A/N - DESPITE the fact that my blog is basically SLBP-exclusive, my favorite Voltage game is actually Scandal in the Spotlight, hands down. (SLBP is a close second) The second season was kind of hit or miss for me, but I’ve really been digging Season 3 (even if Kota—my FAVORITE—had a plot device that is not my fav, I still enjoyed it) I’m REALLY surprised they went there with Nagi’s, but it was so perfect for him? And just, I really like SITS okay. Even if I just pretend Ryo doesn’t exist most of the time, sorry Mr Jellyfish it’s not personal, you’re totally fine just inconvenient.ANYWAY. Here is a fanfiction, written by someone who is writing about MC writing about the SITS boys. Part of my just-keep-writing-plan for NaNoWriMo.
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She had missed this.
Having her own place, finding her own inspiration, she was firmly proud of these things, but she also couldn’t deny how easy it was, how right it felt, to sit on their couch with her legs curled under her and Little Yamato’s slightly slobbering face in half of her lap and a notebook in the other. The Greeks may have had nine muses, but hers came in a sextet.
(An accurate term on more than one level, she might have considered, as the six of them traipsed into the living room from the practice studio, in varying degrees of sweat-soaked and disheveled, but she was focused, and failed to notice.)
Little Yamato whuffed, and with the loyalty and dedication of duplicitous amnesiac, abandoned her immediately in favor of Kyohei.
It was technically October, but her mind was far way in June. A month of water. A month of weddings, of romance. It was quiet in the shared studio, save for the rain pattering against the windows of the courtyard, but she was off in a field of flowers, puffs of purple and blue hydrangeas, willowy irises, watching a laughing, rueful couple try and stay dry in the meager shelter of a an ancient, gnarled tree. It was a pretty scene, and appropriate for the story she was trying to tell but…she willed the couple to come into greater focus. “Who are they?”
“Who are who?”
She answered absently, eyes still closed, “The romantic leads, of course. I don’t know who they are, yet.”
“Ooooh, why not use me? And Kota?” Her eyes snapped open, realizing that she had not, in fact, been holding an inner dialogue, but responding to Nagito. He was only a few inches from her face, grinning mischievously before he darted over to Kota, reaching for his bandmate, who avoided his grasp with the slinky, graceful body distortion of a cat refusing a proffered petting.
He turned to glare at Nagito, only when the couch stood as a barrier between them. “Leave me outta your weird fantasies.” His scowl only deepened, including the writer this time, and she let out a nervous giggle. “Both of you.”
Nagi pouted for only a moment before sliding onto the couch next to her, throwing a friendly arm over her shoulders and squeezing them tight in solidarity. “Fine, just me then. Who am I romancing, Miss Ghostwriter?”
She hardly noticed the arm, or Ryo and Takashi floating in after the others. She was already imagining half of the couple as her tall, curly-haired friend. As he came into focus, so too did the second person. She tapped her pen against her lips, but it came in a second, clear as day. “An assistant.”
“Like you, assistant manager?” That was Kyohei, grin cocksure and crooked. Lost in the story firming up in her head, she hardly reacted.
“No, no – like, for the runway shows. An efficient perfectionist.” She could see the woman clear as day – measuring tape around her neck, not because she was a designer, but because the designers always forgot them, and she was the sort to have everything on hand, instantly, with a faint, disapproving frown for the wayward and forgetful. “Tidy as a pin, and practical, but with fabulous shoes.”
Nagi leaned in, caught up in the make believe romance for him. “Why fabulous shoes?”
How to explain? “Because that’s the contrast.” She set her pen down unconsciously, because it freed her hands to gesture. “Nagi’s…wild, and fun, and free, and she’s frighteningly efficient, you know? He’d avoid her—she’s strict, and of course she has everything scheduled and under control, locked down Nagi would think—but, there’s something glamorous about good shoes, isn’t there?”
Kota, who had not in fact left, despite his pouting, looked skeptical at best, but Nagito nodded, and she took that as an indication to go on. “So there’s something interesting there. It makes you wonder—under the tidiness there must be something at least a little fanciful, a little fun. And they give her blisters, you know? And why would someone so practical, so on top of everything, wear shoes that would give her blisters?” She waited, but only silence met her. She sighed at them. “Because they’re pretty.”
“So they get together because of shoes?” Iori didn’t sound impressed, and she wagged her finger at his failure to understand.
“They get together because it’s a good balance. She’d take care of him a little, but not spoil him. And he’d bring her the fun she won’t let herself indulge in all the way. The shoes are just a conversation piece. And of course, she’s had a crush on him forever.”
“Really?” Nagi sounded delighted.
“Really?” Takashi sounded slightly confused.
“Of course! That’s partly why she’s so strict when you work together. It’s embarrassing. And she needs to be taken seriously, she doesn’t want to be seen as frivolous – she’s ambitious about her work. And more than anything, absolutely anything, she wants your show to be perfect, and when she wants something done perfectly by golly it will be.” It was so easy to see the woman in her head, ferociously determined, fierce, proud and protective. “But Nagi wants her to smile. And he trusts her. And she trusts him, because working with him, she sees how hard he works, and she wants to help all that hard work come together.”
Kota sighed, “I feel sorry for her.”
Nagito frowned, “What, hey! Why?”
Iori nodded in agreement with Kota, while Kyohei simply chuckled. Takashi’s expression remained neutral, but she didn’t see any of them, just a field of flowers.
“And it’s not until the day of the big runway show—it’s an outdoor show, of course—“ The field of hydrangeas rearranged itself, so instead they lined a catwalk, glistening in the gloom. “—But she’s prepared for the rain, there’s a tent and the guests and the models and the clothes are perfectly dry. There’s even extra setting spray, you know, for the make-up.”
“Of course,” One of them said—Iori, perhaps?—and if there was an eyeroll accompanying it, she ignored it.
“But, she hasn’t accounted for herself, because someone has to run to the main building for last efforts, and the interns were already busy, and anyway she wouldn’t ask one of them to do it, they’d get soaked, and she gets it done but she’s caught out in the worst of it! But Nagi’s noticed—“
“Of course I would!”
“And he runs out after her. But he gets soaked too, but he’s supposed to Emcee—“
“Typical,” Kota was slouched on the back of the coach, head in his hand with every indication he was bored—except for the fact he was being obvious about it.
“So she goes to scold him—“
“Aww, man!”
“You deserved it! She worked so hard to keep everyone dry!” She was incensed on her fictional friend’s behalf, but finished, bringing her hands together in dreamy pleasure, “But before she can, you pull out a pair of rainboots, just her size.”
Nagito smiled, a sort of floaty, content smile, and she caught the gleam in his eyes and knew he knew, as he finished for her. “So her nice shoes don’t get ruined in the rain.”
She nodded.
Kyohei waved his hand to get back to the point, “Alright, shoes, show, showers, how’s it end?”
That was easy. “Happily ever after.” Iori scoffed, and she scolded him once more, “Don’t you scoff. You asked for a love story.”
“Not all love stories end happily ever after.” To her surprise, it was Nagi, with a smile that was forlorn at the edges. She leaned back and pressed her fingers to those corners, willing them to smooth with the certainty of an author’s penstroke.
“Yours will.”
Nagi turned pink, and withdrew in a dramatic show of burying his cheeks in his hands. “Aw, shucks.”
Ryo floated in from the kitchen to flutter bonelessly into a seat on the floor. “A lovely story.”
Little Yamato barked, and Kyohei leaned in. “Sure. Now who’s next?”
