondering what to say, what not to say, how to gauge Pi’s feelings on the whole thing. He supposes he should have emailed Pi right away after he saw the photos, but somehow it seemed easier to try and get confirmation from Ryo than follow his first impulse and ask Pi if he’s gay.

He and Pi have joked about it before, of course, and Jin even once told Pi that he’ll bounce back and forth depending on the person. Pi never seems uncomfortable talking about it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s gay. Nothing but Pi actually telling him he’s gay means he’s gay.

Jin thinks about telling Pi to wait for him in the lobby. It’ll take him more than two hours to get home, but maybe it’s late enough in the morning that his landlady could let Pi into his apartment. My plane just landed, dude. It’ll be a while until I get home. Can you wait for two hours? He writes everything in Japanese except “dude“ because Pi usually thinks that’s funny and maybe it’ll make him grin.

Pi doesn’t respond right away, so Jin uses the time to answer some of the emails he got while he was in the air, and one catches his attention. It’s a response from Ryo, and after Jin reads it, he’s twice as confused.

He writes back, What does “no” mean? “No” to which part?

Then Pi responds, I’ll wait.

And right after that, from Ryo, It wasn’t a joke.

The seatbelt light shuts off, prompting a swell of activity around Jin—armrests lifting and seatbelts unbuckling and mellow conversations over his head as people retrieve their carry-ons from the overhead bins—none of which he hears.

To Pi and Ryo, he writes, What’s going on?

—

The fans figure out it’s Ryo almost immediately by the shape of his body and what he’s wearing. Someone posts an old photo of him wearing the same shirt and necklace on Janiben, and someone else compares the lines of his body with a number of recent photos. One girl even uses an art program to draw an outline of his Adam’s apple on a shop photo and then posts the image side-by-side with one of the club photos.

The fans are almost convinced; all they’re missing is confirmation from Ryo himself.

Ryo closes his laptop and scrubs his face with his palms.

His family’s been calling all morning.

Jin asked him if it was a joke.

Something like this…it can only be ignored. He and Pi might face some quiet repercussions—a solo project postponed or something—but Johnny won’t acknowledge this as something legitimate.

Ignoring it all is the most rational option. Or making fun of it.

Ryo watches his phone light up for the fourth time in ten minutes, but this time it’s Jin’s number.

What’s going on?

Good question. Ryo closes his phone without answering.

—

Jin gets home two and a half hours later, opens his unlocked front door and walks into a haze of cigarette smoke. Pi’s in the living room with his back to the door, and he doesn’t turn around as Jin toes off his sneakers and sets his bags on the floor. Sunlight pours in through the window, watery and cold, covering Pi’s bare feet and weaving through the twirl of smoke coming off his cigarette.

Jin can’t remember when he last saw Pi smoking. Once or twice last year, maybe. He has Jin’s lighter in his hand, but the box of cigarettes on the table look new.

“Welcome back,” Pi says.

“Mm.” Jin looks at the rigid line of Pi’s back. “Want a drink?”

Pi turns around, scrubbing the cigarette into an ashtray he’s holding. It joins five others, all crumpled and ash-stained.

Wincing, Jin retrieves two beers from the fridge.

They drink in silence on Jin’s couch for ten minutes, and Jin nearly falls asleep twice before Pi finally says, quietly, “I don’t know how to fix this.” He rubs his forehead with the flat of his palm and exhales from the bottom of his lungs.

Jin doesn’t know, either. This is unprecedented. There have obviously been scandalous photos before, some with guys even, but they’ve all been squashed before they went viral.

“It was Ryo, right?” Jin asks.

Pi says, “Yeah,” and his awed, devastated tone makes Jin cringe. Not just fooling around, then. Didn’t see that coming. Well, maybe. It’s not surprising, anyway. Nothing would surprise him in this company.

“Have you heard from anyone about it?”

Pi says, “Yeah,” louder and even less steadily. He takes his cell phone from his pocket and hands it to Jin. “Go ahead.”

There are at least a dozen voicemails, twice as many missed calls, and enough phone mails and emails to keep Jin scrolling for a full minute (during which Pi gets three calls from staff that Pi gestures for him to ignore). There are a few emails from Mary and one from Johnny himself (Let’s talk), and by the time Jin hands the phone back, he’s genuinely afraid for Pi.

“What are you going to do?” He asks it before he can think better of it. He almost apologizes, takes it back, when Pi says,

“I like him.”

It’s not an answer. Pi doesn’t even seem aware that he said it, except that he’s staring at the bottle in his hand and ignoring Jin completely, which is a clear tell.

Jin nods. “I figured,” he says. “Does—” Stops himself. Does Ryo? “Never mind.”

Pi figures it out. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” He takes a long pull from his beer. “Just me.”

Jin thinks of Ryo’s email, says, “He told me it wasn’t a joke. I don’t know if that means anything, though.”

Pi doesn’t answer. Rubs the lip of the bottle against his mouth. Exhales through his nose. His phone lights up.

Jin looks at it and wishes he hadn’t. “Pi,” he says reluctantly, “you…might want to….”

“Answer it for me?” Pi glances at Jin, long enough for Jin to see his reddened eyelids and bloodshot eyes, and adds, “Jin.”

“Yeah, okay.”

He picks up Pi’s phone.

—

Ryo spends an hour on the phone with his manager treading a thin line between confirmation and denial. Yoshida never asks outright if it’s Ryo in the photos. He just proposes hypothetical scenarios that could improve the situation before it becomes unmanageable.

This is somewhat new territory for Yoshida, but the first active step in all of his suggestions (after waiting to hear from Johnny, which is sure to happen, and soon) is to talk to a publicist. Ryo gives the go-ahead for that, and Yoshida says, “Good, so I’ll call her now and get back to you with some times.”

“Right.” Ryo hangs up and starts to put his phone in his pocket, but right now he just really wants to pretend that he doesn’t even have a phone, so he tosses it behind a couch cushion.

He printed out all the photos earlier and spread them on the carpet. He grabs his bottled tea off the table and slides down onto the floor to look at them more closely. He downs half of it in four swallows in an attempt to drown out the hanging note of searing pain between his eyes.

(His phone makes the bird call assigned to Tegoshi’s number.)

The quality of the photos is pretty mediocre overall. Soft outlines, poor framing, hazy. Pi’s easy to identify—face lit up, same high cheekbones, same lips, same dark brown dye job he’s had since last week, bangs over one eye—but Ryo’s more disguised, and not only because the blogger tried to hide his face. The photos were all taken from angles that favored Pi, and Ryo’s body is never fully shown. His head is always slightly turned and his body either faces away from the camera or is captured in motion.

(“Single Ladies,” assigned to Uchi’s number.)

So he’s safe, if he wants to be.

…

Of course he wants to be.

(Trumpet blast, assigned to Hina’s number. He’s got to stop letting Yoko play with the settings on his phone.)

Who could even prove they’re real photos? Ryo’s seen photo manipulations before that look just as real. As long as no one acknowledges them—or even better, if someone does, or if someone jokes about them—the fans will eventually assume they’re fake.

(“Daite Señiorita”—)

Ryo scrambles up onto the couch, flings the cushion aside, and opens his phone.

It’s Jin. So that’s where Pi went. Ryo feels a knot between his shoulders release. Pi just got called in to see Johnny. Heads up in case he calls you.

It’s almost a relief that Johnny’s acting this quickly. Ryo would rather know the repercussions now than have time to imagine the possibilities.

The last time Johnny called Ryo in, it’d been to discuss a leaked photo he and Jin had agreed to take with some fans in Korea. Ryo knew it would get back to Johnny eventually, but he’d covered his face more than Jin, so he figured Johnny might be appeased by the gesture. Not really, as it turned out. Once Ryo arrived in Johnny’s office, it took twenty minutes to get Jin on speakerphone while Ryo took the brunt of Johnny’s annoyance in person. When the lecture finally began, Ryo remembers saying very little until Jin, emboldened by distance and prolonged exposure to California sunlight, told Johnny, “It’s an outdated rule, and it’s not fair. It should be our choice to say yes or no when a fan wants a picture.”

After that, Jin lost the right to speak. Ryo talked over him whenever he tried, thinking, Shut up, shut up, let me fix this, Bakanishi. Johnny gave them both a warning and a reminder that the rule exists for their protection, relative anonymity while in public, and to encourage profit from goods. Ryo and Jin said, “I understand,” Ryo with a small bow and Jin with barely suppressed sarcasm. Looking beleaguered, Johnny disconnected Jin’s line and dismissed Ryo.

Whatever lecture he and Pi are going to get today won’t go so easily.

While Ryo waits for Johnny’s call, he boils a pot of water and takes two eggs from the refrigerator. He won’t be able to stomach anything more substantial than that. Also, his migraine is getting worse.

There’s a new mass email in his inbox from Kanjani’s managers. Because of renovations in the building, we’ve had to change the room and floor of today’s production meeting. Please come to room 504 instead. He’s supposed to be there in an hour, and it’ll take forty minutes to get there. He should leave soon so he can change direction if Johnny calls.

When he calls. Not if.

And then Ryo has a cold, nauseous thought—what if Pi’s the only one Johnny holds responsible for this? The fans know Ryo’s in the photos, so surely Johnny has figured it out, too. But it would make sense, in an unfair way, if Pi were held more responsible, since Pi’s face wasn’t blurred out.

Ryo leans against the kitchen wall, both arms crossed behind his back, and stares at his phone on the counter. Incoming call from Yasu, incoming call from an unknown number, phone mail from Kusano—nothing from Johnny.

If he doesn’t leave soon, he’ll be late.

He puts the eggs back in the refrigerator, turns off the stove, dumps the water.

No word from Johnny.

He carries his phone with him into the bathroom. He turns up the volume while he unbuttons his jeans. He keeps the curtain open while he showers and only looks away from the phone once and just long enough to reach for the soap and shampoo.

He towels off and goes searching through his clothes. Everything’s too bright, too flashy, so he breaks the seal on a shopping bag that contains a pair of dark cargo pants and a gray sweater he got for free from some small boutique when he wore them in last week’s photoshoot.

Still nothing from Johnny, and even if he left right now, he’d be late to Kanjani’s meeting.

He sits on the couch and stares at the photos, phone gripped in his left hand. He can’t remember when he last saw Pi’s face so honest. And now that truth is everyone’s to own, to manipulate, to twist.

And Ryo gave it to them.

He stabs in Johnny’s number.

—

In the time it’s been since Takki last opened his eyes, the rectangle of sunlight they’ve been sleeping in has moved from Tsubasa’s chest to just shy of where Takki’s hand is resting on Tsubasa’s right hip. It’s enough of a reminder that they’re supposed to get up soon that Takki curls his damp fingers against Tsubasa’s skin to wake him.

Tsubasa’s stomach shivers. “Fifteen minutes,” he murmurs. Eyes shut, black wisp of hair sticking to his bottom lip. Too far for Takki to want to reach, so he blows air at it and grins when Tsubasa opens his eyes and gives him an exhausted, put-upon glower.

“Want to play?” Takki offers, beaming.

Tsubasa makes a face at him, then pulls Takki’s head back down against his shoulder. Takki chuckles and fits his cheekbone just above Tsubasa’s collarbone and exhales until his lungs are empty. His body feels heavy, and all of his thoughts are thick and blurry. He presses his tongue against a streak of vanilla in the pocket between his cheek and his gums and savors the taste until it finally fades. Tsubasa’s fingers make tangles in his hair.

When Takki’s phone goes off seven minutes later, he’s just content enough to ignore the first chime. He’s dangerously close to ignoring the second, too, but then he imagines the carefully-plotted itinerary on his manager’s phone and sits up out of guilt. He catches Tsubasa’s foot mid-swing, aimed for his face, and brings it down until the heel touches Tsubasa’s left buttock.

Third chime.

“Ow,” Tsubasa complains into his pillow. “I haven’t stretched yet. Stop that. You’re breaking me.”

Fourth chime. Takki grins and slowly pushes down on Tsubasa’s foot, watching the lean cords in his calf tense and relax. “I’ll help you stretch,” he offers. Fifth chime. Tsubasa turns his head to the side and gives Takki a martyred look. Takki laughs, and just before the sixth chime, brings his iPhone up to his ear and says, “Hello.”

“Oh. T-Takizawa-kun. Um.”

Takki smiles. “Pi-chan!” Tsubasa looks over his shoulder with raised eyebrows and mouths, Why? Takki runs his thumb up the arch of his foot and grins when Tsubasa’s leg jerks. “How are you, Yamapi?”

“You…have you…? I thought maybe….”

Takki frowns. “Are you all right?”

Curiosity replaces the humor on Tsubasa’s face. Takki rubs a circle on the ball of his foot.

“Have you heard…anything? About me?”

Takki says, “Nothing bad. Why?”

“There are photos of. Um. Of me. And. I think. I mean, they are. Bad. And….”

“How bad?”

“Johnny wants to discuss my future with the company.”

Takki’s vision loses focus for so long that Tsubasa twitches his foot in Takki’s hand until Takki makes eye contact, then he whispers, “Is he okay?”

Takki doesn’t respond, just thumbs the bone on the side of Tsubasa’s ankle.

“When are you meeting with him?” Takki asks.

“In an hour.”

“Are you going to drive, or is someone picking you up?”

“I’m going to drive.”

Takki taps his thumb on Tsubasa’s ankle. Then, making a snap decision, “I’ll come in with you.”

“No, no—”

“I’ll drive you, then,” Takki says. “Send me your new address. I’m leaving now. Bye bye~.” He hangs up on Yamapi’s startled objections.

“We have a meeting in an hour,” Tsubasa says. Not meant to guilt or warn against it, just giving a fact.

Takki nods. He opens Safari on his phone and within seconds he finds a hash of likely candidates on one of the larger gossip forums. He shows Tsubasa and watches his expression change to surprise and then uneasiness and finally something like nausea. “Who’s that he’s with?” Tsubasa asks, slipping an arm around Takki’s waist.

Takki resists the urge to pull that arm closer around him. “He didn’t say.” The body looks familiar, like Ryo’s.

Tsubasa’s thumb makes broad strokes over Takki’s navel. “Do you want me to go with you?” he asks, mouth on Takki’s shoulder.

Yes. “No. We have a meeting in an hour.” He manages a grin over his shoulder that Tsubasa doesn’t return. “Let them know I’ll be late. Personal emergency.”

Tsubasa just looks at him, thumb still stroking Takki’s stomach. Takki knows what he’s thinking, so he covers Tsubasa’s hand. It’s okay. We’re fine.

Tsubasa quirks a small, sad smile.

Takki hates the look of it, has always hated the miserable faces Tsubasa can make. He says, “It seems worse than it is. More important than the pictures themselves is the official reaction to them.”

Tsubasa inhales, says, “Right,” and pushes at Takki’s shoulder. “Go be noble,” he adds, his tone more normal.

Takki pulls up a more genuine smile and says, “I’ll call you when I’m on my way back.”

Seven minutes later, he’s driving in the rain with the memory of the first time Pi ever called him. Nervous, mumbling, but casual and unguarded in a way he hasn’t been for years.

Oh. T-Takizawa-kun? Um. This is Yamashi—ah, Yama…pi.

Tsubasa may think he’s being excessive by doing this, but Takki can’t imagine doing less.

—

Yamapi walks with Jin to the front door. “What time will you be finished today?” he asks. Skip work. Stay here.

Jin sits on the floor and pulls on a thick black army boot. “I’m not sure,” he says, frowning. “I’ll call you when I am. Do you want to go out?”

Yamapi says, “No,” more sharply than he meant to.

Jin glances up at him, sheepish, as he tugs on the other boot.

“Sorry,” Yamapi says. “It just seems like a bad idea.”

“Right. Sorry.” Jin stands up and holds out a key. “It’s a spare. Lock the door when Takizawa gets here, and, y’know, tell him I said yo.”

“Yo,” Yamapi echoes. He puts the key in his pocket.

Jin puts his hand on the doorknob but he doesn’t leave, and Yamapi stares at his feet, waiting for him to go. To be alone in Jin’s apartment waiting for Takki to drive him somewhere he really doesn’t want to be.

“Pi,” Jin says, hesitant.

“Mm.”

Jin pokes his shoulder until Yamapi looks at him. “Chin up, yeah?” He offers a helpless smile, like that wasn’t at all what he wanted to say.

Yamapi sympathizes. “Yeah,” he says, nodding.

Jin pats Yamapi’s face with one hand, fends off Yamapi’s retaliations, and opens the door. “See you later, dude,” he says, the dude in English, and Yamapi snorts.

The door clicks and locks behind Jin, and the volume of the silence rises. Takki said he’d be here in twenty-five minutes. Too long to wait by the door, not long enough to immerse himself in a TV show. TV is probably something to avoid, anyway.

He sits on the couch and rests his feet on the arm. Without Jin, the apartment feels indistinguishable from his own. Half-lit by weak streaks of sunlight, too small, quiet. Too easy to lapse into memory.

Jin had pressed Yamapi’s phone to his ear and said, “Hello,” while Yamapi closed his eyes and listened for the response from the other end.

He’d heard Johnny’s voice without a problem. Akanishi, you sound well.

“Yes, sir. I’m good,” Jin had said, giving Yamapi a small grimace.

How was Hawaii?

“Very good.”

Did you forget your cell phone there?

“My…? Oh—this isn’t mine? Huh. Oops.”

Yamapi managed a grin.

Please let Yamashita know that I have an availability in two hours, and I’d like to see him, if he’s free.

Yamapi looked away from Jin, wishing he’d just picked up the phone and dealt with Johnny on his own.

Jin clapped him on the shoulder, said to Johnny, “I will,” and hung up soon after.

Now, Yamapi stares at his phone, at the incoming call from a publicist that he's not going to take. He scrolls down through his inbox to the last message Ryo sent him before all this happened.

Let's go somewhere later. You can buy me a drink.

They met in Osaka, and Yamapi followed Ryo because he didn't know his way around that part of the city. Ryo put on a face mask and a baseball cap, but Yamapi didn't bother, just put up with the stares and ignored the occasional gasp. He remembered eating dinner at a pretty upscale sports pub, and he paid for the first and second round of drinks. They didn’t touch each other at all that night, didn’t even flirt all that much. The one hint of...more came after Jaejoong called to say he was in Tokyo for some event, and Yamapi offered to meet up with him the following night. After he hung up, Ryo complained into his beer about Yamapi taking calls from people while out with his friends.

"I don't care," he added. "It's just rude."

"Eh? But you've done it, too!"

Ryo didn't make eye contact, but his eyebrows arched. "People don't call me as much as they call you," he said. There was a definite tone of whining in his voice that made Yamapi grin.

"Then I'll call you more, Ryo-chan.”

And Ryo gave him a look that was both annoyed and pleased.

—

Subaru’s mother wakes him up at dawn to show him the photos. She calls his name a few times, then sits on his bed with a worried line between her eyes, and Subaru feels dizzy from how fast he wakes up. He shoves one elbow underneath himself and asks, “What’s wrong?” while fighting back a yawn.

“Is this Ryo-chan?” She holds her phone steady for him, the edge of her hand glistening from the fruit she sometimes slices for him when he visits home.

He glances at the photo and frowns. “Eh? No,” he says. “That’s Yamashita. With a…man?” His eyes are blurry and the clouds outside are blocking most of the sunlight from his room, but after his mother turns on the overhead light and hands him the phone for a closer look, Subaru recognizes Ryo’s lean forearm and the leather bracelet Ohkura gave him for his birthday two years ago.

Subaru thinks, No, and since his cell phone is charging on the windowsill across the room, he dials Yoko’s number on his mother’s.

“Oh,” his mother says quietly. “So it is him.” She squeezes his knee through the blanket.

Yoko picks up, says, “Hey. You saw?” A detached part of Subaru’s brain recognizes that he’s called from his mother’s phone so many times that Yoko has come to recognize the number. On any other day, he’d find it funny.

“I saw,” he says. “Have you talked to him?”

“No. He won’t answer his phone.”

“Oh.” Why not? Why not? “Then, I guess…k-keep trying.”

“I will,” Yoko promises.

Subaru doesn’t hang up and neither does Yoko, judging by the white noise Subaru can hear on his side.

“Kimi,” he says.

Yoko doesn’t respond. Subaru wonders if he’s going to pretend he’s not still there and hang up.

“Kimi,” he says again.

His mother squeezes his knee again, constant and devoted and wonderful. She loves his friends, and she’s always had a soft spot for Yoko, so Subaru doesn’t blink when she takes the phone away from him.

“Kimi-kun,” she says.

Subaru can hear Yoko’s startled, “Eh?” and smiles at his clever mother.

She hands the phone back to him, pats his shoulder once, and leaves the room chuckling.

“Was that your mother?” Yoko asks, all pretenses abandoned. “That scared the hell out of me.”

Subaru’s smile falls away, replaced by some tighter expression.

Years ago, Yoko called him in the middle of the night, maybe drunk, and said, ”Subaru, we have to talk to Johnny about Uchi. Maybe we can change his mind. Maybe he’ll listen to us if we go in together—” but Subaru hung up before Yoko could finish, too certain that Johnny would never listen to them under any circumstances, even if they brought in Takizawa and Yamapi and Tegoshi and every idol Johnny’s ever favored.

Subaru wonders how long Yoko talked before he realized Subaru had hung up on him.

“I’ll email Ryo-chan too,” he says. “If he doesn’t answer, we can ask him about it at the production meeting.”

“Yeah,” Yoko says. “Okay.” He takes a breath. “See you soon.”

Subaru doesn’t hang up until after Yoko does.

Ryo doesn’t respond to any of his messages, but Subaru keeps sending them. One after another, again and again, from the moment he steps onto the bullet train leaving Shin Osaka until he arrives at the jimusho building by himself, heart in his throat. He’ll be here, he’ll be here.

But he can’t find the room because his memory of this place is bad, and then the room he does find is empty because it’s the wrong room. He spins around, reads the note on the door (Kanjani∞ production meeting: please come to room 504), and crashes into the doorframe on his way back into the hallway. He stops just short of running straight into a tiny kid who startles and goes pale and then begs Subaru’s forgiveness, presumably just for existing. Subaru blinks at him, his mind blank with confusion, and then he walks fast down the hallway in the direction of decreasing numbers.

Ryo was that small once. Smaller, even. With the same high-pitched voice and thick Kansai accent that always made Subaru feel homesick and somehow strong, too. He was their Ryo-chan, all shy smiles and bone-deep persistence, always just outside the perimeter of his, Yoko’s, and Hina’s joined shadow.

Room 514. 512. 510.

There’s no one else in the hallway, so Subaru jogs—almost runs, but maybe he’s wrong to worry so much—and as he nears the conference room he hears Hina’s voice suggest, “Ryo?” to the others.

Damn it.

They’re all facing the door, so Subaru can see the hope extinguished from every one of their faces as soon as he appears in the doorway. He doesn’t care—he’s sure he looks just as unhappy to see his group even more incomplete than it normally is.

The staff, their managers, and even the producers say nothing as Subaru crosses the room and drops into one of the two empty chairs between Yoko and Yasu.

After a tense moment, Ohkura quietly asks, “Should we wait?”

“Yes,” Yasu says firmly.

“He’ll come,” Subaru says, half focused on the table, half on the staffer across from him who’s tapping his pen on his open binder.

Ryo’s manager isn’t here, either, but neither is Maru’s or Hina’s. There’s no reason to worry.

He’ll be here. It couldn’t happen again.

They wait another ten minutes, and then five minutes after the meeting should have started. The staffers make small business conversation, but none of Kanjani says a word. They’re all wound too tight.

Yoko’s chin jerks up whenever someone passes by the open door. Next to him, Hina’s reads through a sheaf of stapled papers, but he’s probably not absorbing any of it. Maru’s still, perfectly still, staring at the floor, not even blinking. Ohkura’s fidgeting in his chair and biting the skin off his thumb’s cuticle. Only Yasu will meet Subaru’s eyes, and the most he can manage is a quick, failed attempt at a smile that’s cut short before his lips can curve.

Subaru’s stomach twists.

It can’t happen again.

Finally, Hina clears his throat. “I think—”

“Right,” one of the producers interrupts, looking relieved. “We’ll start. We can fill in Nishikido later.”

Subaru scowls at him, but it’s halfhearted because this guy doesn’t control anything. He doesn’t matter. Subaru takes out his phone and, ignoring Hina’s warning stare, types out another phone mail to Ryo.

You’re late. Hurry up.

—

Yamapi slouches low in Takki’s car and stares at the dashboard and wonders if Ryo's been called in, too. He never answered Jin’s message.

Takki hasn’t tried to talk to him much even though he looks sorely tempted. He just sneaks glances at Yamapi every few minutes whenever they’re stopped at a light or idling in a sluggish line of traffic. Yamapi hates to ignore him, knows Takki doesn’t deserve it, especially considering how much he tries to help.

And he wants to talk to Takki about this, because Takki is balanced and calm and smart about how to keep one's image smooth. Also he's...how does Tegoshi put it? Standing in an open closet hiding behind the clothes? Something like that. He’d get this, maybe, if Yamapi told him what’s happened. Takki might never have told anyone (as far as Yamapi knows) that he's gay, sometimes it seems like he can't be bothered to act otherwise. It’s a big part of why Yamapi called him.

But even if Takki isn't gay at all, he’ll still listen and have something encouraging to say. He's told Yamapi many times before to ask for help whenever he needs it, but Yamapi has only ever followed that advice twice before now. It always seems like it’s too much to impose on Takki, too much like cornering him into discussing his own life. Maybe if Takki weren’t so kind, so eager to give, it would be easier to ask for his help.

So Yamapi just says, "Can I put on the radio?"

Takki nods. "Sure, go ahead.” He offers Yamapi a quick smile, then focuses back to the road.

It’s the smile that does it. Concerned, affectionate, sad. Yamapi sits up straighter, fixes his gaze on the bruised green Toyota in front of them, and says, "Thank you for today."

"You're welcome," Takki says. Neutral, polite.

Yamapi tries to think of some suave way to ask for help, and even though nothing comes to him, he can't keep silent, so, "I really appreciate…this.” Tell him. Tell him. “And...ah.…” No, forget it. “Will you wait for me after?"

"Of course, Pi-chan." Takki's tone is surprised, as if he thought Yamapi already knew that or should have expected it.

Maybe he did. Why else would he ask for something like that unless he knew it was something Takki was willing to do?

Yamapi slumps lower in his seat and exhales. “Thank you,” he says again. He rubs his forehead. “I’m sorry if I’m keeping you from some—”

“You’re not.” Takki’s hand ruffles his hair. “You’re cute when you worry.”

Yamapi ducks his head away halfheartedly, but not quite enough to shake off Takki’s hand.

—

Ryo’s already folded in a chair outside Johnny’s office when Yamapi steps out of the elevator. Just the sight of him—rounded shoulders, arms crossed over his stomach, chin on his chest—Yamapi jams his hands into his pockets and closes them into fists. Ryo seems to be sleeping, or else he’s just choosing to ignore the elevator bell and Yamapi’s footsteps. His hair is wet, presumably from showering, and he’s changed into something more sedate than what he was wearing last night. Yamapi flinches, all too aware that he’s in the same rank clothes.

“Ryo-chan,” he says, half-question.

“Yeah,” Ryo answers, quiet, eyes still closed.

Yamapi sits in the chair next to him and glances at Johnny’s door.

All the words in him right now are words he should never say out loud, so he watches Ryo instead and hopes he’ll say something to make this less of a nightmare. A minute goes by, then three. Ryo hardly moves at all except to breathe.

“Ryo-chan,” Yamapi says, quieter. Look at me.

Ryo doesn’t answer this time.

Yamapi moves his gaze over Ryo’s clothes, his neck, his face. Remembers Ryo’s lips grazing his jaw, his stomach, his thigh. Yamapi curls his hands into fists until his blunt fingernails bite into the skin of his palms.

“He didn’t call me in,” Ryo says. He opens his eyes and glances at Yamapi, then looks away and shuts them again. “I asked to be here.”

Yamapi stares at Ryo, uncomprehending. His fists relax.

Ryo holds out for another twenty seconds, his shoulders drawn up around his ears, hands tightly wound in the hem of his sweater, and then he frowns over at Yamapi.

“What?” he asks, plaintive, quiet, raw.

Yamapi automatically makes a nothing, sorry sound and wants to look anywhere else to spare Ryo and himself the embarrassment of…whatever this moment is, but Ryo’s expression—

Ryo once showed up at Yamapi’s apartment around midnight for no reason. They talked for a while, watched TV. Ryo slept on the couch, woke up early to use Yamapi’s shower, ate an orange from Yamapi’s refrigerator, and then asked Yamapi to drop him off at the station so he could catch a bullet train to Osaka. All of that seemed normal until Yamapi stepped into his sneakers at the door and Ryo touched his shoulder, slow and deliberate, and Yamapi thought, Oh. It was only the third time that Ryo had ever touched him like that, and Yamapi found himself leaning into Ryo’s hand. He tried to turn around, but Ryo squeezed down hard, his fingers digging sharp under Yamapi’s collarbone. Then Ryo’s lips touched the back of his neck, and his arms wrapped around Yamapi’s chest, just holding on, and Yamapi tried to breathe without a sound as Ryo’s mouth moved to his shoulder, pressing damp and soft against his skin, and Yamapi thought, Please.

Looking at Ryo now, he can see all the emotions—desperation, fear, defensive anger—that Ryo might not have wanted him to see then.

“Mr. Nishikido, Mr. Yamashita.” Johnny’s secretary offers them a perfunctory smile from the office’s open door. “I’m sorry you had to wait so long. Mr. Kitagawa’s ready to see you.”

Ryo-chan.

—

They’re standing in front of the old man.

Ryo’s left knee pops when he shifts his weight. The sound is sharp like a firecracker in the silence, and it makes Yamapi wince.

Fifteen minutes later—the old man is busy—they leave.


Yamapi goes into the men’s bathroom and locks the door, then stabs his fingers through his hair and squeezes.


Ryo goes home and locks the door, then slumps into a crouch and sighs.


Yamapi’s feature role in an upcoming movie will be recast.

Ryo’s solo concert has been pulled from the lineup.

Neither activity was announced to the public, so removing them takes only a few quick keystrokes.


Their schedules for the immediate future are identical:

Go home. Rest.

Between the lines: Don’t make things worse.

—

To Yamapi and Ryo, from Koyama: We all support you.

To Yamapi, from Toma: It’ll be okay.

To Ryo, from Kusano: You’re idiots.


From: Nishikido Ryo
To: Kusano Hironori
Received: 19:01
We know.


Part Two
Part Three