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JE fic: Summerlong (Ryo/Yamapi)
Title: Summerlong
Fandom: JE
Pairing: Ryo/Yamapi
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Sex. For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elyndys, who gave me a plotbunny. I cannot write Kanjani8, oh god, I know NOTHING about them. I am so sorry.
Summary: Yamapi has something to say after seeing Ryo and Subaru kissing onstage.
“What's the hardest thing about being in two bands?” is the question Ryo thinks he's asked most often. It's not the question he thinks he should be asked most often (what the hell would he ask somebody who did his job?), but that's life. He thinks that the answer should be, “it's like having a wife and a girlfriend but neither of them are putting out.”
The problem with being in two bands isn't on Kanjani8's end. Kanjani8 is the alluring mistress. Ryo encounters no particular jealousy or possessiveness from the boys in Kanjani8. It's odd but the more flirtatious he gets with the boys in NEWS, the more he plays up to the fanservice – the more Subaru seems to egg him on. He's never understood that, but then there's lots about Subaru he doesn't understand.
NEWS are more prickly about Ryo's schedule. NEWS is a scorned and all-knowing wife. They're more aware that he's two people for two bands, that he's being unfaithful. For NEWS, Ryo dominates, he pretends to be mean, he pretends to be too cool for it all. For Kanjani8, he becomes as much of a dork as the rest of them. He submits, as Subaru might say. Only there's no putting out in either band, so what the point of it all is, he doesn't know.
The point of it all becomes harder to find the longer he goes without having a day off. He browses the newspapers on the tour bus and sees pictures of Yamapi lounging about on beaches, reads gossip stories about members of KAT-TUN apparently having girlfriends. Touring is the best part of being in a band, but the summer is a hot one and he's exhausted. Knowing that he'll go straight from the Kanjani8 tour back into NEWS' next single and album publicity, that's even more exhausting.
He wants a holiday. To sit on a beach with Yamapi, or maybe get a girlfriend like Junno. Well, not like Junno, obviously, a girlfriend like Junno's. Or possibly to sit on a beach with his girlfriend Yamapi.
“I'm starting to think like you,” he says, accusingly, down the bus, to the hat on Subaru's head. Everyone looks up except Subaru, who just laughs in an annoyingly vague, dirty sort of way.
Yamapi wouldn't make a good girlfriend, probably. He makes a poor enough wife. But the urge is there, all the same. Ryo plays at fanservice with the whole of NEWS, except Yamapi, because with Yamapi there's the need for it to be real and Ryo stays away from heavy red lines on the ground. Subaru tells him that he should play around with Yamapi, just like that, play around onstage, but Ryo can't and it bothers him. It seems to bother Yamapi, too. They've discussed it, their respective interest in each other. Over too many beers and too much horny melancholy. It was surprisingly nonchalant. They don't play at anything, that was the agreement.
Subaru would make an even worse girlfriend, but he has the kind of courage that Yamapi doesn't, the kind of courage that allows him to rough up against anyone he particularly likes the look of, trusting that his bandmates know him well enough to humour him. That's the thing about Subaru, about Kanjani8. They're uncomplicated. They accept, they flirt. They tease. They say: we are easy. Take us. The thing about Yamapi, and NEWS, is that Ryo has to work for it. And like the sort of masochist who'd be in two fucking bands in the first place, Ryo lusts after challenges.
When Ryo tries to explain all of it to Subaru, before the show, he has to keep shoving Yasu out of the dressing room. Yasu wants to hear the secret merely because they don't want him to, and Ryo's trying to talk as fast as he can. He doesn't get so far as to explaining the Yamapi thing, untangling that would take far too long. But he explains the horniness and the wife/girlfriend metaphor, and Subaru waggles his eyebrows a lot but says that he understands. There's a look in his eye that suggests he's going to do something about it, which makes Ryo a bit afraid, truth be told. Everyone is afraid of Ryo but it's the person Ryo's afraid of that they should really fear, he thinks.
The show goes well and there's no strike, no evil, malicious plot of doom. Ryo feels that he can relax. Which is obviously the chosen moment for a strike, an evil, malicious plot of doom. Subaru is singing one minute and then he's not, then he's leaning over and smacking one on Ryo, and it's nice, it goes with the mood and when he draws back they're both smiling. There's no hidden message, no wicked intent. It's just Subaru, reminding Ryo of why he keeps the girlfriend around so much. And perhaps, just perhaps, there's a little bit of a nudge of goodbye there, too. Ryo understands that. There's a lot he doesn't understand about Subaru, but he understands that.
Unsurprisingly, the picture gets to be almost everywhere and Ryo imagines that he has Pleased Johnny Kitagawa, singularly the scariest idea ever. When the tour ends and he has one day off, the one he sleeps through, he misses the start of the scandal. Returning to NEWS, he has very little conception of what's happened, the stir going through the band. The tanned band, actually. Relaxed, tanned band. Except Yamapi, who is neither relaxed nor tanned, despite having sunbathed all summer. Tego gives Ryo an evil eye and slaps him on the back.
“You said you were working all summer, huh? Didn't look like working to me.”
Ryo glares at him. “115-”
Tego grins. “Kissing your bandmates isn't work. Unless you're paying them. Are you paying them? The size of that mouth, it must be costing you. Maybe that's why you have to be in two bands, for the money.”
Ryo is struck dumb. It happens rarely and Koyama stares at him completely wide-eyed, almost as if he's counting the seconds.
“How did you get more evil?” Ryo splutters. “I go away for a few months and you turn into Damien from the fucking Omen!”
Yamapi looks up from his magazine. His eyes are dark and his face inscrutable. “He made up for you not being here.”
“I'm not evil,” Ryo says. “Just sarcastic.”
“And unscrupulous,” Yamapi says. “Don't forget unscrupulous.”
Ryo narrows his eyes, a little stung. “I'm not-”
Koyama suddenly stops counting, notes the danger and claps his hands together.
“We have work to do,” he says. He means the album, of course, but the meaning hangs in the air like morning mist.
There's something insane about singing bouncy, happy pop songs with someone you're not speaking to, Ryo thinks. His eyes keep catching Yamapi's and darting off, their mouths all set in a line, and yet they're singing this inanely cheerful record about dreams and love and never giving up. The problem with being in just one JE band is this sort of surreal nonsense.
Koyama does a bit of work when they go for their single cover photoshoots, to get Yamapi and Ryo into the same hotel room. He's worried that they'll both be scowling on the cover. Shige points out that it's more likely they'll have a big physical fight, but at least it'd look suitably cartoonish.
Tego reckons that it doesn't matter if they do, because Ryo's tiny and Yamapi can take him. Yamapi says nothing, just takes his luggage up to the room.
He's in the shower when Ryo comes up, and his stuff is all over both beds. Ryo sits on the chair and puts the television on, finds something cookery-related that he thinks will be Yamapi's thing, and waits. When Yamapi comes out his eyes catch the screen, some sort of cake with cream and strawberries and for a moment, he's transfixed.
“You hate cooking shows,” he says.
Ryo shrugs. “You like them.”
Yamapi tugs a t-shirt on over his towel. His back is still a bit wet and the fabric sticks. “Yeah, well.”
“Why are you being like this?” Ryo says, to fill the silence. It isn't quite as he'd intended to put it, but, well, bluntness works.
“Like what?”
“All kind of. Like a girl I've done something to.”
Yamapi looks at him. “What?”
“Like. No, not like a girl. Just. Sulky. You're sulking.”
“I'm not sulking.”
“You're brooding, then.”
“I'm not a hen.”
“Oh, for fuck's sake. You're being pissed off in a masculine sort of way. Happy?”
Yamapi's lips quirk a bit. “No, obviously not, if I'm pissed off in a masculine sort of way.”
“Shut up. This whole fucking band has gotten all sarcastic since I've been gone.”
“You've softened, so that works, no? Subaru's work, I think.”
“This is about Subaru?”
Yamapi looks at him. There's a long silence. Ryo looks at him, and starts to laugh, because he can't help it. Because the idea is just. He doesn't know. It's as if he's entered a parallel dimension where the wife really is pissed because he's slept with the girlfriend.
“It was just a stage thing,” Ryo says. Yamapi is looking at him curiously. “Just a stage thing. Heat of the moment. You know what he's like.”
“Yeah,” Yamapi says. “It wasn't him. It was you. That he was...with you.”
“You're jealous.”
Yamapi shrugs. “A bit.”
“Well, that's fucking stupid. We agreed we weren't going to do anything about our...thing.”
“Yeah, but that was because there was beer involved. I think it was a bad decision.”
“We wouldn't have admitted it if not for the beer.”
Yamapi can't argue with that. “Yeah, well, the beer is still bad. I think it was the wrong thing to do.”
Ryo runs a hand into his hair and tries to process. “You want to make it a thing?”
“I want to try it.”
“What about the band? All the stuff you said would get in the way?”
“Subaru gets away with it,” Yamapi shrugs.
“Yeah, it's all just...kissing on stage and pretending to feel us all up, though.” Ryo couldn't ever have imagined himself, as a young man, having this conversation. If he'd seen this at eleven years old, he'd have hung himself. “It's not real. You want this to be real.”
Yamapi blinks. “He's with Yasu.”
“He is not.”
They look at each other.
Ryo swallows. Things fall into place.
“How did you know if I didn't know?!”
Yamapi just taps his nose, grinning. Wives know everything, he seems to say. Ryo is staggered. Feels he should apologise to Yasu but then Yasu watched the kiss, grinning. Kanjani8 is the kinkiest girlfriend ever.
“So,” Yamapi says. “Is that a 'yes'?”
Ryo thinks it over. “If you can get me a week off and take me on holiday, it's a yes.”
The weird thing about being in JE is that it changes your outlook on almost everything. Ryo isn't fond of labels, he just goes with what he feels. And JE has made him feel a lot of different things no other job could, including both colossal embarrassment and some unbelievable highs. And kissing men, that's a whole other different feeling. But it isn't bad, and that's the weird thing about being in JE. There's no other place that Ryo feels more himself: whether submitting or dominating or whatever it is he does with all of his bands. These are just parts of himself, both honest and true and harmonious parts of himself.
The trick is allowing just one person to see both. That's the only way to banish the feeling that he's being unfaithful. The only way to bridge the gap. Yamapi gets NEWS another week off. Ryo doesn't know how he does it, and he doesn't much care. They take Ryo's car and they go on a road trip, Ryo navigating, Yamapi driving. Ryo's navigation is as bad as Yamapi's hand-eye co-ordination and his tendency to pick up his 'cell. First Jin, then Tego, then Koyama, then Ryo, who tells him to put the fucking 'cell away before he throws it into the dust by the road.
They check into a small guest house somewhere in the hills, populated by people over sixty who feed them and don't know enough about music to realise they're in the company of superstars. Yamapi is pleased: anonymity and a full stomach some sort of mystical combination. And having Ryo all to himself makes it a holy trinity. They walk around the lakes when it gets dark, breathing in fresh air and quiet and the feeling of their fingers brushing together as they walk, side by side. It takes a while for the straw to snap. They take things slowly, with a luxury they never normally have. They spend a week out there in the peace, taking boats onto the lake, doing a bit of fishing and a bit of hill climbing. They gradually get closer in bed, Yamapi sleeping almost on Ryo. It's irritatingly endearing.
On the second last night there, Yamapi comes out of the bathroom and puts the television on to find a cooking show. Ryo snatches the remote up and changes it back to men on tiny little motorbikes, riding around this sideways ring and falling over. Yamapi makes a face. He still has his toothbrush in his mouth and his sweatpants are falling down, his t-shirt riding up. Ryo looks at him, all askew, and it feels right. Everything feels right. He throws the remote onto the floor and puts his hands on Yamapi's hips, tugs him a bit until Yamapi relents and places himself in Ryo's lap. The toothbrush remains because Yamapi thinks it's funny, Ryo's face, until Ryo takes it away and fumbles it onto the bedside table. There's kissing, slow at first and then fevered, as Ryo's hands find Yamapi's shoulderblades, warm under his shirt.
“My thighs have gone to sleep,” Yamapi says, through kissing.
Ryo sighs and gruffly gets up, moves him onto his back. Yamapi loops a foot around Ryo's back and it falls onto him, sleepily, so Ryo goes 'ow' and bites his collarbone. It doesn't seem to put Yamapi off. Nothing seems to put Yamapi off. Once he's on, he's on, and the problem with this is that Ryo can't tear himself away, can't bring himself to do it, to get lube and condoms, and so he waits for Yamapi to break the kiss before he can bring it up. Which is when he realises that Yamapi knows, he always knows, and he's saying 'yes' against Ryo's mouth. When Ryo leans back on his heels, Yamapi is taking his shirt off and Ryo is looking through the bedside drawer, like a new science student assembling different test supplies. Confusion is there on his face, which makes Yamapi laugh, grabbing everything up in his hands.
“Don't do-” Ryo begins, folding his arms.
“First, condoms!” Yamapi says, all wicked instruction. “Do you know what a condom is, Ryo?”
“I know what a fucking condom is!”
“Excellent!” Yamapi says. “You did the banana test, huh?”
Ryo looks at him. Yamapi looks back, waggles his eyebrows, raises his hips and waits. Ryo holds onto the bone, and Yamapi wriggles a bit more until Ryo yanks on his sweatpants and then he smiles, the corner of his mouth. It's sexy and Ryo likes it, but he's still none the wiser about what he's supposed to do now. This isn't part of the JE induction, surprisingly enough.
The good thing about Yamapi, about wives, is that they too can be intriguingly kinky. Yamapi, when in the mood, has a characteristic lack of self-consciousness and he happily prepares himself whilst Ryo watches, all hard and breathing through his nostrils, until Ryo feels he'd rather like to put a stop to that and tease Yamapi a bit himself. He does, clumsily, not even sure he's doing it right until Yamapi's cool voice drops, flattens into a long, hard moan. Ryo's so surprised he nearly stops altogether, so aroused he nearly drops the tube in his hand. Well. It's probably a good thing this isn't part of the JE induction. It'd be far too much of an encouragement.
Yamapi turns over onto his hands and knees, a signal of readiness which Ryo isn't having. He flattens him onto his back and kneels between his knees, swallowing down nerves and insecurity as he tugs his own shirt off, rids himself of trousers. Yamapi is nothing but encouraging and a fair bit perverted, his hands dropping down to stroke Ryo, who is half-stuck in his t-shirt.
“Gnak,” he says. “Pi. Stop it.”
“Are you stuck?” Yamapi says. “Are you seriously stuck?”
“No,” Ryo says. “You're distracting me. Stop it.”
Yamapi does, but only for the length of time it takes Ryo to get his shirt off and then he starts again, so Ryo hands him the condom and lets him have done with it, leaning down to kiss his neck, underside of jaw, earlobe. Yamapi turns his head obligingly and his hands drop, so Ryo feels ready, at last. Yamapi wraps one leg around his lower back and Ryo moves forward, and then inside, grunting and trying to think of things completely unrelated to a hard cock and a tight, wet entrance, and failing, because Yamapi's breathing is hard and his hands are clawing Ryo's shoulders. He stops, enough to not embarrass himself and enough for Yamapi's face to relax, enough to hear him say,
“Okay. It's okay. It's okay.”
And to start again, even worse the second time, the second time he feels teeth in his shoulder and he swats Yamapi, who growls at him. “You wait until your turn,” he mutters. “You'll fucking bite me, too.”
“Sorry,” Ryo says. He's stopped again. “Sorry.”
“It's okay,” Yamapi says. With his leg, he moves Ryo in, to get it all over with, and they make the exact same noise at the exact same time: a long sound like a car screeching off. It makes them both laugh, them both relax, and Ryo is glad it's Yamapi. It could only be Yamapi.
They don't talk after that. Not verbally. Ryo lies until Yamapi moves and then he eases, in, then out, the sensation easier with every thrust. They move from grunting to moaning to all out cries of pleasure, Yamapi's hands knotting in Ryo's hair and his hips moving just as fast as Ryo's. Ryo tries to find the angle that works, the speed that works, whilst he still has consciousness enough to do it. Before long, the noises Yamapi's making, they remove his capacity to think and he reacts on pure sensation. His hands moves from Yamapi's hip to his cock, and when he touches it Yamapi's hips jerk up and he calls out, “yes, yes, yes, more, please” and that's all Ryo really needs. From then it's clumsy and fast and elbows knock together and chins clash, but it's real and true and honest, the sweat from Ryo's forehead onto Yamapi's face real, the feeling of their faces together as they kiss and bite and moan real. Everything real.
It doesn't last, the feeling, it can't. Yamapi moves up for the last few seconds, pushes them both upright until he's in Ryo's lap, limp and weak as a kitten. He rolls his hips as Ryo moves upwards, hard, into him, and his mouth is at Ryo's ear and his arms are over Ryo's shoulders and he clings, clings, clings until Ryo yells out and then he mewls with utter submission ten seconds later. Neither of them can breathe, or speak, or open their eyes. The only thing in the world is this. Yamapi turns his head so that Ryo's cheek brushes his chin and their eyes meet, all lidded and spent and pleased. Yamapi smiles, so Ryo smiles. They're both unkempt, hair sticking up and sweat like a river running down the sheets and everywhere, but Ryo's never seen anything this beautiful or this right.
The hardest thing about being in two JE bands is that these holidays are few are far-between. Ryo is away from Yamapi a lot, and resisting the temptation to rough up against his Kanjani8 bandmates in the meantime, that's hard. In the end, he loses a girlfriend but keeps a wife, and that's more than enough for him. The holidays Yamapi and Ryo take when they have the time, that's enough. They drive a car somewhere nobody knows them and together, they discover a whole other part of Ryo that isn't related to JE at all. And that part isn't divided at all, just Yamapi's. Just the way it should be.
Fandom: JE
Pairing: Ryo/Yamapi
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Sex. For
elyndys, who gave me a plotbunny. I cannot write Kanjani8, oh god, I know NOTHING about them. I am so sorry. Summary: Yamapi has something to say after seeing Ryo and Subaru kissing onstage.
“What's the hardest thing about being in two bands?” is the question Ryo thinks he's asked most often. It's not the question he thinks he should be asked most often (what the hell would he ask somebody who did his job?), but that's life. He thinks that the answer should be, “it's like having a wife and a girlfriend but neither of them are putting out.”
The problem with being in two bands isn't on Kanjani8's end. Kanjani8 is the alluring mistress. Ryo encounters no particular jealousy or possessiveness from the boys in Kanjani8. It's odd but the more flirtatious he gets with the boys in NEWS, the more he plays up to the fanservice – the more Subaru seems to egg him on. He's never understood that, but then there's lots about Subaru he doesn't understand.
NEWS are more prickly about Ryo's schedule. NEWS is a scorned and all-knowing wife. They're more aware that he's two people for two bands, that he's being unfaithful. For NEWS, Ryo dominates, he pretends to be mean, he pretends to be too cool for it all. For Kanjani8, he becomes as much of a dork as the rest of them. He submits, as Subaru might say. Only there's no putting out in either band, so what the point of it all is, he doesn't know.
The point of it all becomes harder to find the longer he goes without having a day off. He browses the newspapers on the tour bus and sees pictures of Yamapi lounging about on beaches, reads gossip stories about members of KAT-TUN apparently having girlfriends. Touring is the best part of being in a band, but the summer is a hot one and he's exhausted. Knowing that he'll go straight from the Kanjani8 tour back into NEWS' next single and album publicity, that's even more exhausting.
He wants a holiday. To sit on a beach with Yamapi, or maybe get a girlfriend like Junno. Well, not like Junno, obviously, a girlfriend like Junno's. Or possibly to sit on a beach with his girlfriend Yamapi.
“I'm starting to think like you,” he says, accusingly, down the bus, to the hat on Subaru's head. Everyone looks up except Subaru, who just laughs in an annoyingly vague, dirty sort of way.
Yamapi wouldn't make a good girlfriend, probably. He makes a poor enough wife. But the urge is there, all the same. Ryo plays at fanservice with the whole of NEWS, except Yamapi, because with Yamapi there's the need for it to be real and Ryo stays away from heavy red lines on the ground. Subaru tells him that he should play around with Yamapi, just like that, play around onstage, but Ryo can't and it bothers him. It seems to bother Yamapi, too. They've discussed it, their respective interest in each other. Over too many beers and too much horny melancholy. It was surprisingly nonchalant. They don't play at anything, that was the agreement.
Subaru would make an even worse girlfriend, but he has the kind of courage that Yamapi doesn't, the kind of courage that allows him to rough up against anyone he particularly likes the look of, trusting that his bandmates know him well enough to humour him. That's the thing about Subaru, about Kanjani8. They're uncomplicated. They accept, they flirt. They tease. They say: we are easy. Take us. The thing about Yamapi, and NEWS, is that Ryo has to work for it. And like the sort of masochist who'd be in two fucking bands in the first place, Ryo lusts after challenges.
When Ryo tries to explain all of it to Subaru, before the show, he has to keep shoving Yasu out of the dressing room. Yasu wants to hear the secret merely because they don't want him to, and Ryo's trying to talk as fast as he can. He doesn't get so far as to explaining the Yamapi thing, untangling that would take far too long. But he explains the horniness and the wife/girlfriend metaphor, and Subaru waggles his eyebrows a lot but says that he understands. There's a look in his eye that suggests he's going to do something about it, which makes Ryo a bit afraid, truth be told. Everyone is afraid of Ryo but it's the person Ryo's afraid of that they should really fear, he thinks.
The show goes well and there's no strike, no evil, malicious plot of doom. Ryo feels that he can relax. Which is obviously the chosen moment for a strike, an evil, malicious plot of doom. Subaru is singing one minute and then he's not, then he's leaning over and smacking one on Ryo, and it's nice, it goes with the mood and when he draws back they're both smiling. There's no hidden message, no wicked intent. It's just Subaru, reminding Ryo of why he keeps the girlfriend around so much. And perhaps, just perhaps, there's a little bit of a nudge of goodbye there, too. Ryo understands that. There's a lot he doesn't understand about Subaru, but he understands that.
Unsurprisingly, the picture gets to be almost everywhere and Ryo imagines that he has Pleased Johnny Kitagawa, singularly the scariest idea ever. When the tour ends and he has one day off, the one he sleeps through, he misses the start of the scandal. Returning to NEWS, he has very little conception of what's happened, the stir going through the band. The tanned band, actually. Relaxed, tanned band. Except Yamapi, who is neither relaxed nor tanned, despite having sunbathed all summer. Tego gives Ryo an evil eye and slaps him on the back.
“You said you were working all summer, huh? Didn't look like working to me.”
Ryo glares at him. “115-”
Tego grins. “Kissing your bandmates isn't work. Unless you're paying them. Are you paying them? The size of that mouth, it must be costing you. Maybe that's why you have to be in two bands, for the money.”
Ryo is struck dumb. It happens rarely and Koyama stares at him completely wide-eyed, almost as if he's counting the seconds.
“How did you get more evil?” Ryo splutters. “I go away for a few months and you turn into Damien from the fucking Omen!”
Yamapi looks up from his magazine. His eyes are dark and his face inscrutable. “He made up for you not being here.”
“I'm not evil,” Ryo says. “Just sarcastic.”
“And unscrupulous,” Yamapi says. “Don't forget unscrupulous.”
Ryo narrows his eyes, a little stung. “I'm not-”
Koyama suddenly stops counting, notes the danger and claps his hands together.
“We have work to do,” he says. He means the album, of course, but the meaning hangs in the air like morning mist.
There's something insane about singing bouncy, happy pop songs with someone you're not speaking to, Ryo thinks. His eyes keep catching Yamapi's and darting off, their mouths all set in a line, and yet they're singing this inanely cheerful record about dreams and love and never giving up. The problem with being in just one JE band is this sort of surreal nonsense.
Koyama does a bit of work when they go for their single cover photoshoots, to get Yamapi and Ryo into the same hotel room. He's worried that they'll both be scowling on the cover. Shige points out that it's more likely they'll have a big physical fight, but at least it'd look suitably cartoonish.
Tego reckons that it doesn't matter if they do, because Ryo's tiny and Yamapi can take him. Yamapi says nothing, just takes his luggage up to the room.
He's in the shower when Ryo comes up, and his stuff is all over both beds. Ryo sits on the chair and puts the television on, finds something cookery-related that he thinks will be Yamapi's thing, and waits. When Yamapi comes out his eyes catch the screen, some sort of cake with cream and strawberries and for a moment, he's transfixed.
“You hate cooking shows,” he says.
Ryo shrugs. “You like them.”
Yamapi tugs a t-shirt on over his towel. His back is still a bit wet and the fabric sticks. “Yeah, well.”
“Why are you being like this?” Ryo says, to fill the silence. It isn't quite as he'd intended to put it, but, well, bluntness works.
“Like what?”
“All kind of. Like a girl I've done something to.”
Yamapi looks at him. “What?”
“Like. No, not like a girl. Just. Sulky. You're sulking.”
“I'm not sulking.”
“You're brooding, then.”
“I'm not a hen.”
“Oh, for fuck's sake. You're being pissed off in a masculine sort of way. Happy?”
Yamapi's lips quirk a bit. “No, obviously not, if I'm pissed off in a masculine sort of way.”
“Shut up. This whole fucking band has gotten all sarcastic since I've been gone.”
“You've softened, so that works, no? Subaru's work, I think.”
“This is about Subaru?”
Yamapi looks at him. There's a long silence. Ryo looks at him, and starts to laugh, because he can't help it. Because the idea is just. He doesn't know. It's as if he's entered a parallel dimension where the wife really is pissed because he's slept with the girlfriend.
“It was just a stage thing,” Ryo says. Yamapi is looking at him curiously. “Just a stage thing. Heat of the moment. You know what he's like.”
“Yeah,” Yamapi says. “It wasn't him. It was you. That he was...with you.”
“You're jealous.”
Yamapi shrugs. “A bit.”
“Well, that's fucking stupid. We agreed we weren't going to do anything about our...thing.”
“Yeah, but that was because there was beer involved. I think it was a bad decision.”
“We wouldn't have admitted it if not for the beer.”
Yamapi can't argue with that. “Yeah, well, the beer is still bad. I think it was the wrong thing to do.”
Ryo runs a hand into his hair and tries to process. “You want to make it a thing?”
“I want to try it.”
“What about the band? All the stuff you said would get in the way?”
“Subaru gets away with it,” Yamapi shrugs.
“Yeah, it's all just...kissing on stage and pretending to feel us all up, though.” Ryo couldn't ever have imagined himself, as a young man, having this conversation. If he'd seen this at eleven years old, he'd have hung himself. “It's not real. You want this to be real.”
Yamapi blinks. “He's with Yasu.”
“He is not.”
They look at each other.
Ryo swallows. Things fall into place.
“How did you know if I didn't know?!”
Yamapi just taps his nose, grinning. Wives know everything, he seems to say. Ryo is staggered. Feels he should apologise to Yasu but then Yasu watched the kiss, grinning. Kanjani8 is the kinkiest girlfriend ever.
“So,” Yamapi says. “Is that a 'yes'?”
Ryo thinks it over. “If you can get me a week off and take me on holiday, it's a yes.”
The weird thing about being in JE is that it changes your outlook on almost everything. Ryo isn't fond of labels, he just goes with what he feels. And JE has made him feel a lot of different things no other job could, including both colossal embarrassment and some unbelievable highs. And kissing men, that's a whole other different feeling. But it isn't bad, and that's the weird thing about being in JE. There's no other place that Ryo feels more himself: whether submitting or dominating or whatever it is he does with all of his bands. These are just parts of himself, both honest and true and harmonious parts of himself.
The trick is allowing just one person to see both. That's the only way to banish the feeling that he's being unfaithful. The only way to bridge the gap. Yamapi gets NEWS another week off. Ryo doesn't know how he does it, and he doesn't much care. They take Ryo's car and they go on a road trip, Ryo navigating, Yamapi driving. Ryo's navigation is as bad as Yamapi's hand-eye co-ordination and his tendency to pick up his 'cell. First Jin, then Tego, then Koyama, then Ryo, who tells him to put the fucking 'cell away before he throws it into the dust by the road.
They check into a small guest house somewhere in the hills, populated by people over sixty who feed them and don't know enough about music to realise they're in the company of superstars. Yamapi is pleased: anonymity and a full stomach some sort of mystical combination. And having Ryo all to himself makes it a holy trinity. They walk around the lakes when it gets dark, breathing in fresh air and quiet and the feeling of their fingers brushing together as they walk, side by side. It takes a while for the straw to snap. They take things slowly, with a luxury they never normally have. They spend a week out there in the peace, taking boats onto the lake, doing a bit of fishing and a bit of hill climbing. They gradually get closer in bed, Yamapi sleeping almost on Ryo. It's irritatingly endearing.
On the second last night there, Yamapi comes out of the bathroom and puts the television on to find a cooking show. Ryo snatches the remote up and changes it back to men on tiny little motorbikes, riding around this sideways ring and falling over. Yamapi makes a face. He still has his toothbrush in his mouth and his sweatpants are falling down, his t-shirt riding up. Ryo looks at him, all askew, and it feels right. Everything feels right. He throws the remote onto the floor and puts his hands on Yamapi's hips, tugs him a bit until Yamapi relents and places himself in Ryo's lap. The toothbrush remains because Yamapi thinks it's funny, Ryo's face, until Ryo takes it away and fumbles it onto the bedside table. There's kissing, slow at first and then fevered, as Ryo's hands find Yamapi's shoulderblades, warm under his shirt.
“My thighs have gone to sleep,” Yamapi says, through kissing.
Ryo sighs and gruffly gets up, moves him onto his back. Yamapi loops a foot around Ryo's back and it falls onto him, sleepily, so Ryo goes 'ow' and bites his collarbone. It doesn't seem to put Yamapi off. Nothing seems to put Yamapi off. Once he's on, he's on, and the problem with this is that Ryo can't tear himself away, can't bring himself to do it, to get lube and condoms, and so he waits for Yamapi to break the kiss before he can bring it up. Which is when he realises that Yamapi knows, he always knows, and he's saying 'yes' against Ryo's mouth. When Ryo leans back on his heels, Yamapi is taking his shirt off and Ryo is looking through the bedside drawer, like a new science student assembling different test supplies. Confusion is there on his face, which makes Yamapi laugh, grabbing everything up in his hands.
“Don't do-” Ryo begins, folding his arms.
“First, condoms!” Yamapi says, all wicked instruction. “Do you know what a condom is, Ryo?”
“I know what a fucking condom is!”
“Excellent!” Yamapi says. “You did the banana test, huh?”
Ryo looks at him. Yamapi looks back, waggles his eyebrows, raises his hips and waits. Ryo holds onto the bone, and Yamapi wriggles a bit more until Ryo yanks on his sweatpants and then he smiles, the corner of his mouth. It's sexy and Ryo likes it, but he's still none the wiser about what he's supposed to do now. This isn't part of the JE induction, surprisingly enough.
The good thing about Yamapi, about wives, is that they too can be intriguingly kinky. Yamapi, when in the mood, has a characteristic lack of self-consciousness and he happily prepares himself whilst Ryo watches, all hard and breathing through his nostrils, until Ryo feels he'd rather like to put a stop to that and tease Yamapi a bit himself. He does, clumsily, not even sure he's doing it right until Yamapi's cool voice drops, flattens into a long, hard moan. Ryo's so surprised he nearly stops altogether, so aroused he nearly drops the tube in his hand. Well. It's probably a good thing this isn't part of the JE induction. It'd be far too much of an encouragement.
Yamapi turns over onto his hands and knees, a signal of readiness which Ryo isn't having. He flattens him onto his back and kneels between his knees, swallowing down nerves and insecurity as he tugs his own shirt off, rids himself of trousers. Yamapi is nothing but encouraging and a fair bit perverted, his hands dropping down to stroke Ryo, who is half-stuck in his t-shirt.
“Gnak,” he says. “Pi. Stop it.”
“Are you stuck?” Yamapi says. “Are you seriously stuck?”
“No,” Ryo says. “You're distracting me. Stop it.”
Yamapi does, but only for the length of time it takes Ryo to get his shirt off and then he starts again, so Ryo hands him the condom and lets him have done with it, leaning down to kiss his neck, underside of jaw, earlobe. Yamapi turns his head obligingly and his hands drop, so Ryo feels ready, at last. Yamapi wraps one leg around his lower back and Ryo moves forward, and then inside, grunting and trying to think of things completely unrelated to a hard cock and a tight, wet entrance, and failing, because Yamapi's breathing is hard and his hands are clawing Ryo's shoulders. He stops, enough to not embarrass himself and enough for Yamapi's face to relax, enough to hear him say,
“Okay. It's okay. It's okay.”
And to start again, even worse the second time, the second time he feels teeth in his shoulder and he swats Yamapi, who growls at him. “You wait until your turn,” he mutters. “You'll fucking bite me, too.”
“Sorry,” Ryo says. He's stopped again. “Sorry.”
“It's okay,” Yamapi says. With his leg, he moves Ryo in, to get it all over with, and they make the exact same noise at the exact same time: a long sound like a car screeching off. It makes them both laugh, them both relax, and Ryo is glad it's Yamapi. It could only be Yamapi.
They don't talk after that. Not verbally. Ryo lies until Yamapi moves and then he eases, in, then out, the sensation easier with every thrust. They move from grunting to moaning to all out cries of pleasure, Yamapi's hands knotting in Ryo's hair and his hips moving just as fast as Ryo's. Ryo tries to find the angle that works, the speed that works, whilst he still has consciousness enough to do it. Before long, the noises Yamapi's making, they remove his capacity to think and he reacts on pure sensation. His hands moves from Yamapi's hip to his cock, and when he touches it Yamapi's hips jerk up and he calls out, “yes, yes, yes, more, please” and that's all Ryo really needs. From then it's clumsy and fast and elbows knock together and chins clash, but it's real and true and honest, the sweat from Ryo's forehead onto Yamapi's face real, the feeling of their faces together as they kiss and bite and moan real. Everything real.
It doesn't last, the feeling, it can't. Yamapi moves up for the last few seconds, pushes them both upright until he's in Ryo's lap, limp and weak as a kitten. He rolls his hips as Ryo moves upwards, hard, into him, and his mouth is at Ryo's ear and his arms are over Ryo's shoulders and he clings, clings, clings until Ryo yells out and then he mewls with utter submission ten seconds later. Neither of them can breathe, or speak, or open their eyes. The only thing in the world is this. Yamapi turns his head so that Ryo's cheek brushes his chin and their eyes meet, all lidded and spent and pleased. Yamapi smiles, so Ryo smiles. They're both unkempt, hair sticking up and sweat like a river running down the sheets and everywhere, but Ryo's never seen anything this beautiful or this right.
The hardest thing about being in two JE bands is that these holidays are few are far-between. Ryo is away from Yamapi a lot, and resisting the temptation to rough up against his Kanjani8 bandmates in the meantime, that's hard. In the end, he loses a girlfriend but keeps a wife, and that's more than enough for him. The holidays Yamapi and Ryo take when they have the time, that's enough. They drive a car somewhere nobody knows them and together, they discover a whole other part of Ryo that isn't related to JE at all. And that part isn't divided at all, just Yamapi's. Just the way it should be.