Chapter 3
There were lines showing on Hiro's face when he turned up at the studio, with Yuki close behind. He had asked Yuki not to come down though he hadn't listened; his best friend and Yuki had had almost fights every time they met each other, strangely enough, Hiro winning more verbal wars than Yuki.
Some of it went away, and his features softened slightly when he saw Shuichi looking apologetically at him. "Sorry," he said anyway, obligated.
Hiro shook his head slightly, leaving the matter closed and done with. He raised an eyebrow though, when he saw Yuki smirking right back at him from behind Shuichi.
"Come to see your boyfriend croon love songs?" he asked dryly, smiling. His teeth was gritted.
Shuichi sighed inwardly.
Yuki responded by wrapping both his arms around Shuichi, and dropped little kisses on the top of his head. He flushed, then squirmed, trying to get out of his grasp. "Yeah," Yuki said, flashing a satisfied grin. "How did you know?"
Hiro rolled his eyes, then reached out a hand towards Shuichi. "C'mon, dumbass," he said. "K is going to kill you if you don't get in there soon. Fujisaki was about to leave when you came. He said he wasn't going to wait for you but I stopped him."
That reminded him. He looked around, and the studio was empty save for two technicians, Hiro, Fujisaki in the recording room, and a pile of guitars and drum sets. No sign of a trigger-happy K anywhere. Breathing a huge sigh of relief, he shook off Yuki's hands and took Hiro's. "Sorry for being late," he said again. He turned back, caught Yuki's roll of his eyes and laughed. "I'll call you later," he promised and pushed open the door that lead to a menacing-looking Fujisaki.
Yuki nodded slightly, and walked off with one hand in his pocket, and the other handling a cigarette. Shuichi noticed that he didn't turn left, where they had come from, but instead, he walked off into the right hallway, presumably to pay a visit to Tohma.
When the silhouette of Yuki couldn't be seen any longer, Shuichi found himself cuffed on the head, and fighting for breath in the headlock Hiro was holding him in. "I'm going to kill you once I'm done," Hiro said, before releasing him. There was a light in his tired eyes, though his mouth was drawn down into a frown.
Shuichi pouted. "I'm sure you could have handled them."
His best friend made several incoherent noises and pulled at his hair. He then rambled on and on a bout how K would shoot at anything that moved and how Sakano made hyperventilating noises every 5 minutes so Hiro had to get the first aid team on stand-by, and how Fujisaki kept describing the ways he would torture Shuichi. "Usually I can't handle the four of you and you're the loudest of them all," Hiro mock-raged, poking Shuichi in the shoulder. "But with you gone, it's even worse!"
"Aww, I love you too," he said happily, and elbowed Hiro. Hiro rolled his eyes and mumbled, "Honestly, Shuichi…"
Fujisaki wasn't having any small talk. He walked out, and pushed a crumpled sheet of paper into Shuichi's hands. "The score," he said curtly and pointed towards the blackened notes, all dotting the lines in a pattern.
"I'll modify them, to suit the final composition and once you are done with the lyrics."
Shuichi gulped.
The lyrics.
He reached to smoothen out the wrinkles in the paper so he could read the notes before forming an emergency plan to come up with verses to the songs he had promised would be done before the day ended, when Hiro snatched the piece of paper right out of his hands.
"I need it," he said to a scowling Fujisaki. "I am not done with my guitar licks."
The other boy shrugged, and threw up his hands in the air. "Suit yourselves, the both of you. I'm done for the day."
"Thanks," Shuichi breathed a sigh of relief when Fujisaki's head went bobbing out the door, presumably also, to pay a visit to Tohma. He noticed, irritably, that he had been spending far too much time with the head producer lately, and some of Tohma's arrogance and threatening characteristic had rubbed off on him. He had mellowed down a little bit, and learned not to be so high strung over the years, especially when it came to Shuichi, but Tohma apparently decided the band needed reigning in. And so, Fujisaki was called in ever so often to have tea with his dear uncle; and returned to the recording studio more often that not a tyrant.
"Here," Hiro said, and pressed into Shuichi's palms, two sheets of white paper, and several 2B pencils. He stopped short, and decided that there was something he had forgotten. Rummaging in his left pocket, he fished out several leftover candy wrappers, a girl's photograph (which Shuichi tried unsuccessfully to snatch) and some loose change before dropping a smaller scrap of paper into Shuichi's hands.
"For inspiration," Hiro grinned, his eyes crinkling.
He stared at the handwriting on the piece of paper.
Good luck with your upcoming album!
p/s: Tohma is a meanie. Tatsuha keeps calling.
Ryuichi.
"Hirooo," he breathed in awe before looking up at his best friend, all starry-eyed. Then he stopped. As far as he knew, Ryuichi was in the states for another unplanned holiday. He was gone since June, a few months ago.
Hiro seemed to know his thoughts. "Ryuichi said to give it to you when you need it. I figured, now is a better time than any," Hiro shrugged.
He didn't need to say anything back. He never had to. He simply gripped the papers in his hands and headed for the low coffee table by the corner of the room, partially hidden by the enormous equipment framing the walls and blocking the pathways. Hiro reached for his acoustic guitar and sat down with Shuichi at the couch.
There was nothing to be heard except the sounds of Hiro strumming the guitar and the scratch of the pencil on paper. Occasionally, Hiro would like a sound he made so he played it over and over and over again, until he was fairly satisfied.
They worked till it was night, though Shuichi hadn't noticed. He never carried a watch with him, and the studio came without windows. It was only when Hiro yawned hugely, and rubbed his left shoulder where the guitar strap bit into the flesh, that he realized they had been there quite a long while. He looked down at his sheet of paper; a mess collection of scribbles and rhymes, until he could no longer see the white from the black. Still, it wasn't finished.
He looked up at his best friend, who was now taking a cigarette break. The room was dark, save for a lone light over the top of their heads, and the spot of red from his lighted stick.
"Don't you have to meet Ayaka? Yuki told me she was in town." Shuichi asked, leaning back on the sofa. His bright green shorts made funny sounds against the leather, shutting out the quiet of the room.
"…Yeah, I do," Hiro replied after a long pause, and an extra drag.
Shuichi raised an eyebrow.
Hiro laughed, lifting the guitar strap over his shoulder and resting the axe in its case. He shut it with a snap, and stabbed the cigarette in the ash tray. "I'll be going then. Sure you'll be okay? Sakano-san will stop by to check later."
Shuichi nodded, rolling his eyes like he was eight. "I won't get kidnapped, I won't get locked in, and I won't be lonely," he chanted, pulling a face at Hiro's old man expression.
"Yup, you sure are old enough to take care of yourself," Hiro deadpanned, and received a ball of paper in the face before Shuichi gasped, and leapt from the couch to retrieve it again. He smoothed it with shaking fingers, and hoped desperately his carbon lyrics didn't suddenly melt or smudge from the violent act.
Hiro smacked a hand to his forehead and wondered aloud if he would ever stop worrying over Shuichi, to Shuichi's heated remarks that he should get going or Ayaka would get mad, and then Tatsuha will find out, and Yuki will know from Tatsuha, and due to Yuki's family pressure, Shuichi would be obligated to give Hiro a long lecture on how to treat the ladies right.
Hiro waved a tired hand, resigned, and defeated, and yelled out one more time that Shuichi had better make sure he turned off the Mac in the room, and took home his lyric sheet, and Fujisaki's score, and that he would call him in an hour to remind him again before disappearing from the room, all bright and fuzzy at the edges because the fluorescent lights outside were so strong.
Yuki was waiting for him at home, though rather discreetly (he pretended he was working on his novel at his study, though Shuichi could see, from where he stood a few feet away, that all that was typed on the open document was gibberish and had funny words like 'pink' and 'annoying fuzzball'). He had a hand around a glass of wine, and he looked up instantly, when Shuichi opened the door and beamed and said "I'm back Yuki!" quite loudly.
"You're noisy," he replied, his traditional way of saying welcome back.
He shrugged off his backpack, and dropped it with a thud on the floor, and padded all the way to Yuki's chair, to give him a kiss on the forehead. Somehow though, along the way, it led to mussed hair, and shared tongues, and moments of catching breath.
Yuki stopped just as Shuichi suppressed a throated groan, and smirked. He pushed back his chair, and shrugged Shuichi off, and headed out the study. "No sex, right, Shu-chan?" Yuki asked smoothly, and ignored Shuichi's cry of disbelief.
"That's not fair, Yuki. You started it first," Shuichi whined all the way to the kitchen, trudging in Yuki's shadow.
Yuki didn't answer but pulled out a bowl, and two packets, one had a ball of ramen, and the other hot soup, from the counter. Shuichi's eyes glittered at the sight, and his mouth watered. Food. He hadn't had any since the afternoon when he had sashimi with Yuki. He suppressed the urge to laugh manically. At this rate, Yuki could be qualified to be a housewife!
Yuki mumbled something along the lines of having dinner with Mika-san, and they had ramen (though Shuichi knew very well that Mika-san would never eat ramen, because she wanted to watch her figure) so he decided to buy back dinner for Shuichi too, which would otherwise be instant noodles.
There was two calls during dinner; one from Yuki's editor, who told him to hurry the fuck up, and that she would be stopping by a few days from now to pick up his latest work, at which Yuki told her in very polite words to fuck off, and the other from Hiro, who wanted to know whether Shuichi remembered to take home his lyrics.
Shuichi gasped in horror, and took the appropriate steps to freak out, and Hiro said "I knew it!" and said with a triumphant tone, that he had left the sheets of paper in the mailbox.
At this point, Yuki lighted another cigarette and observed with condescending tones that Hiro should learn to stop babying Shuichi, because he was never going to grow up to become a proper adult like everyone else.
Shuichi grinned, and made kissy faces at Yuki and he relented, and they forgot about the sheets of paper lying in the mailbox, and had sex on the kitchen table top.
K-san would be going ballistic when he finds out.
A/N: LMAO. The thought of Yuki being a housewife… :facepalms:
