[Two Friendships, Four Loves] I Fell For You Like a Child - Part 2

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Title: Two Friendships, Four Loves
Chapter: (8) I Fell For You Like a Child – Part 2
Pairings: Ryo/Shige, Koyama/Yamapi
Author: misticloud
Rating: PG-13
Words: 4,862
Summary: Ryo didn't believe in possession, and Shige wasn't interested in relationships.

Previously: Landing in Fire | When Hearts Like Ours Meet [1] [2] [3] [4] | It Burns, Burns, Burns | I Fell For You Like a Child [1]



I Fell For You Like a Child

Part 2

Ryo's biggest fight had always been with loneliness.

The first time he woke up in someone else's bed, he didn't remember how he'd gotten there nor what had happened the night before but he did know that he'd turned onto a new and previously avoided path that he would remain on for a substantial amount of time.

While he'd enjoyed sex ever since the first time he did it in a love hotel with one of the Jimusho's interns, he didn't think much of the way his fellow idols-in-the-making slept around with random girls they'd picked up in noisy drunken forgettable parties. For three years after he left home, Ryo spent most of his nights lying alone on his own bed, sometimes tossing and turning while thoughts chased each other mercilessly in his head, or jerking awake in the middle of the night from nightmares that he couldn't remember clearly. But the year he turned nineteen and found himself waking up in some guy's bed at ten o' clock in the morning with a sharply aching butt and a head that felt heavier than what his neck could support, he realised, with a faint ambiguous sort of sadness settling on him out of nowhere, that he'd actually managed to stave off loneliness the previous night.

It didn't take long for him to get addicted to the non-lonely nights and over the years, he became accustomed to waking up in unknown places. White rooms and beige rooms with differently coloured curtains, morning light filtering in through unwashed windows, clothes lying haphazardly on the floor, rough sheets and mattresses too hard for him to sleep comfortably on. There were faint remembrances of blurred faces and bitter aftertastes, impressions of taking quick, hot showers in featureless toilets. Finger-combing his hair in front of steam-filled mirrors and dialing Yamapi's number to politely demand a lift home. Perhaps there were promises, too, to the face beside him, of future nightly meetings and more mornings of waking up in unfamiliar rooms. More or less. He didn't remember them too well; all these nights that were thinner than wispy clouds on an early summer morning.

Sometimes Ryo wished he had the strength to spend nights alone. Wished that he could draw the blankets over himself and melt into a deep, dreamless sleep against his pillow. But he wasn't strong enough and he hated his weakness, hated that even after so many years he couldn't find a way to build up his defenses against his old enemy. Ryo thought that loneliness could be a very powerful, evil thing.

… …

One morning he woke up and didn't really know where he was, which was normal. What wasn’t normal was that instead of waking up lazily with someone's arms draped around him, he jerked awake to the sound of a feminine scream and the weary, explaining voice of some guy. He couldn't place where the hell he was and it was more than a little scary, terrifying almost, so much so that he remained where he was, blinking rapidly up at the cracks in the ceiling until his vision was obscured by a slightly familiar face.

"You scared my mum," said the face.

Ryo had learned from some smart kid in the Jimusho that the eyes do not see faces as actual faces; all they take in are lines and curves that are interpreted by the brain. He stared blankly up at the lines and curves before him now, none of them making any sense to him until something suddenly clicked and things began falling into place. The non-stranger under a streetlamp, tiny stones being kicked around on the ground, quiet Ikebukuro station, taxi, helping hand, oh yes, last night. Ryo let out a breath of relief and roused himself sufficiently to sit up. "Uh…sorry?"

The guy took a couple of steps back and crossed his arms, staring at him. He had a nice face, much nicer than many guys, nice enough to be on the cover of a magazine if properly done up, Ryo mused. He also needed a haircut, but Ryo forbore to mention that; after all, he was technically a stranger who couldn't be expected to respond kindly to constructive criticism from an idol who'd somehow ended up on his couch with a hangover.

"We're having Western breakfast today," said the guy. "Do you want your egg sunny side up or scrambled?"

The thought of food made Ryo slightly nauseated. "Uh, no breakfast. Not for me."

"…right. Because you're not worth the trouble it takes to scramble eggs."

"I didn't mean it that way," Ryo said, wondering why the slightly miffed look on the guy's face made him feel as bad as it did. "I appreciate you letting me stay over for the night. But I'll probably puke if I eat anything and so I think I'd better…get back to Ikebukuro for my car."

The guy stared at him for a long moment before leaving and reappearing bare minutes later holding a glass of water and aspirin. Ryo took the medication obediently and submitted to being pushed back down onto the sofa.

"Whatever parking ticket you've already got isn't going anywhere," said the guy.

Ryo turned his head and watched him as he went back to the kitchen. Nameless non-stranger. What was it about some people that made them so kind to others? Ryo couldn't figure it out. He thought briefly of the breakfasts his stepmother used to make, plain rice and miso soup and fish that weren't outstanding but somehow tasted like home. Funny, it had been a long time, very long, since he'd thought about the family in Osaka. The breakfasts in this house would probably taste like home too, and kindness, and the headache was melting his vision into something white and blurry. Turning back into the cushion and closing his eyes, he waited for sleep and aspirin to catch up with the pain in his head.

… …

He'd left one grey morning in April.

He still remembered how the gravel of the road felt beneath his shoes, the pressure of his bag on his right shoulder, and the plastic bag of refrigerated food dangling from his left hand. Frozen curry and fried pork cutlets in neat little containers. His last taste of home-cooked food for a while.

He'd breathed in once, twice, of the air now untainted by families and bitterness and mothers who condemned their children by giving up their lives for them.

There had been a heaviness lying in his heart, a thick heaviness as grey as the clouds. He'd wondered why it was there when, by right, he should have been feeling liberated.

When he was walking towards the nearest bus stop, he forced himself not to turn back. Lot's wife had turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back on the burning city of Sodom and Gomorrah. Nishikido Ryo would never be that silly. Nishikido Ryo didn't have anything to look back on.

At that point, he woke up with tears on his cheeks. Loneliness was a state, not a feeling, because feelings come and go but states remain longer than you can fight them. He raised his hand to his face, but the next moment something soft and papery touched his fingers. Looking up, he saw the non-stranger holding out a tissue to him with his eyes fixed on some random point of interest beyond the living room windows.

Ryo took the tissue and the non-stranger walked wordlessly away.

… …

"Isn't it interesting and simplistic," Yamapi said much later, "how we fell for them just because they smiled at us?"

He was thinking of Koyama, of course. Koyama of the light brown hair and smile as wide and loving as his heart.

Ryo thought of the silent offering of the tissue paper; the unasked for sympathy behind that action. Shige hadn't smiled at him. Shige had done much more than that.

… …

The law dictated that his wheel would be clamped, and so it was. Ryo stood and gazed grimly at his car until the burst of laughter from Nameless behind reminded him of the beating his pride was taking.

"You just had to park in a wheel clamping zone," Nameless said with amusement spilling out of his voice.

Ryo looked back with a ready retort on the tip of his tongue to see Nameless grinning at him through his opened car window. There was so much good humour in his face that Ryo unwillingly felt a smile turn up the edges of his lips just a fraction. "Do you always take such pleasure in other people's misfortune?"

"Not as much as now," Nameless said.

"I can't express how flattered I am to be affording you such entertainment."

"I'm flattered to be entertained."

Ryo rolled his eyes. "Least I could do for someone who obviously isn't acquainted with classier forms of entertainment."

"Idols are made to please people, aren't they?" Nameless said. "It's good practice for you. In any case, if you no longer have need of me, I have someone to meet."

"Wait," Ryo said before he could stop himself. "What's your name?"

Nameless shook his head and began to scroll up the window, but appeared to change his mind halfway through. "I'm Kato. Shigeaki."

"Thanks, Shige."

"It's Ka…"

"For everything," Ryo said. "Including the breakfast that I didn't eat."

Shige looked awkward at the sudden shift in mood. "It's okay," he said.

They looked at each other for a moment, as though adding up the minutes that had built up between them since the night before, and evaluating them to ascertain how much a farewell weighted. Then Shige coughed and nodded at him. "Take care of yourself. I'm going."

"Bye," said Ryo.

Shige accelerated and Ryo stood watching as the car drove out of the parking lot, entering the main road where it mingled with fifty other similar-looking cars. Kato Shigeaki, lost among a line of city dwellers making their way elsewhere. It was strange wasn't it, how many chance encounters and leave-takings there were in a day?

He pushed the thought to some crevice in his head and turned to the wheel clamping signboard, searching for a phone number. Time didn't stand still for men to ponder philosophical questions. First things first; get the clamp out.

… …

It took a week, but he eventually got round to carrying out the second item on the to-do list.

"You're having dinner with me," Ryo announced on Shige's doorstep where he'd appeared unanticipated.

Shige looked from Ryo's face to the new set of cutlery he was holding. "Come again?"

"As a form of thanks for saving me from the reporters and, also, it's your turn to entertain me."

"I'm not an idol. I'm not well-versed in entertaining people."

"It's okay." Ryo smiled and passed the cutlery set over to him. "For tonight, I'll make do with you."

The look on Shige's face told him quite obviously that Shige thought something was not quite right with him, but Ryo couldn't care less when all Shige said in reply was, "Are all idols as pushy as you?"

… …

It was late, very late, almost four in the morning in some small, mid-scale bar somewhere in Shinjuku that Ryo chose to patronise because there was little chance of him being recognised there. Neither of them remembered what they'd had for dinner; they were too interested in the drinks and conversation on hand. Shige could hold his liquor surprisingly well for someone who looked so studious; "it's as though you actually go drinking pretty often," Ryo grumbled. He'd been looking forward to getting Shige drunk just to see the polished veneer of this Aoyama Gakuin law student slip off.

"You are talking to a university kid," Shige said, taking another swig of his beer. "I go out drinking every Friday night with my friends. Sometimes Saturday nights, too. If we don't have dates."

"Friday nights, huh," Ryo said. "Friday nights I spend filming 'Ryuusei no Kizuna'."

The look on Shige's face showed plainly that he had no idea what Ryo was talking about, even though 'Ryuusei no Kizuna' was raking in some of the highest ratings of the season.

"You exist in a different world altogether, don't you?" Ryo said.

"I don't watch many dramas," Shige said with a hint of apology in his voice. "Nights are usually spent finishing up some assignment…what's it like anyway? Doing that idol bit, I mean?"

"It's work." Ryo shrugged and knocked his glass against Shige's. "Work is my life. I've been at it since I was thirteen, you know. I don't know how to tell you what it's like because it's my life. It's like me asking you what life as a university student is like."

"Oh, that, I can answer perfectly. Deadlines, projects, roleplays, quizzes, assignments." Shige raised his eyebrows as he watched a drunk girl fall harmlessly onto the floor on her way to the toilet. "The occasional partying. Getting wasted. Girls."

Ryo remained silent and Shige waited a couple of moments for his reply before continuing, "The usual, you know. Some of the guys have girlfriends; I don't know how they manage. There's barely even time for me to breathe, let alone have a serious relationship with anyone. I mean, look at me, I don't even watch dra…"

"That's strange, a pretty boy like you without a girlfriend," Ryo said, interrupting him so abruptly that Shige was left with sentences hanging unfinished from his open mouth. "I would imagine they would all be after you."

"I'm not interested in having a relationship," said Shige flatly, looking at the stage where the live band was beginning on another song. Ryo followed his gaze and saw that his eyes were lingering a little longer than normal on the band's guitarist, a boy with beautifully gelled hair and big, black-lined eyes. He wasn't Ryo's type but he obviously appealed to Shige's tastes, judging from the way Shige followed his movements with appreciative eyes. There seemed to be some things amid the apparently open talk that weren't mentioned after all; would probably not be talked about, but then again didn't have to be talked about to be known. Ryo contemplated it, watching as Shige, cheeks a little higher in colour than they were a couple of minutes ago, threw back another mouthful of beer.

When they left the bar half an hour later to seek out separate destinations, they stood side by side on the curb waiting for taxis to appear. Shige looked at Ryo and Ryo could see the hesitance in his face; a sort of apprehension that made him move closer, casually, into Shige's personal space. The sky was beginning to lighten, morning was approaching, the sun rose so early in Japan. Ryo had been in many strange places before at this time, but never here on a curb with a man whom he'd spent the night drinking and talking to without the slightest physical intimacy. A taxi drove by, saw them, drove slower, then went off in a huff when neither flagged it down.

"Kato, you should've flagged that taxi."

"So should you, Nishikido."

Their hands brushed slightly, non-accidentally, Shige's eyes widened and Ryo took a couple of steps back. He should have been confused, he thought, but instead he'd never felt so lucid before. There was something wonderful hanging just on the edge, he could feel it lingering there, wonderful and tentative and crazy and potentially heartbreaking, and when he looked at Shige he could see the fear of it in Shige's eyes.

"Ignore that taxi."

Shige turned away from him and held out his arm. The second taxi coming up the road slowed down to a stop beside them and Ryo pushed his hands into his jeans pockets as the door swung open for Shige.

"Let's hang out again sometime," Shige said, not meeting his eyes.

Something wonderful and heartbreaking.

Looking back now, Ryo thought that was possibly the moment when Shige began fighting.

… …

Ryo never really understood how he'd fallen in love with Shige. In the beginning he tried to reason it out; he had been drawn to Shige, Shige was unlike anyone he'd ever encountered before and he'd appeared at a time when Ryo had been at a really low point in his life, but eventually he stopped reasoning. There was just no explanation.

Koyama said that there was something about Shige that made you fall in love with him. But then Koyama had a wealth of Shige-memories – a cognitive library that Ryo secretly envied far more than anyone realised – while there had been nothing between Ryo and Shige. No playground bonding, no walking home together eating watermelon slices from the neighbourhood fruit stall, no riverbank first kisses, no sunny days spent at the beach building oddly-shaped sand castles. There hadn't even been any mutual friends who could shape their perceptions of each other before they met. On this stage, there had simply been them and them alone.

Perhaps that was the reason why Ryo thought they would last. Perhaps it was also the reason why Shige thought they wouldn't.

… …

It wasn't often that Ryo got a Saturday off, especially with the filming of Ryuusei, but occasionally he got lucky and this was one of those times. Shige wasn't free, saying that a couple of his university friends were having some inline skating extreme sports contest in Komazawa Park that day, but he invited Ryo along if he wanted to come. Ryo didn't, not really, but he wanted to see Shige, so on Saturday morning he woke up earlier than he'd originally planned to, and left to meet Shige at Setagaya-ku.

There was already a little crowd milling about the area when they arrived, and a couple of guys standing near the stands hailed Shige when they saw him. They didn't recognise Ryo at first, but after Shige introduced him, their faces took on looks of recognition. One of them, a slim, bright-eyed kid called Tegoshi Yuya, informed Ryo that his mother liked him very much and the other, Masuda Takahisa who had dimples in his cheeks when he smiled, said that his female friends frequently sang 'Code' during karaoke sessions.

Shige found seats for all of them and settled down with Ryo beside him as Tegoshi and Masuda wandered off to buy refreshments. "Tegoshi is in Waseda studying psychology," Shige said, "and Massu works at a gym as a co-ordinator. We don't get much chance to hang out, but since we've known each other for a long time, we always get along when we meet."

"I've some friends like that in the Jimusho," Ryo said. "Yamapi and Akanishi Jin; also Ohkura Tadayoshi and Yokoyama Yuu. Do you know them?"

Shige laughed at him. "Of course I do, I only see them on posters and commercials all the time."

"You must excuse me for being dubious; after all, you're unaware of the existence of 'Ryuusei no Kizuna'."

"A slight oversight," Shige said. "I promise to watch at least half of an episode before it finishes airing. I'm not too much in tune with the entertainment world, you know. Tegoshi, Massu and me, we're just regular guys."

"I'm hanging out with regular guys today so that makes me a regular guy too," Ryo pointed out.

"Can't argue with you there," Shige acknowledged. "Try not to be too bored with our regular ways."

Whenever Ryo remembered that Saturday, he thought of how ridiculous it had been to even suggest he would be bored. Shige kept the topics of conversation centred around fun, general, silly things that all of them could participate in, and when the competition started, the only thought Ryo had was how out of touch he was with cheering other people on. This was the kind of life that Yamapi, schooling and working at the same time, enjoyed once in a while; the life that he might have had if he hadn't dropped out of school six years ago, and Shige was shouting at the top of his voice, dropping wisecracks and jokes with an eloquence that kept their row and the row in front of them laughing almost without a break.

Sometime during the competition, Ryo slipped his hand into Shige's and squeezed. Shige didn't squeeze back but he didn't pull away either, and Ryo thought of how easy it would be to fall for Shige, just a little.

… …

Three days later, Ryo found himself in a hotel in Osaka listening to Shige's voice breaking up a little over the buzzing phone line.

"I can't imagine it…" break "…guess it's impossible for someone who has always had a home to imagine what it's like being homeless."

"I can't say what it's like," Ryo said, stretching out on the bed and idly studying the landscape prints hanging on the plain yellow wall opposite. "I'm not good at describing things well. It was just…I sort of wondered where I was going to stay the next night. Where to shower, brush my teeth…mundane things like that. I guess I blocked out stuff that wasn't banal."

"You're stronger than I thought you were when I first saw you slumped on that bench asking for help."

"Don't mistake me, Shige. The guy you saw slumped on the bench...that's what I really am."

"No, that's part of what you really are," said Shige. "You're made up of a sum of parts, just like everybody else. The Nishikido Ryo who was strong enough to leave home and become a successful idol all by himself; that's a part of you, too."

"Sometimes I don't want to be an idol. I just want…" to be in Tokyo with you, drinking beer at some nameless bar watching big-eyed guitarists playing to a non-listening crowd.

Shige yawned – rather incongruously, Ryo decided, even though it was 2am. "When will you be back?"

"Day after. Dinner's on you."

Shige immediately launched into a very logical protest, pointing out the fact that he was a student who was paying money, not receiving, and as such did not have the resources to treat extravagant idols who earned figures large enough to make salarymen tear off their uniform black suits in despair. Ryo laughed and kept the phone close to his ear, enjoying Shige's tirade, thinking how loneliness during nights could be alleviated simply by talking to the right person.

… …

In the end they didn't do dinner as Shige conveniently had an appointment that day – Ryo spent fifteen minutes explaining to him how wrong it was to cancel a previously made arrangement just because he was too stingy to pay for the meal – but, instead, met up for a lunch of shabu-shabu the following day with Shige's best friend, one Koyama Keiichirou whose resentment stung every look between them.

There had been no problem getting on with Tegoshi and Masuda from the outset, but there wasn't any talk between him and Koyama after the introductions; something which Ryo suspected was not usually the case when Koyama met anyone new. They crawled through twenty minutes of mostly silent eating punctuated with occasional remarks from Shige, who was looking from him to Koyama with a slightly puzzled expression in his eyes. Ryo watched as Koyama laid cooked pork on Shige's rice, dipped meat into the soup for him, poured his own iced water into Shige's glass when Shige had drunk most of his. There was something about the way Koyama served Shige that was not natural; something that went far beyond best-friend-ship.

And then he was jealous. Just like that, just because Koyama obviously had feelings for Shige and was in a much better position to secure Shige's affections than some random idol who'd encroached on his personal space one drunken night three weeks ago.

Shige was finishing some story to Koyama, and the both of them laughed in a way that made Ryo feel conspicuously left out. Ryo wasn't one for possession; he'd not done relationships before because he didn't believe two people could truly belong to each other 'heart, soul and body', or whatever trash that romance novels talked about. But seeing Shige and Koyama together, comfortable in their own little world of shared memories and good times and understanding, he envied their unconscious possession of each other so fiercely that, when Shige left for the toilet, he told Koyama then and there that he loved Shige. And realised, as he said it, how much he really did.

He'd never imagined that he could learn to love someone.

He thought that Koyama would retort; argue, perhaps, that it was the height of absurdity for someone to fall in love so quickly; but Koyama didn't have much to say. He simply looked at him with a sad face whose eyes seemed to speak much more than his expected, monotone "I understand".

… …

The first time Ryo kissed Shige, they were in a club full to the hilt with gyrating dancers and Shige pulled away quickly, thinking that Ryo had accidentally – albeit conveniently – bumped his lips onto his. Ryo saw a grin spreading across Shige's face as he opened his mouth…most likely to crack some sort of silly joke that would lighten the situation and prepare it for future quirky retellings to Koyama…but he wasn't having any of it.

The second time he kissed Shige, they were in an alley behind the club and Shige was complaining about how Ryo had abruptly pulled him out without rhyme or reason. This time the kiss left no room for misunderstandings and Ryo could feel Shige stiffening with shock, both hands coming up instinctively to push Ryo away. But those hands stilled somewhere near Ryo's torso and by the time they parted for breath, his hands were gripping Ryo's shoulders, pulling both of them in for yet another kiss rougher and definitely more balanced than the previous two.

Somewhere along the fourth kiss, or maybe the fifth, Shige mumbled, "What are we doing what are we doing what are we doing?"

Ryo only said, "I'm serious about this, entirely serious."

Shige closed his eyes and Ryo pressed their mouths together again, unheeding of passer-bys who might be disconcerted at the sight of two men making out against a wall. All these irrelevant nothings and everybody elses really didn't matter. When Shige wrapped warm arms around his waist and snaked his tongue in through parted lips, it felt to Ryo that he was experiencing his first real kisses in a lifetime of shallow, make-believe ones.

… …

They slept together that night. Ryo had not brought any of his 'regulars' or 'one-nighters' to his apartment before, preferring to keep the memories of strange mornings separate from what was familiar and his own, but he brought Shige back to his place without any clear consciousness of it. It was the most natural thing to open the door a couple of seconds longer for Shige to walk in after him, the most natural thing to watch Shige take off his shoes at the genkan and wander across the living room, the most natural thing to lead Shige to the bedroom and undress him as though they'd been doing it for nights that stretched beyond what they could remember.

Relaxed as he was, Shige tensed when Ryo traced a finger over his entrance so Ryo didn't try any tricks, any of the silly things that he did with his other bedfellows to maintain his interest in the activities. With Shige he didn't need to try, everything happened as they were supposed to; the warmth of their bodies as they pressed against each other, the wetness and comfort of Shige's mouth, the welcoming tightness of Shige's body as Ryo pressed a slick finger into him, the little sigh of pain or pleasure or both that Shige exhaled when Ryo pushed slowly into him.

"Are you okay?" he murmured, hands tight on Shige's hips, and Shige nodded, said, "Are you comfortable?" and that made Ryo laugh, vibrations running through his body right down to his cock, and the sensation made Shige laugh too as they moved into a rhythm that was both urgent and gentle.

It didn't take long before they came, gasping and gripping each other tight as they shuddered with the intensity of their climax. Yet even through the haze of pleasure Ryo kept his eyes open, watching as Shige's face clenched, listening as a breathless "Ryo" dropped from Shige's lips, collecting every instance of this lovemaking to form memories that would remain with him for years after.

The next morning he woke up to Shige in his arms. No more strange places, he thought, no more empty promises and early morning demands on Pi and hours so thin that they slipped out of memory the very moment they passed from present to history. He kissed Shige and Shige breathed into his mouth, still asleep, and Ryo understood, after twenty three years, how there could be such things as love and mutual possession and joy in the world.




A/N: This chapter has taken me forever to write and I really apologise for the long wait. I hope the next chapter will not take over a month >.

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