merryfortune

100ships - #42 Platinum 

Title: This song had gone multi-platinum 

Ship: N/A | Roa/Romin

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! Sevens

Word Count: 1,813

Rating: Not Rated

Warning: Underage

Tags: Not Canon Compliant, Abuse, Cousin Incest, Swearing

   “Congratulations, the new song Back to the Wall has gone platinum! One million streams, one million sales as a digital unit, all in a day, congrats!” their Agent announced to proud, overbearing cheers of their parents.

   The boys - Taira and Ushiro - were whooping and hollering. Roa sat on the corner of the lounge, smug and open, his shoulders back and arms over the edge of the top. And Romin was none of that. She just let the reality sink quietly into her head, expressionless but her hands in her lap, holding onto her skirt, were going white from how tight of tension she was feeling.

   “And you say that Back to the Wall was nothin’ special, eh, Romin?” Taira taunted her.

   “Oh, well, you can never predict these things,” Romin sounded all jumbled up, “I mean, I did think it’d do well but I didn’t wanna jinx it.”

   “Well I had confidence from day one of writing that little ditty that it was going to be something extremely special.” Roa boasted.

   “Yeah dude, we know.” Ushiro rolled his eyes. “It was a-”

   “It was a group effort.” Taira bombastically interrupted Ushiro, making him fume and Roa laugh. Romin felt a bit bad but didn’t know how to say it.

   “And the numbers keep going up,” their Agent continued, “we’ll organise a press conference to say thanks to our fans, field any questions, and then we’ll do proper interviews next week once the initial wave of hype has passed.”

   “Good, good.” Roa’s Mother agreed.

   She didn’t know how to say anything. That song…. She wished it had never been written, or that its inciting incident had never happened. 

   Roa was blackmailing her. Yeah, sure, maybe her secret wasn’t that big of a deal. She was tonedeaf. So what. There were plenty of quirkier weirdos and eccentrics across the music industry in far deeper trouble than not being able to carry a tune with their mouth. So long as she played professionally and excellently on her guitar as lead, that’s all that mattered.

   But that little crack was what turned into a gaping wound in Romin’s armour. Roa just needed a way in and Romin, stupidly, she thought in hindsight, had given him more than what needed to get inside of her. To get past her defences and ruin her.

   That moment where he had slammed his hand against the wall, backing Romin into it, that was when things had gone from bad to worse, Romin now recognised. Again with that magical and potent power of hindsight. The way he had looked at her in that moment, it made her skin crawl. Then and now.

   There was a look far beyond Roa’s years in the glint of his eyes as he sized Romin up for more than just a petty secret. He licked his lips and Romin felt devoured. For good reason, too, as he kissed her shortly afterwards because she was just prey to him.

   The taste of his beeswax lip balm was not one that Romin was going to forget any time soon. It, mixed with the bile and metallic distaste in her mouth, hovered whenever she felt awful. Whenever she felt like she was in Roa’s clutches. And right now, awful did not begin to describe the enormity of the catastrophe she felt knowing that a song about that moment had gone so viral and exploded in popularity as a fucking love song.

   Romin was all too eager to escape the band room well and truly after the news had broken. Soon as she got home, she holed up in her bedroom but she felt… unclean. Dirty. Gross. All those descriptors and more, it went down to the flesh and blood of her.

   So she did the seemingly right thing, as exhaustive as it was. She put herself through the shower. Knowing full well that she wouldn’t be out for an hour but was too tired to stand up in the shower, she sat down instead. 

   Back to the wall, funnily enough, in her nudity, underneath the showerhead that drone. She just sat there. Ruminating in her awful, awful thoughts she didn’t feel like she would ever truly be clean of. In her misery, Romin brought her knees to her face and hugged them, sitting fetally against the tiled walls. They were wet and warm and she squeezed her eyes tight. She tried to block out everything, even the water that cascaded upon her from the two showerheads.

   She needed to get clean. She felt like she was never going to be clean again. She was always going to be dirty, stained just like the walls of the apartment where the Drageas curry had exploded. A hot tear rolled down her cheek but it got lost in the rush of the rest of the water which poured over her, drenching her. 

   Despite her need to get clean, Romin couldn’t find it in herself to reach for some soap or body wash. Not even her favourite kind which smelt like wild fruits and vanilla and foamed. 

   She looked like a drowned rat when she finally emerged about an hour later. She took a cold, sardonic comfort in knowing she had been right. She would take an hour. Hungry, or maybe thirsty, rugged up in her towel, Romin stumbled to the kitchen after a snack or a drink. She would decide when she got there but even though this was her and her family’s apartment, guess who was there.

   Standing tall and pretty on the linoleum of the kitchen.

   “Hey cuz,” Roa said, saluting her with a wink as a greeting, “there’s something important we missed earlier.”

   “What is it?” Romin asked, sharp, spitting, she held herself tighter because she really did not want Roa to see her fresh out of the shower.

   Something he really seemed to want to see as he approached. Closer and closer, even when she stepped back and back. In the end, he managed to touch her, he ran his fingers through her sopping wet hair in a thick strand and brought it to his mouth with a kiss.

   “You look really cute like that.” Roa complimented her.

   “What is it?” Romin growled.

   “You wound me, cuz.” Roa sighed and he - thankfully - let go of Romin’s hair.  “Anyways, there’s a press conference tomorrow morning, ten am sharp. Be there or be square.” 

   “Okay. Fine. I’ll be there. Don’t worry about it. Now get out of my apartment.” Romin snapped.

   “You really have a bee in your bonnet tonight, cuz. I’m serious.” Roa huffed.

   But at least he left without saying another word, without doing anything. Yet Romin’s nerves were on fire anyway. Do or die. Fight or flight. Something like that best described how the adrenaline coursed through her, only to abandon her when she heard the front door slam shut.

   She all but collapsed when Roa was gone. As was her hunger or dehydration or whatever it had been before. Feeling grody all over from the encounter, but being sopping wet from her shower, Romin gave up and went to bed. Though not before setting an alarm: one with the marimba as far away from the usual notes of RoaRomin’s sound as possible.

   And somehow in the morning, Romin was ready for what the day would be. She very much did not want to be but she was. She was wearing something nice, even, and some perfume and looked like she had gotten a decent amount of sleep. Maybe she could go into acting next after being in a band.

   But none of that changed the fact that press conferences were the worst. Even at the best of times, they were such a slog to get through. So many people, so many microphones, so many questions. But this was the worst one yet. There were so many silver flashes going on endlessly and people talking over one another.

   It was an awful cacophony and one Romin couldn’t hear anyway. Just her horrible, terrified thoughts that droned on and on in her ears. Reminding her to keep her answers tight and concise or better yet, her mouth shut completely lest something untoward were to get out.

   Roa glanced at her and her blood ran cold. Even when he refocused and returned his calculating gaze out to the sea of journalists and reporters and bloggers and goodness knows who else was out there. All their faces were blank and featureless to Romin. 

   “Why, that’s an easy question to end with,” Roa nonchalantly bantered with whatever paparazzo journalist had asked, “who is Back to the Wall about? Why a girl of course. A girl I really, really like, no less.” Roa gave the dazzle of photography flashes a wink for emphasis.

   Romin steeled herself. She couldn’t let anyone know that a shiver just rolled down her spine. In this overcrowded room of voices and robotic noises and other modern ambience, all she could hear was Roa. 

   “Which girl?” Roa pretended he didn’t know, playing games, toying not only with the asker but Romin as well. “I don’t want to say, I can’t say, she’s my first love, I don’t want to put her in the spotlight like that. But I will say this, we’ll be meeting up again soon, in the green room, and she better be ready.”

   Romin flinched, she grit her teeth and she wished. She wished so badly, so sorely, from all of her, that this fucking song had never been written, let alone gone multi-platinum and for the first time, this entire press conference, she heard a voice which was neither her own nor Roa’s.

   “Congratulations, Back to the Wall will definitely be considered an all-time hit, not just for RoaRomin but for this generation of music.”

   The praise was awful. It made Roa smile, it made Getta and Taira, blissfully ignorant, beam, but Romin gagged. She held her stomach, she held her mouth, and she bit back the metallic taste of bile. 

   Robotically, Romin removed her hand from off her belly and off her face. She smiled pleasantly. Sweetly. Pretending that the sip of water she just had gone down the wrong way or that she was having period cramps or literally anything else. 

   All because she had to smile.

   She had to. 

   To pretend that everything was alright, that things were perfectly hunky-dory and that she was enjoying the success of Back to the Wall just like all her other bandmates.

   Romin had no other choice but to grin and bear it. To reap the fame and fortune that would follow from this astronomical and astounding success that she had been a key part of. All under the knowing leer of Roa, out the corner of his eye, who was watching very carefully for his dear cousin’s reaction to a song about her going multi-platinum.