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jewelledhoursTitle: Two Friendships, Four Loves
Chapter: (5) When Hearts Like Ours Meet – Part 4
Pairings: Koyama/Yamapi, Ryo/Shige
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
misticloud
Rating: PG-13
Words: 4,586
Summary: Koyama and Yamapi bond over being spectators of a tempestuous relationship.
When Hearts Like Ours Meet
Part 4
When Koyama thought about it later, he could only wonder at how differently things had turned out from what he’d expected them to. After Yamashita and Ryo left the ramen shop, he certainly hadn’t expected to see Yamashita again, and Ryo perhaps only occasionally at some chance encounter impossible to avoid. He hadn’t expected that Shige would begin hanging out with both Ryo and Yamashita, nor that Yamashita would actually ask if Koyama could join them. Of course he didn’t know then that Yamashita had been the one inviting him; he only learned of it one year later when they were both in vulnerable moods and Yamapi decided to tell him a little more of his feelings during and after the ramen shop scene. Koyama had been surprised, “So it was you who dragged me in.”
“But you came, didn’t you?” Yamapi said, drawing idle circles on the back of Koyama’s hand. “I couldn’t have dragged you in if you hadn’t wanted to come in the first place.”
“I didn’t want to,” Koyama protested, but Yamapi only laughed and kissed his shoulder lightly.
“You were lonely.”
Koyama wouldn’t have believed it at that time, but now, looking back, he saw just how lonely he’d been, the main character in all the songs ever written about lonely men, solitare’s the only game in town, a loneliness within him that wasn’t brought on by him being alone because he wasn’t. He still saw Shige regularly and he had his own group of university friends who could chase away “alone-ness” with a single phone call for help. But loneliness was a far more difficult infliction to chase away, especially when it grew bleaker and deeper whenever he saw his best friend who now belonged to someone else. A joker had once said, “When you’re single, the last thing you want is your best friend forming a serious relationship with someone else.” He and Shige had laughed at it, thought it unaccountably selfish. But Koyama understood it now. It meant being adrift in the singles land while your friend wandered off to unknown destinations with someone else; going to fewer movies together or not going at all; watching as a phone call or text message came in and interrupted your conversations; planning appointments around the “third party’s” schedule; wondering if you would be left to spend public holidays and New Year Eves by yourself.
At any rate, Koyama spent more days of his summer holiday than he could remember holed up at home playing video games meant for one. He’d almost resigned himself to the thought of that being the norm from now on when Shige called him one day to invite him out for a drinking night with Ryo and Yamashita. Koyama wasn’t very sure why he’d agreed to go; it wasn’t as though he yearned to see the two idols again nor had anything in particular, if at all, to say to them.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be there,” Shige assured him. “And don’t underestimate the miracles of alcohol.”
Koyama hadn’t expected the evening to turn out well. Shige brought him to a dim, high-class sort of bar that he’d never been to before and his heart pained him at the thought of how much this night out would cost him. Ryo wanted to dance but Shige refused, are you out of your mind, definitely not in a public place like that, and Yamashita paid for the drinks, thereby reducing the pain in Koyama’s chest, and they’d talked about things that could have been a little on the lewd side, guy things, Yamashita said, youthful things, Ryo said, and he woke up sometime in the night with a raging headache to find himself dumped unceremoniously in the backseat of a car.
He raised his head and peered blearily out of the car window to find a streetlamp glaring down at him. Koyama wanted to puke, but didn’t think that would be a good idea since the leather seat felt suspiciously expensive. And familiar. Then Ryo looked in through the window and Koyama fell back a little.
“Oy, Shige,” said Ryo casually, “he’s awake.”
“What?” Koyama asked, but the next moment the door opened and Shige attempted to pull him out into the open. Koyama was left dangling with half his body out of the car and refused to move any further. Ryo snorted. “God, you’re wasted. Your tolerance for alcohol is even worse than Shige’s!”
“You have to work on that, you know,” said another voice, and Koyama blinked up to see Yamashita standing beside Ryo, dragging at his cigarette. He grinned. “If you want to continue hanging out with us, you’ll need to display better alcoholic skills.”
“Don’t make my friend into an alcoholic like you two,” said Shige, sitting down on the ground beside Koyama’s head. He lifted Koyama’s fringe and wiped the sweat off his forehead with a tissue. “We did only start drinking when we turned legal.”
“Say that with more conviction and maybe I’ll be able to believe you,” Ryo chortled.
“Why did you allow me to get drunk?” Koyama said reproachfully to Shige.
“It’s okay, I’ve seen worse,” said Shige in a would-be comforting tone, balling the tissue in his fist and stuffing it down Koyama’s shirt. “At least you weren’t drunk enough to inform them that you thought Bangkok was a country.”
“Excuse me, what?” Yamashita interrupted, and Shige started laughing infectiously.
“This guy thought Bangkok was a country because of the way the name is pronounced,” he explained, and both Ryo and Yamashita began laughing as well, and after all it was pretty nice hearing them laugh so cheerfully. Koyama smiled despite the pain in his head.
“At least I didn’t stumble and fall flat on my face on the way to the toilet and lie there yelling for help!” he retorted, and Ryo and Yamashita laughed harder.
“You did what, Shige?” Ryo managed to say.
“Let’s have some embarrassing stories from you for a change,” Shige said, dodging the topic, but Ryo only shook his head and walked towards the end of the road. Koyama squinted his eyes; surely the road didn’t just drop off into nothingness?...then realised that they were parked just before a river and the lights from the streetlamps were rippling thick orange lines on the water. The night air felt cool and dry against his face and he sighed, happier in the moment than he’d imagined he could possibly be under the circumstances.
Yamashita squatted down beside him, flicking ash off his cigarette. Koyama watched the embers fall to the ground, glowing faintly for a brief moment before fading into black and grey. He would’ve liked a cigarette himself, but wasn’t sure if it was a wise thing to want when he was hung-over and dangling out of a car at four in the morning.
“Ryo-chan and I come here often,” Yamashita said. “It’s always quiet here.”
“If you usually come at this time of the night, of course it would be quiet,” Shige said.
Yamashita grinned. “That’s true. But doesn’t it make you feel quiet and peaceful too?”
“Mmm,” Shige said, his eyes wandering over to where Ryo stood at the edge, staring out across the dark waters. “You know, I never thought I’d end up here with you guys after…what happened.”
“You mean, that…?”
“Yeah.”
“Ryo-chan always meant to get you back. He can’t live without you.”
Shige was quiet, pondering that. “It’s scary,” he said softly, “when you have someone who can’t live without you.”
“Wouldn’t most people be happy if they had that?”
“I don’t know about ‘most people’,” said Shige, still watching Ryo, “but it scares me.”
Yamashita passed him his cigarette and playfully poked Koyama’s temple. Koyama couldn’t be bothered with retaliation. He looked at Ryo kicking the ground as he stared into nowhere, then at Yamashita and Shige passing the cigarette back and forth in companionable silence. Koyama didn’t want to think too much about what was happening or how they’d ended up here. There would be time enough to contemplate when morning came. He reached out and rested a hand on Shige’s shoulder. For now, this was enough.
… …
There was time, but after all none for contemplation. It seemed that after that night, Koyama was called out constantly by Shige and, after he caved in and gave Yamashita his number, from Yamashita too. Sometimes he didn’t even know what the four of them did. Mostly they went out for drinks and found themselves sacked out in Yamashita’s car afterwards sleeping the rest of the night away until the city came to life around them at daybreak. Shige and Koyama shared the backseat together for the first couple of times, but it didn’t take long for Koyama to figure out that Ryo would much rather have his seat and so he rather magnanimously exchanged with Ryo.
“Refrain from having sex in my car,” Yamashita warned them. “I don’t want to have to spend the rest of the week with my windows rolled down just to get the smell out.”
“So maybe you should get an air freshener,” Ryo said, pretending to grope Shige, and Koyama, who was getting a little more used to them now, giggled weirdly and fell asleep before anyone could comment on how horrible and freaky that had sounded.
When he woke, he found Yamashita looking at him. Koyama had the strange feeling that Yamashita had been looking at him for some time, but Yamashita only smiled and put his finger to his lips. “Look behind.”
Koyama looked and saw Ryo’s head turned into Shige’s lap. One set of their hands were entwined and Shige’s other hand was entangled in Ryo’s hair as though it was the most natural thing in the world. He swallowed a little and turned back to the front.
“Thank God I won’t need the air freshener today,” Yamashita said, quirking his eyebrows.
Koyama started to say something, but a low laugh broke out in his throat and he could only nod. They sat there side by side looking out of the windscreen at the deserted car park and Koyama felt a deep sense of gratitude rising in him, gratitude for this man who was more sensitive and understanding than he’d given him credit for, who had seen into his heart and known the right words to say.
“Ne, Koyama-kun,” said Yamashita, “do you think you can call me Yamapi?”
“Would…you want me to?”
“I want people I care about to call me by a name I feel belongs to me.”
Koyama smiled, and Yamashita smiled back. What’s in a name? Koyama thought, and valiantly tried to remember how the rest of the lines went, but he’d always found Shakespeare a boring longwinded old fart that wasn’t worth his memory space. He gave up and tasted the name silently on his tongue instead. Yamapi. Somehow, in this quiet early morning car park with their best friends asleep behind them, it felt just about right.
… …
It was amazing how much one could learn about a person within a short period of time. At the end of two months, Koyama knew more about Yamapi than he’d ever reckoned on knowing. It was mostly because they were left alone by Ryo and Shige frequently and so had nothing better to do than to talk to each other, but it was also because Yamapi was by nature an open person once he was comfortable with you.
Yamapi liked long aimless drives and cold drinks without ice and a DJ’s voice coming out of the static when he hit upon the right radio frequency. Things were never the same after he was done with them; bottles were left uncapped, doors were left unclosed, towels were left in a heap. Koyama suspected it was not out of any inclination to impoliteness, but rather an inherently absent-minded side of a person who had to be clear-headed about way too many things. Yamapi liked watching late night shows while dropping off to sleep on Ryo’s couch. He liked making pasta with sauce out of a packet and rummaging through Ryo’s kitchen cupboards for more ingredients to throw in. He’d once made pasta for all of them and Shige said it was good, really good, better than most of the stuff he could get outside, and Ryo had scowled and tried to look jealous because Shige never praised his cooking in such effusive ways. Yamapi liked standing at the counter watching them take second helpings of his pasta. Yamapi didn’t like making pasta only for himself. He didn’t like going on drives with nobody beside him except the radio and he didn’t like watching late night shows in the silence of an apartment with mother and sister asleep. Yamapi didn’t like being alone.
“Going solo was the hardest thing the Jimusho ever made me do,” he said as they lingered around the table after dinner. “I wanted to quit after a couple of weeks. But Ryo-chan didn’t let me.”
“What would you have done if you quit?” Ryo retorted. “Who would want to hire you?”
“That’s how he destroyed my confidence,” Yamapi said, rolling his eyes. “So I stayed. But even so it gets hard.”
“Don’t you have a con in Tokyo next week?” Shige asked. “You should give us tickets to go.”
“Why?”
“If you’re feeling worried about being alone, just remember that we’re in the audience.”
Yamapi laughed. “I won’t even be able to see you!”
“You’ll feel our supportive vibes,” said Shige wisely, and Ryo smacked him lightly on the head and they all teased him mercilessly for his silliness, but the next day Koyama actually opened his front door to Yamapi standing outside holding two tickets and a slightly nervous smile.
“For the supportive vibes,” he said.
Koyama laughed. “Shige was just joking!”
“Still, I’ll like to see you two there. We can go out to eat or something afterwards. My treat.” Yamapi paused. “Does that sound okay?”
Koyama looked from his smiling face to the tickets he held, then promptly plucked them out of his hand. “I’m only going for the free food.”
… …
The concert came and went and was better than Koyama expected. Hidden among what seemed like Japan’s entire population of screaming fangirls, Koyama initially felt that it had been a very, very bad idea to come…what if we’re captured on camera?! Shige had worried, they’ll think we’re fanboys!…but he forgot it once Yamapi appeared on stage. Or rather, Yamashita Tomohisa, the perfect idol who wooed a 20,000-strong crowd effortlessly and performed back to back dances that made Shige wonder aloud how long he’d taken to master them all.
“Longer than you can imagine,” Yamapi said wryly over dinner. “My choreographers hate me. I always forget which part of the stage I’m supposed to be at which time until the final rehearsal.”
“Why am I not surprised?” said Shige. “It just makes sense that a guy who leaves hundreds of bottles uncapped will forget which part of the stage he’s supposed to be on.”
Yamapi got his revenge by stealing pork katsu out of Shige’s bowl. After the protests were over and they’d settled back down, he said reflectively, “Ryo-chan’s probably the best in the whole company. You only have to show him once and he gets it. I don’t remember him ever having problems with choreography, and I’ve known him for a long time.”
“How did you two meet?” Koyama asked.
“A big bunch of us juniors were in Hawaii filming,” Yamapi said, “and at night we were having ghost story telling sessions in our dorms. I guess Ryo-chan was scared, cause he asked me to go to the toilet with him. We’ve been friends since then.”
“Ryo does get spooky about things,” Shige remarked. “He always leaves a night light on because he’s scared of the apartment being completely dark.”
“Can’t blame him,” said Yamapi. “He’s told you about how his dad used to come home drunk at nights?”
Shige nodded.
“What happened?” Koyama asked, though he wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to know the answer.
“His dad would beat him then,” said Yamapi briefly. “That’s why even now, Ryo’s scared of nights.”
Koyama fell silent, poking at his rice with his chopsticks. He’d heard hints of Ryo’s childhood over the past few months, not concrete full-blown information because nobody seemed to want to talk about it, but enough for him to know that Ryo’s early life had been anything but happy.
Yamapi tilted his chin at Shige. “Don’t break his heart.”
Shige put a piece of pork katsu into his mouth and chewed slowly. “Who says I have the power to do that?”
… …
Summer flared into autumn, university and all its joys started again for Shige and Koyama found himself a full-time administrative job at a bank working nine hours per day at files and documents that never seemed to get any less. The time they had for Ryo and Yamapi dwindled down to practically nothing and Ryo complained whenever they met about how he hardly saw Shige anymore.
“I have school,” said Shige exasperatedly. “Two papers and a mock court trial next week. You saw my calendar. I don’t have time to get drunk and spend nights sleeping in Yamapi’s car anymore. You just have to deal with it.”
“And you think that all this while I’ve been squatting on my ass waiting to see you?” Ryo demanded. “I’m up at 7am nearly every day for some rehearsal or recording session or meeting. How do you think I find time for you?”
Yamapi met Koyama’s eyes resignedly as Ryo and Shige squabbled back and forth across the table. Koyama had to admit that Ryo had a point; but then again Ryo wasn’t taking into consideration how hard Shige worked during term time. Didn’t, perhaps, know Shige long enough yet to realise how much this law degree meant to him. Ryo could never understand that there were other things more important to Shige than himself. It was aggravating and it aggravated Shige and Koyama could well see why it did.
That night, Yamapi called Koyama for the first time.
… …
“Hey,” said Yamapi after they’d idled away an hour talking about things that they promptly forgot once the topics were finished with, “do you think you can tell me more about you and Shige?”
Koyama shifted the phone from his left ear to the right, feeling with relief the little ache in the left ear as he did so. “What do you want to know? Shige and I had normal childhoods. We didn’t go travelling to Hawaii or Okinawa or pretty much anywhere. The furthest we ever went was to Kyoto and even then Shige got food poisoning so we came back after one day.”
Yamapi laughed. “That seems so Shige.”
“The world has a vengeance towards him,” Koyama agreed.
“But you see, those are the kind of things I want to know,” said Yamapi. “Normal childhood memories. I don’t have many or if I do, I don’t remember half of them. It was just a lot of work. Learning about ten different dances every month and going from one senpai’s concert tour to another. But whenever I listen to you, I feel like I gain normal childhood memories of my own. As though my childhood becomes happier through you.”
“Don’t make it sound so sad!” Koyama protested.
“Did it sound sad?” Yamapi asked with genuine surprise in his voice. “It isn’t sad to me. When something happens, you just run along and try to keep up with it, you know? I entered the Jimusho when I was a kid and since then I’ve been spending my life in that way. When you do something for so long, there’s nothing really sad about it.”
Koyama stared into the darkness of his room, through the sadness he felt bunched up in his chest for a Yamapi who had been running half his life trying to keep up with somethings, and thought that he could admire him, if only just a little for now at the starting point.
… …
A week later Shige stormed out of Ryo’s apartment in a temper and didn’t go back for nearly a fortnight, until Yamapi called Koyama to ask what the hell has happened to them now?
“This can’t go on,” he complained. “Even Ryo-chan’s manager asked me today why he has been so bad-tempered lately. He’s still working hard, but off camera nobody even dares to talk to him about anything not work-related. If he goes on like this, he’s going to get a warning from the higher ups. They don’t like seeing sulky faces. It makes them antsy.”
Koyama winced. Shige had come round to his place a couple of days ago and ranted furiously about how Ryo wasn’t giving him any space and how suffocating it was and when he had a paper due he was going to do it, regardless of whatever sexual or entertainment desires the great Nishikido Ryo might have. “I’m not your fucking toy,” he’d shouted at Ryo before slamming the door on his way out.
“Bastard,” he’d yelled at Koyama, “what does he think I exist for, to serve him hand and foot?”
Koyama wasn’t in the mood to give Yamapi a thorough description of what had happened. He’d had a long day at work wrestling with wordy documents and now there were once again way too many words involved. Besides, he sensed that before long Ryo and Shige would get back together anyway, so there wasn’t any point in wearing himself out trying to explain. “You know they can’t keep away from each other for too long. They’ll get over it soon.”
“They better,” Yamapi grumbled. “They’re driving me fucking crazy.”
… …
November melted into December and Yamapi’s almost regular calls became something Koyama looked forward to after showering the scent of the office off himself. They didn’t meet up too frequently now; he was busy with yearend reports and Yamapi had a dozen things going on at the same time, a bunch of performances lined up for shows that Koyama couldn’t remember the names and dates of, dances, choreography, photoshoots, everything an idol at the top of the entertainment food chain had to go through whenever December descended.
Yamapi sounded more and more tired on the phone, “Times like these, I want the world to slow down and stop.”
The night was cold and quiet and Koyama lingered at his balcony, blowing out cigarette smoke through his lips as he listened to the low hum of Yamapi’s voice. “I want it to stop – just for a few minutes – stop rushing and spinning and going in all directions. Do you know when was the last time I felt it still?”
“On your last day off?”
Yamapi laughed. “No, wise guy. I was thirteen years old and my dad had just walked out on us. My mum would cry every night. I felt bad for her, so one day my sister and I pooled our money and bought her a couple of roses. Just two stalks. I went back home and gave them to her, and her eyes misted over as she said ‘thank you’. She was the only focal point in the world then.” He paused, and Koyama could hear the night and its silence gathering between them. “I always wanted to feel that same kind of happiness again,” Yamapi said at last. “The next day the Jimusho called me in and since then everything has been rushing crazily around me and I don’t know how to stop it.”
Koyama stubbed out his cigarette and put it down carefully beside him on the balcony ledge. “The world is pretty still now.”
“Not still enough,” said Yamapi, “it’s never still enough now.”
… …
Yamapi wasn’t keen on a lavish Christmas celebration and Ryo declared that he didn’t have time for stupid sappy festivals, so Shige planned a simple home cooked meal on Christmas Eve in his place and treated his parents to a movie night out so that the four of them would have some privacy. Koyama, industriously chopping up garlic for the meal, sighed for girls who would do the cooking while he did the eating.
“I feel as though we’ve become the girls,” he grumbled.
“Stop complaining,” said Shige, separating the vegetable stalks and leaves into two neat piles. “It’s only for one night. Let’s give them a good Christmas for once. And I’d rather have Ryo spending Christmas Eve here than at some club.”
Koyama looked up. “You don’t trust him?”
Shige shrugged and turned on the fire, and Koyama hastened his garlic chopping.
The dinner was by no means remarkable, but Shige’s vegetable dish was tasty enough for idol taste buds and the bottle of wine Yamapi brought along was heartily appreciated. Ryo refrained from making any comments about the cooking and Koyama, watching him as he smiled and teased Shige, thought that this was the closest to happiness he’d ever seen Nishikido Ryo. The house was warm and cosy and Yamapi’s laughter infected the dinner table and for the first time Koyama found himself not regretting the night that Shige had missed the last train and happened upon a drunken Ryo. He didn’t think he would regret it again. Despite all that had happened, the spite and hatred he’d gone through in the first month, the inadequacy, sadness and lack of understanding, somehow the four of them had come together and built an unlikely friendship and this was where he felt comfortable now, opposite his best friend and his lover and beside a man whom he’d grown to care for out of little, misunderstood beginnings.
“In a few days we’ll all be attending the yearend parties,” said Yamapi. “The bounenkai. Don’t you think it’s strange that it’s called ‘forget the year party’? There must be something wrong with our Japanese culture if we hold celebrations to forget the year that has just passed.”
“Don’t insult our Japanese culture!” Ryo said. “At least we don’t sing weird senseless songs about forgotten acquaintances.”
“What I’m trying to say is,” Yamapi went on patiently, “I don’t want to forget this year. The first half was normal and I don’t even remember too much about it but the second half was great and no matter what, I don’t want to forget it. Our friendship is precious to me and…this is the first year that I haven’t felt alone during Christmas.”
“That sounds like a toast,” said Shige, “so let’s make it one. With Yamapi’s good wine that I sincerely hope he didn’t beg, steal or borrow to get, here’s to future Christmasses and ‘remember the year’ parties and…” he smiled at Ryo, “drunken nights without last trains.”
Ryo raised his wineglass. “To miso ramen and seaside barbeques and great sex.”
“To not being able to sleep because of certain cries making their way through the walls,” Yamapi said cheerfully, and sat back to enjoy Shige’s blush to his heart’s content.
“I’ll tell Shige to shut up next time and fuck quietly,” said Ryo.
“I think this matter has been discussed enough,” Shige interrupted. “End of topic. Koyama?”
Koyama grinned and held up his wineglass. “To not being alone.”
“Amen,” said Yamapi, and clinked his glass against Koyama’s.
Underneath the table, their hands caught and held.
end of ‘When Hearts Like Ours Meet’
A/N: Happy new year everybody! Thank you for staying with this fic up to this point <3 This is the end of Koyama’s part.
Chapter: (5) When Hearts Like Ours Meet – Part 4
Pairings: Koyama/Yamapi, Ryo/Shige
Author:
misticloudRating: PG-13
Words: 4,586
Summary: Koyama and Yamapi bond over being spectators of a tempestuous relationship.
When Hearts Like Ours Meet
Part 4
When Koyama thought about it later, he could only wonder at how differently things had turned out from what he’d expected them to. After Yamashita and Ryo left the ramen shop, he certainly hadn’t expected to see Yamashita again, and Ryo perhaps only occasionally at some chance encounter impossible to avoid. He hadn’t expected that Shige would begin hanging out with both Ryo and Yamashita, nor that Yamashita would actually ask if Koyama could join them. Of course he didn’t know then that Yamashita had been the one inviting him; he only learned of it one year later when they were both in vulnerable moods and Yamapi decided to tell him a little more of his feelings during and after the ramen shop scene. Koyama had been surprised, “So it was you who dragged me in.”
“But you came, didn’t you?” Yamapi said, drawing idle circles on the back of Koyama’s hand. “I couldn’t have dragged you in if you hadn’t wanted to come in the first place.”
“I didn’t want to,” Koyama protested, but Yamapi only laughed and kissed his shoulder lightly.
“You were lonely.”
Koyama wouldn’t have believed it at that time, but now, looking back, he saw just how lonely he’d been, the main character in all the songs ever written about lonely men, solitare’s the only game in town, a loneliness within him that wasn’t brought on by him being alone because he wasn’t. He still saw Shige regularly and he had his own group of university friends who could chase away “alone-ness” with a single phone call for help. But loneliness was a far more difficult infliction to chase away, especially when it grew bleaker and deeper whenever he saw his best friend who now belonged to someone else. A joker had once said, “When you’re single, the last thing you want is your best friend forming a serious relationship with someone else.” He and Shige had laughed at it, thought it unaccountably selfish. But Koyama understood it now. It meant being adrift in the singles land while your friend wandered off to unknown destinations with someone else; going to fewer movies together or not going at all; watching as a phone call or text message came in and interrupted your conversations; planning appointments around the “third party’s” schedule; wondering if you would be left to spend public holidays and New Year Eves by yourself.
At any rate, Koyama spent more days of his summer holiday than he could remember holed up at home playing video games meant for one. He’d almost resigned himself to the thought of that being the norm from now on when Shige called him one day to invite him out for a drinking night with Ryo and Yamashita. Koyama wasn’t very sure why he’d agreed to go; it wasn’t as though he yearned to see the two idols again nor had anything in particular, if at all, to say to them.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be there,” Shige assured him. “And don’t underestimate the miracles of alcohol.”
Koyama hadn’t expected the evening to turn out well. Shige brought him to a dim, high-class sort of bar that he’d never been to before and his heart pained him at the thought of how much this night out would cost him. Ryo wanted to dance but Shige refused, are you out of your mind, definitely not in a public place like that, and Yamashita paid for the drinks, thereby reducing the pain in Koyama’s chest, and they’d talked about things that could have been a little on the lewd side, guy things, Yamashita said, youthful things, Ryo said, and he woke up sometime in the night with a raging headache to find himself dumped unceremoniously in the backseat of a car.
He raised his head and peered blearily out of the car window to find a streetlamp glaring down at him. Koyama wanted to puke, but didn’t think that would be a good idea since the leather seat felt suspiciously expensive. And familiar. Then Ryo looked in through the window and Koyama fell back a little.
“Oy, Shige,” said Ryo casually, “he’s awake.”
“What?” Koyama asked, but the next moment the door opened and Shige attempted to pull him out into the open. Koyama was left dangling with half his body out of the car and refused to move any further. Ryo snorted. “God, you’re wasted. Your tolerance for alcohol is even worse than Shige’s!”
“You have to work on that, you know,” said another voice, and Koyama blinked up to see Yamashita standing beside Ryo, dragging at his cigarette. He grinned. “If you want to continue hanging out with us, you’ll need to display better alcoholic skills.”
“Don’t make my friend into an alcoholic like you two,” said Shige, sitting down on the ground beside Koyama’s head. He lifted Koyama’s fringe and wiped the sweat off his forehead with a tissue. “We did only start drinking when we turned legal.”
“Say that with more conviction and maybe I’ll be able to believe you,” Ryo chortled.
“Why did you allow me to get drunk?” Koyama said reproachfully to Shige.
“It’s okay, I’ve seen worse,” said Shige in a would-be comforting tone, balling the tissue in his fist and stuffing it down Koyama’s shirt. “At least you weren’t drunk enough to inform them that you thought Bangkok was a country.”
“Excuse me, what?” Yamashita interrupted, and Shige started laughing infectiously.
“This guy thought Bangkok was a country because of the way the name is pronounced,” he explained, and both Ryo and Yamashita began laughing as well, and after all it was pretty nice hearing them laugh so cheerfully. Koyama smiled despite the pain in his head.
“At least I didn’t stumble and fall flat on my face on the way to the toilet and lie there yelling for help!” he retorted, and Ryo and Yamashita laughed harder.
“You did what, Shige?” Ryo managed to say.
“Let’s have some embarrassing stories from you for a change,” Shige said, dodging the topic, but Ryo only shook his head and walked towards the end of the road. Koyama squinted his eyes; surely the road didn’t just drop off into nothingness?...then realised that they were parked just before a river and the lights from the streetlamps were rippling thick orange lines on the water. The night air felt cool and dry against his face and he sighed, happier in the moment than he’d imagined he could possibly be under the circumstances.
Yamashita squatted down beside him, flicking ash off his cigarette. Koyama watched the embers fall to the ground, glowing faintly for a brief moment before fading into black and grey. He would’ve liked a cigarette himself, but wasn’t sure if it was a wise thing to want when he was hung-over and dangling out of a car at four in the morning.
“Ryo-chan and I come here often,” Yamashita said. “It’s always quiet here.”
“If you usually come at this time of the night, of course it would be quiet,” Shige said.
Yamashita grinned. “That’s true. But doesn’t it make you feel quiet and peaceful too?”
“Mmm,” Shige said, his eyes wandering over to where Ryo stood at the edge, staring out across the dark waters. “You know, I never thought I’d end up here with you guys after…what happened.”
“You mean, that…?”
“Yeah.”
“Ryo-chan always meant to get you back. He can’t live without you.”
Shige was quiet, pondering that. “It’s scary,” he said softly, “when you have someone who can’t live without you.”
“Wouldn’t most people be happy if they had that?”
“I don’t know about ‘most people’,” said Shige, still watching Ryo, “but it scares me.”
Yamashita passed him his cigarette and playfully poked Koyama’s temple. Koyama couldn’t be bothered with retaliation. He looked at Ryo kicking the ground as he stared into nowhere, then at Yamashita and Shige passing the cigarette back and forth in companionable silence. Koyama didn’t want to think too much about what was happening or how they’d ended up here. There would be time enough to contemplate when morning came. He reached out and rested a hand on Shige’s shoulder. For now, this was enough.
… …
There was time, but after all none for contemplation. It seemed that after that night, Koyama was called out constantly by Shige and, after he caved in and gave Yamashita his number, from Yamashita too. Sometimes he didn’t even know what the four of them did. Mostly they went out for drinks and found themselves sacked out in Yamashita’s car afterwards sleeping the rest of the night away until the city came to life around them at daybreak. Shige and Koyama shared the backseat together for the first couple of times, but it didn’t take long for Koyama to figure out that Ryo would much rather have his seat and so he rather magnanimously exchanged with Ryo.
“Refrain from having sex in my car,” Yamashita warned them. “I don’t want to have to spend the rest of the week with my windows rolled down just to get the smell out.”
“So maybe you should get an air freshener,” Ryo said, pretending to grope Shige, and Koyama, who was getting a little more used to them now, giggled weirdly and fell asleep before anyone could comment on how horrible and freaky that had sounded.
When he woke, he found Yamashita looking at him. Koyama had the strange feeling that Yamashita had been looking at him for some time, but Yamashita only smiled and put his finger to his lips. “Look behind.”
Koyama looked and saw Ryo’s head turned into Shige’s lap. One set of their hands were entwined and Shige’s other hand was entangled in Ryo’s hair as though it was the most natural thing in the world. He swallowed a little and turned back to the front.
“Thank God I won’t need the air freshener today,” Yamashita said, quirking his eyebrows.
Koyama started to say something, but a low laugh broke out in his throat and he could only nod. They sat there side by side looking out of the windscreen at the deserted car park and Koyama felt a deep sense of gratitude rising in him, gratitude for this man who was more sensitive and understanding than he’d given him credit for, who had seen into his heart and known the right words to say.
“Ne, Koyama-kun,” said Yamashita, “do you think you can call me Yamapi?”
“Would…you want me to?”
“I want people I care about to call me by a name I feel belongs to me.”
Koyama smiled, and Yamashita smiled back. What’s in a name? Koyama thought, and valiantly tried to remember how the rest of the lines went, but he’d always found Shakespeare a boring longwinded old fart that wasn’t worth his memory space. He gave up and tasted the name silently on his tongue instead. Yamapi. Somehow, in this quiet early morning car park with their best friends asleep behind them, it felt just about right.
… …
It was amazing how much one could learn about a person within a short period of time. At the end of two months, Koyama knew more about Yamapi than he’d ever reckoned on knowing. It was mostly because they were left alone by Ryo and Shige frequently and so had nothing better to do than to talk to each other, but it was also because Yamapi was by nature an open person once he was comfortable with you.
Yamapi liked long aimless drives and cold drinks without ice and a DJ’s voice coming out of the static when he hit upon the right radio frequency. Things were never the same after he was done with them; bottles were left uncapped, doors were left unclosed, towels were left in a heap. Koyama suspected it was not out of any inclination to impoliteness, but rather an inherently absent-minded side of a person who had to be clear-headed about way too many things. Yamapi liked watching late night shows while dropping off to sleep on Ryo’s couch. He liked making pasta with sauce out of a packet and rummaging through Ryo’s kitchen cupboards for more ingredients to throw in. He’d once made pasta for all of them and Shige said it was good, really good, better than most of the stuff he could get outside, and Ryo had scowled and tried to look jealous because Shige never praised his cooking in such effusive ways. Yamapi liked standing at the counter watching them take second helpings of his pasta. Yamapi didn’t like making pasta only for himself. He didn’t like going on drives with nobody beside him except the radio and he didn’t like watching late night shows in the silence of an apartment with mother and sister asleep. Yamapi didn’t like being alone.
“Going solo was the hardest thing the Jimusho ever made me do,” he said as they lingered around the table after dinner. “I wanted to quit after a couple of weeks. But Ryo-chan didn’t let me.”
“What would you have done if you quit?” Ryo retorted. “Who would want to hire you?”
“That’s how he destroyed my confidence,” Yamapi said, rolling his eyes. “So I stayed. But even so it gets hard.”
“Don’t you have a con in Tokyo next week?” Shige asked. “You should give us tickets to go.”
“Why?”
“If you’re feeling worried about being alone, just remember that we’re in the audience.”
Yamapi laughed. “I won’t even be able to see you!”
“You’ll feel our supportive vibes,” said Shige wisely, and Ryo smacked him lightly on the head and they all teased him mercilessly for his silliness, but the next day Koyama actually opened his front door to Yamapi standing outside holding two tickets and a slightly nervous smile.
“For the supportive vibes,” he said.
Koyama laughed. “Shige was just joking!”
“Still, I’ll like to see you two there. We can go out to eat or something afterwards. My treat.” Yamapi paused. “Does that sound okay?”
Koyama looked from his smiling face to the tickets he held, then promptly plucked them out of his hand. “I’m only going for the free food.”
… …
The concert came and went and was better than Koyama expected. Hidden among what seemed like Japan’s entire population of screaming fangirls, Koyama initially felt that it had been a very, very bad idea to come…what if we’re captured on camera?! Shige had worried, they’ll think we’re fanboys!…but he forgot it once Yamapi appeared on stage. Or rather, Yamashita Tomohisa, the perfect idol who wooed a 20,000-strong crowd effortlessly and performed back to back dances that made Shige wonder aloud how long he’d taken to master them all.
“Longer than you can imagine,” Yamapi said wryly over dinner. “My choreographers hate me. I always forget which part of the stage I’m supposed to be at which time until the final rehearsal.”
“Why am I not surprised?” said Shige. “It just makes sense that a guy who leaves hundreds of bottles uncapped will forget which part of the stage he’s supposed to be on.”
Yamapi got his revenge by stealing pork katsu out of Shige’s bowl. After the protests were over and they’d settled back down, he said reflectively, “Ryo-chan’s probably the best in the whole company. You only have to show him once and he gets it. I don’t remember him ever having problems with choreography, and I’ve known him for a long time.”
“How did you two meet?” Koyama asked.
“A big bunch of us juniors were in Hawaii filming,” Yamapi said, “and at night we were having ghost story telling sessions in our dorms. I guess Ryo-chan was scared, cause he asked me to go to the toilet with him. We’ve been friends since then.”
“Ryo does get spooky about things,” Shige remarked. “He always leaves a night light on because he’s scared of the apartment being completely dark.”
“Can’t blame him,” said Yamapi. “He’s told you about how his dad used to come home drunk at nights?”
Shige nodded.
“What happened?” Koyama asked, though he wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to know the answer.
“His dad would beat him then,” said Yamapi briefly. “That’s why even now, Ryo’s scared of nights.”
Koyama fell silent, poking at his rice with his chopsticks. He’d heard hints of Ryo’s childhood over the past few months, not concrete full-blown information because nobody seemed to want to talk about it, but enough for him to know that Ryo’s early life had been anything but happy.
Yamapi tilted his chin at Shige. “Don’t break his heart.”
Shige put a piece of pork katsu into his mouth and chewed slowly. “Who says I have the power to do that?”
… …
Summer flared into autumn, university and all its joys started again for Shige and Koyama found himself a full-time administrative job at a bank working nine hours per day at files and documents that never seemed to get any less. The time they had for Ryo and Yamapi dwindled down to practically nothing and Ryo complained whenever they met about how he hardly saw Shige anymore.
“I have school,” said Shige exasperatedly. “Two papers and a mock court trial next week. You saw my calendar. I don’t have time to get drunk and spend nights sleeping in Yamapi’s car anymore. You just have to deal with it.”
“And you think that all this while I’ve been squatting on my ass waiting to see you?” Ryo demanded. “I’m up at 7am nearly every day for some rehearsal or recording session or meeting. How do you think I find time for you?”
Yamapi met Koyama’s eyes resignedly as Ryo and Shige squabbled back and forth across the table. Koyama had to admit that Ryo had a point; but then again Ryo wasn’t taking into consideration how hard Shige worked during term time. Didn’t, perhaps, know Shige long enough yet to realise how much this law degree meant to him. Ryo could never understand that there were other things more important to Shige than himself. It was aggravating and it aggravated Shige and Koyama could well see why it did.
That night, Yamapi called Koyama for the first time.
… …
“Hey,” said Yamapi after they’d idled away an hour talking about things that they promptly forgot once the topics were finished with, “do you think you can tell me more about you and Shige?”
Koyama shifted the phone from his left ear to the right, feeling with relief the little ache in the left ear as he did so. “What do you want to know? Shige and I had normal childhoods. We didn’t go travelling to Hawaii or Okinawa or pretty much anywhere. The furthest we ever went was to Kyoto and even then Shige got food poisoning so we came back after one day.”
Yamapi laughed. “That seems so Shige.”
“The world has a vengeance towards him,” Koyama agreed.
“But you see, those are the kind of things I want to know,” said Yamapi. “Normal childhood memories. I don’t have many or if I do, I don’t remember half of them. It was just a lot of work. Learning about ten different dances every month and going from one senpai’s concert tour to another. But whenever I listen to you, I feel like I gain normal childhood memories of my own. As though my childhood becomes happier through you.”
“Don’t make it sound so sad!” Koyama protested.
“Did it sound sad?” Yamapi asked with genuine surprise in his voice. “It isn’t sad to me. When something happens, you just run along and try to keep up with it, you know? I entered the Jimusho when I was a kid and since then I’ve been spending my life in that way. When you do something for so long, there’s nothing really sad about it.”
Koyama stared into the darkness of his room, through the sadness he felt bunched up in his chest for a Yamapi who had been running half his life trying to keep up with somethings, and thought that he could admire him, if only just a little for now at the starting point.
… …
A week later Shige stormed out of Ryo’s apartment in a temper and didn’t go back for nearly a fortnight, until Yamapi called Koyama to ask what the hell has happened to them now?
“This can’t go on,” he complained. “Even Ryo-chan’s manager asked me today why he has been so bad-tempered lately. He’s still working hard, but off camera nobody even dares to talk to him about anything not work-related. If he goes on like this, he’s going to get a warning from the higher ups. They don’t like seeing sulky faces. It makes them antsy.”
Koyama winced. Shige had come round to his place a couple of days ago and ranted furiously about how Ryo wasn’t giving him any space and how suffocating it was and when he had a paper due he was going to do it, regardless of whatever sexual or entertainment desires the great Nishikido Ryo might have. “I’m not your fucking toy,” he’d shouted at Ryo before slamming the door on his way out.
“Bastard,” he’d yelled at Koyama, “what does he think I exist for, to serve him hand and foot?”
Koyama wasn’t in the mood to give Yamapi a thorough description of what had happened. He’d had a long day at work wrestling with wordy documents and now there were once again way too many words involved. Besides, he sensed that before long Ryo and Shige would get back together anyway, so there wasn’t any point in wearing himself out trying to explain. “You know they can’t keep away from each other for too long. They’ll get over it soon.”
“They better,” Yamapi grumbled. “They’re driving me fucking crazy.”
… …
November melted into December and Yamapi’s almost regular calls became something Koyama looked forward to after showering the scent of the office off himself. They didn’t meet up too frequently now; he was busy with yearend reports and Yamapi had a dozen things going on at the same time, a bunch of performances lined up for shows that Koyama couldn’t remember the names and dates of, dances, choreography, photoshoots, everything an idol at the top of the entertainment food chain had to go through whenever December descended.
Yamapi sounded more and more tired on the phone, “Times like these, I want the world to slow down and stop.”
The night was cold and quiet and Koyama lingered at his balcony, blowing out cigarette smoke through his lips as he listened to the low hum of Yamapi’s voice. “I want it to stop – just for a few minutes – stop rushing and spinning and going in all directions. Do you know when was the last time I felt it still?”
“On your last day off?”
Yamapi laughed. “No, wise guy. I was thirteen years old and my dad had just walked out on us. My mum would cry every night. I felt bad for her, so one day my sister and I pooled our money and bought her a couple of roses. Just two stalks. I went back home and gave them to her, and her eyes misted over as she said ‘thank you’. She was the only focal point in the world then.” He paused, and Koyama could hear the night and its silence gathering between them. “I always wanted to feel that same kind of happiness again,” Yamapi said at last. “The next day the Jimusho called me in and since then everything has been rushing crazily around me and I don’t know how to stop it.”
Koyama stubbed out his cigarette and put it down carefully beside him on the balcony ledge. “The world is pretty still now.”
“Not still enough,” said Yamapi, “it’s never still enough now.”
… …
Yamapi wasn’t keen on a lavish Christmas celebration and Ryo declared that he didn’t have time for stupid sappy festivals, so Shige planned a simple home cooked meal on Christmas Eve in his place and treated his parents to a movie night out so that the four of them would have some privacy. Koyama, industriously chopping up garlic for the meal, sighed for girls who would do the cooking while he did the eating.
“I feel as though we’ve become the girls,” he grumbled.
“Stop complaining,” said Shige, separating the vegetable stalks and leaves into two neat piles. “It’s only for one night. Let’s give them a good Christmas for once. And I’d rather have Ryo spending Christmas Eve here than at some club.”
Koyama looked up. “You don’t trust him?”
Shige shrugged and turned on the fire, and Koyama hastened his garlic chopping.
The dinner was by no means remarkable, but Shige’s vegetable dish was tasty enough for idol taste buds and the bottle of wine Yamapi brought along was heartily appreciated. Ryo refrained from making any comments about the cooking and Koyama, watching him as he smiled and teased Shige, thought that this was the closest to happiness he’d ever seen Nishikido Ryo. The house was warm and cosy and Yamapi’s laughter infected the dinner table and for the first time Koyama found himself not regretting the night that Shige had missed the last train and happened upon a drunken Ryo. He didn’t think he would regret it again. Despite all that had happened, the spite and hatred he’d gone through in the first month, the inadequacy, sadness and lack of understanding, somehow the four of them had come together and built an unlikely friendship and this was where he felt comfortable now, opposite his best friend and his lover and beside a man whom he’d grown to care for out of little, misunderstood beginnings.
“In a few days we’ll all be attending the yearend parties,” said Yamapi. “The bounenkai. Don’t you think it’s strange that it’s called ‘forget the year party’? There must be something wrong with our Japanese culture if we hold celebrations to forget the year that has just passed.”
“Don’t insult our Japanese culture!” Ryo said. “At least we don’t sing weird senseless songs about forgotten acquaintances.”
“What I’m trying to say is,” Yamapi went on patiently, “I don’t want to forget this year. The first half was normal and I don’t even remember too much about it but the second half was great and no matter what, I don’t want to forget it. Our friendship is precious to me and…this is the first year that I haven’t felt alone during Christmas.”
“That sounds like a toast,” said Shige, “so let’s make it one. With Yamapi’s good wine that I sincerely hope he didn’t beg, steal or borrow to get, here’s to future Christmasses and ‘remember the year’ parties and…” he smiled at Ryo, “drunken nights without last trains.”
Ryo raised his wineglass. “To miso ramen and seaside barbeques and great sex.”
“To not being able to sleep because of certain cries making their way through the walls,” Yamapi said cheerfully, and sat back to enjoy Shige’s blush to his heart’s content.
“I’ll tell Shige to shut up next time and fuck quietly,” said Ryo.
“I think this matter has been discussed enough,” Shige interrupted. “End of topic. Koyama?”
Koyama grinned and held up his wineglass. “To not being alone.”
“Amen,” said Yamapi, and clinked his glass against Koyama’s.
Underneath the table, their hands caught and held.
end of ‘When Hearts Like Ours Meet’
A/N: Happy new year everybody! Thank you for staying with this fic up to this point <3 This is the end of Koyama’s part.
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