106.
Title: Extended Stay
Pairing/Characters: 4nin NEWS, Massu/Shige (one-sided?), briefly mentioned Koyama/SNSD’s Sooyoung
Rating/Warnings: PG, not beta’d, angst, attempted scary stuff, maximum ridiculosity
Prompt: # 106 Massu is in the closet and scared of coming out.
A/N: Do I have the right to remain silent? Because I’ll need it. Actually, no. I need to apologize. I’m sorry, world.
Whump.
Massu awakes in the dark, sitting on something soft and propped against a wall. Where is he? The air feels thick, stagnant. His head throbs. Someone screams.
An odd swishing sound comes from somewhere nearby, but it doesn’t seem to be in the room with him.
There’s a bright line along the floor. Reaching his hand out to feel it, he finally realizes it’s the gap of light under a doorway.
Something brushes against his head. He jumps, then cowers, but when he works up the nerve to put his hand over his head, he finds soft fabric. Oh, right. He’s in the closet.
Outside the closet, there’s another whump like the one that woke Massu, then there’s another scream. It sounds like Koyama, this time-Massu thinks the first one was Tegoshi. There’s a clatter, followed by the sound of running feet.
What the hell? Massu tries to control his breathing and remember the night before. It didn’t seem like anything was wrong, but something clearly is now.
Koyama had been excited, chattering about his new girlfriend.
“She’s so cute! And we like all the same shows. Yesterday we watched some of ‘City Hunter’ together.”
“To think, three weeks ago you were saying Riko was your soulmate,” Tegoshi laughed.
“And now it’s all Sooyoung this, Sooyoung that,” Shige whined into his drink. “I’m already sick of hearing about her.”
Staring into his drink, Massu just wished he could talk about his love interests as freely as the rest of his group. The thought of hiding their thoughts on love wouldn’t even cross Koyama or Tegoshi’s minds, at least not with friends within the company.
Outside, there’s the tinkle of shattering glass.
Massu’s heart races. He’s torn between edging away from the door into the dark recesses of the closet and staying put, because there could be spiders back there.
“No, no!” Koyama yells. Then there’s the sound of running feet. “Shige, stop!”
After being ordered to shut up about his girlfriend, Koyama had turned to happily trying to fix everyone else’s love lives.
“Geeeeshiiiii,” Koyama said. “Been on any dates lately?”
“What? No,” Shige replied. He took a swig of beer, then frowned at the can.
“Sooyoung’s got a friend who likes to read,” Koyama said. “And studied law in college. Also, F-cup.”
Groaning, Shige grabbed his beer can and stood up. “I don’t have time. Anybody else want more beer?”
The can Massu was holding still had some liquid in the bottom, so he tipped it back and finished it off, then wobbled off after Shige before Koyama could move on to asking about his own love life.
He found Shige in the kitchen, sipping a glass of water.
“Can I get some water, too?”
“Sure,” Shige opened a cabinet and produced a glass, then struggled with his ice tray.
“Oh, I don’t need ice,” Massu said. He didn’t want to be a bother when he was really just avoiding Koyama’s invasive questions.
Giving up on the ice and filling the glass with water, Shige asked, “Do you think he’s moved on yet?”
He passed the water over and took a sip of his own.
“Probably,” Massu tried not to watch the way Shige’s throat moves as he drank, but it was as impossible as not staring at the collarbones that peeked out from the wide collar of his shirt. “He’s pretty drunk.”
“Yeah. Maybe we should be out of beers. I don’t want to pay for a new carpet.”
Was Shige really irritated? He jokingly whines about so many things, it’s always hard to tell when he’s being serious. And the truth is, Massu hadn’t really wanted to know, at the time.
There’s another thump, the sound of a door rattling.
“What the hell, what the hell?” Shige says. His voice is high and squeaky, just as terrified as Koyama’s and Tegoshi’s had been.
The floor groans and fabric rustles-someone must be walking very softly. Scooting farther back into the closet, Massu thinks harder, trying to figure out what’s going on.
With a creak, the closet door starts to open.
They all fell asleep on the floor in the living room. Couch cushions were substituted for pillows because Shige was the first to drift off, and nobody wanted to risk digging in his closet after their previous disastrous visit. With the summer heat, they didn’t need blankets.
Massu turned off the light after asking a question to which Koyama didn’t respond and tiptoed to his cushion at the edge of the group. He waited for sleep, but sleep passed him by, leaving him to his drunken pondering.
Being the only one awake at a slumber party is always awkward. You can’t do anything without waking everyone up, so all you can do is lie there, listening to your unconscious companions’ heavy breathing. Watching their sleeping faces is just a little uncomfortable. You know you’d be happier asleep like they are, but it won’t happen. And they just sleep on, oblivious to their own good fortune for being able to do so.
It’s a lot like being a closeted gay person surrounded by straight people. They don’t know how lucky they are, and they’re unaware of how miserable Massu is; they just assume he’s the same as them.
After a few minutes, he could see well enough by the light from the window to make out Shige’s face and a pale, slender arm slung across the floor. He wanted to kiss it. He wanted to touch Shige’s hand again to see if it was still soft or if the guitar had given it calluses. Mostly, he wanted to lie down with Shige, wrap his arms around him, and kiss him.
That thought oozed into his head and settled in. Even with his back to Shige, he couldn’t chase off the fantasies of pressing his lips against Shige’s in that softly lit room. There was no way he could sleep out there, then. For similar reasons, Shige’s bed wasn’t going to work. Closets had always made Massu feel safe, and so he took his cushion with him and settled onto Shige’s closet floor.
Now he feels significantly less safe and far more confused as light pours into the closet, bringing with it Shige, Koyama, and Tegoshi.
Then the door closes again, and all Massu can see are bright spots where the light had hit his eyes.
“Massu, there you are,” Shige whispers.
“What’s going on?” Massu whispers back.
“There’s a fucking monkey in the apartment.”
“How did it get in?”
There’s a crash, and Massu jumps and grabs Shige’s arm.
“Came in when I tried to leave,” Tegoshi says. He continues, “Do you have your phone on you, Massu? I dropped mine out there and Koyama and Shige’s are on the coffee table.”
As it happens, Massu does. He lets Shige use it to call the police, because none of them knows who you’re supposed to call when your apartment is invaded by a monkey. It’s not something that happens often in Tokyo.
They hear the door to the bedroom open.
“Fuck, why?” Shige whispers into the darkness, but only a tense silence follows.
The closet is cramped with all four of them, but they can’t see each other. As the silence grows longer, Massu’s mind starts to wander, and it occurs to him that his inability to distinguish their faces in the dark means that he could come out here and not have to see their uncomfortable expressions.
“Guys?” he whispers. “I have something I need to tell you.”
“What?” Koyama asks.
Gathering his nerves, Massu says, “I’m gay.”
There’s a long, long silence. Finally Koyama breaks it with, “Massu, we’re all hiding from a monkey in Shige’s closet, and you think it’s a good time to come out of the closet?”
“Well, it’s better than coming out of the actual closet right now?” Massu tries.
It’s not like there’s ever a good time to come out. There’s no decent transition from your average conversation to, “I’m gay.” Straight people don’t have to come out as straight.
Only when Shige shifts does Massu realize that he’s still clinging to Shige’s arm. As he starts to back off, Shige says, “Since you brought it up, so am I.”
The swell of elation that Massu feels at that comment is almost immediately crushed by a crash from the bedroom.
“That’s nice and all, but does it matter if we’re all going to die?” Koyama asks.
Outside, there’s the sound of fabric ripping. Massu buries his face in Shige’s shoulder.
“Quick, Shige. Kiss Massu so he doesn’t have to die before his first kiss,” Tegoshi jokes. Before Massu can protest, he adds, “But seriously, we’re not going to d-“
The door to the closet rattles. All four of them scream simultaneously.
Then comes a shout from the front door, and people are running into the room.
Massu has never seen anyone look as horrified as Shige does surveying the damage. The bedding and mattress are torn, lamps are broken, at least one couch cushion didn’t survive, and a variety of objects have been knocked to the floor. They all cringe, and animal control says they’ve never seen a monkey do anything this bad-the ones that have been spotted around heavily populated areas of Japan recently have all been quite docile.
Koyama, Tegoshi, and Massu all offer Shige a place to say. When Shige takes up Massu’s offer, Massu tries not to be hopeful; it’s probably because his parents’ house has a guest room, with a proper bed.
Still, for the first time in a very long time, he doesn’t feel alone.
Pairing/Characters: 4nin NEWS, Massu/Shige (one-sided?), briefly mentioned Koyama/SNSD’s Sooyoung
Rating/Warnings: PG, not beta’d, angst, attempted scary stuff, maximum ridiculosity
Prompt: # 106 Massu is in the closet and scared of coming out.
A/N: Do I have the right to remain silent? Because I’ll need it. Actually, no. I need to apologize. I’m sorry, world.
Whump.
Massu awakes in the dark, sitting on something soft and propped against a wall. Where is he? The air feels thick, stagnant. His head throbs. Someone screams.
An odd swishing sound comes from somewhere nearby, but it doesn’t seem to be in the room with him.
There’s a bright line along the floor. Reaching his hand out to feel it, he finally realizes it’s the gap of light under a doorway.
Something brushes against his head. He jumps, then cowers, but when he works up the nerve to put his hand over his head, he finds soft fabric. Oh, right. He’s in the closet.
Outside the closet, there’s another whump like the one that woke Massu, then there’s another scream. It sounds like Koyama, this time-Massu thinks the first one was Tegoshi. There’s a clatter, followed by the sound of running feet.
What the hell? Massu tries to control his breathing and remember the night before. It didn’t seem like anything was wrong, but something clearly is now.
Koyama had been excited, chattering about his new girlfriend.
“She’s so cute! And we like all the same shows. Yesterday we watched some of ‘City Hunter’ together.”
“To think, three weeks ago you were saying Riko was your soulmate,” Tegoshi laughed.
“And now it’s all Sooyoung this, Sooyoung that,” Shige whined into his drink. “I’m already sick of hearing about her.”
Staring into his drink, Massu just wished he could talk about his love interests as freely as the rest of his group. The thought of hiding their thoughts on love wouldn’t even cross Koyama or Tegoshi’s minds, at least not with friends within the company.
Outside, there’s the tinkle of shattering glass.
Massu’s heart races. He’s torn between edging away from the door into the dark recesses of the closet and staying put, because there could be spiders back there.
“No, no!” Koyama yells. Then there’s the sound of running feet. “Shige, stop!”
After being ordered to shut up about his girlfriend, Koyama had turned to happily trying to fix everyone else’s love lives.
“Geeeeshiiiii,” Koyama said. “Been on any dates lately?”
“What? No,” Shige replied. He took a swig of beer, then frowned at the can.
“Sooyoung’s got a friend who likes to read,” Koyama said. “And studied law in college. Also, F-cup.”
Groaning, Shige grabbed his beer can and stood up. “I don’t have time. Anybody else want more beer?”
The can Massu was holding still had some liquid in the bottom, so he tipped it back and finished it off, then wobbled off after Shige before Koyama could move on to asking about his own love life.
He found Shige in the kitchen, sipping a glass of water.
“Can I get some water, too?”
“Sure,” Shige opened a cabinet and produced a glass, then struggled with his ice tray.
“Oh, I don’t need ice,” Massu said. He didn’t want to be a bother when he was really just avoiding Koyama’s invasive questions.
Giving up on the ice and filling the glass with water, Shige asked, “Do you think he’s moved on yet?”
He passed the water over and took a sip of his own.
“Probably,” Massu tried not to watch the way Shige’s throat moves as he drank, but it was as impossible as not staring at the collarbones that peeked out from the wide collar of his shirt. “He’s pretty drunk.”
“Yeah. Maybe we should be out of beers. I don’t want to pay for a new carpet.”
Was Shige really irritated? He jokingly whines about so many things, it’s always hard to tell when he’s being serious. And the truth is, Massu hadn’t really wanted to know, at the time.
There’s another thump, the sound of a door rattling.
“What the hell, what the hell?” Shige says. His voice is high and squeaky, just as terrified as Koyama’s and Tegoshi’s had been.
The floor groans and fabric rustles-someone must be walking very softly. Scooting farther back into the closet, Massu thinks harder, trying to figure out what’s going on.
With a creak, the closet door starts to open.
They all fell asleep on the floor in the living room. Couch cushions were substituted for pillows because Shige was the first to drift off, and nobody wanted to risk digging in his closet after their previous disastrous visit. With the summer heat, they didn’t need blankets.
Massu turned off the light after asking a question to which Koyama didn’t respond and tiptoed to his cushion at the edge of the group. He waited for sleep, but sleep passed him by, leaving him to his drunken pondering.
Being the only one awake at a slumber party is always awkward. You can’t do anything without waking everyone up, so all you can do is lie there, listening to your unconscious companions’ heavy breathing. Watching their sleeping faces is just a little uncomfortable. You know you’d be happier asleep like they are, but it won’t happen. And they just sleep on, oblivious to their own good fortune for being able to do so.
It’s a lot like being a closeted gay person surrounded by straight people. They don’t know how lucky they are, and they’re unaware of how miserable Massu is; they just assume he’s the same as them.
After a few minutes, he could see well enough by the light from the window to make out Shige’s face and a pale, slender arm slung across the floor. He wanted to kiss it. He wanted to touch Shige’s hand again to see if it was still soft or if the guitar had given it calluses. Mostly, he wanted to lie down with Shige, wrap his arms around him, and kiss him.
That thought oozed into his head and settled in. Even with his back to Shige, he couldn’t chase off the fantasies of pressing his lips against Shige’s in that softly lit room. There was no way he could sleep out there, then. For similar reasons, Shige’s bed wasn’t going to work. Closets had always made Massu feel safe, and so he took his cushion with him and settled onto Shige’s closet floor.
Now he feels significantly less safe and far more confused as light pours into the closet, bringing with it Shige, Koyama, and Tegoshi.
Then the door closes again, and all Massu can see are bright spots where the light had hit his eyes.
“Massu, there you are,” Shige whispers.
“What’s going on?” Massu whispers back.
“There’s a fucking monkey in the apartment.”
“How did it get in?”
There’s a crash, and Massu jumps and grabs Shige’s arm.
“Came in when I tried to leave,” Tegoshi says. He continues, “Do you have your phone on you, Massu? I dropped mine out there and Koyama and Shige’s are on the coffee table.”
As it happens, Massu does. He lets Shige use it to call the police, because none of them knows who you’re supposed to call when your apartment is invaded by a monkey. It’s not something that happens often in Tokyo.
They hear the door to the bedroom open.
“Fuck, why?” Shige whispers into the darkness, but only a tense silence follows.
The closet is cramped with all four of them, but they can’t see each other. As the silence grows longer, Massu’s mind starts to wander, and it occurs to him that his inability to distinguish their faces in the dark means that he could come out here and not have to see their uncomfortable expressions.
“Guys?” he whispers. “I have something I need to tell you.”
“What?” Koyama asks.
Gathering his nerves, Massu says, “I’m gay.”
There’s a long, long silence. Finally Koyama breaks it with, “Massu, we’re all hiding from a monkey in Shige’s closet, and you think it’s a good time to come out of the closet?”
“Well, it’s better than coming out of the actual closet right now?” Massu tries.
It’s not like there’s ever a good time to come out. There’s no decent transition from your average conversation to, “I’m gay.” Straight people don’t have to come out as straight.
Only when Shige shifts does Massu realize that he’s still clinging to Shige’s arm. As he starts to back off, Shige says, “Since you brought it up, so am I.”
The swell of elation that Massu feels at that comment is almost immediately crushed by a crash from the bedroom.
“That’s nice and all, but does it matter if we’re all going to die?” Koyama asks.
Outside, there’s the sound of fabric ripping. Massu buries his face in Shige’s shoulder.
“Quick, Shige. Kiss Massu so he doesn’t have to die before his first kiss,” Tegoshi jokes. Before Massu can protest, he adds, “But seriously, we’re not going to d-“
The door to the closet rattles. All four of them scream simultaneously.
Then comes a shout from the front door, and people are running into the room.
Massu has never seen anyone look as horrified as Shige does surveying the damage. The bedding and mattress are torn, lamps are broken, at least one couch cushion didn’t survive, and a variety of objects have been knocked to the floor. They all cringe, and animal control says they’ve never seen a monkey do anything this bad-the ones that have been spotted around heavily populated areas of Japan recently have all been quite docile.
Koyama, Tegoshi, and Massu all offer Shige a place to say. When Shige takes up Massu’s offer, Massu tries not to be hopeful; it’s probably because his parents’ house has a guest room, with a proper bed.
Still, for the first time in a very long time, he doesn’t feel alone.