Why don’t you ask him if he’s going to stay
Title: Why don’t you ask him if he’s going to stay
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Sakurai Sho/Matsumoto Jun
Summary: It all started with a shirt, but he supposes it might have started way earlier than that. Sho and Jun and the start of something new.
Notes/Warnings: Hello to anyone still hanging around here! I had back surgery a few months ago, but I’m doing so much better now. Thought I’d try easing my way back into this fanfic stuff, and these are the messy results LOL. This story is set pretty much now and in the near future. Story contains swearing, sex, and soccer jerseys.
don't say that you love me
just tell me that you want me
-tusk, fleetwood mac
\ / \ / \ / \ / \ /
It all started with a shirt, but he supposes it might have started way earlier than that.
But the shirt is the little anecdote he’d point to if anyone ever found out, ever read between the lines, ever just outright asked. Well, the thing is, Sho would say with more than twenty years of variety experience under his belt, the thing is we each went home with the wrong shirt one day. Cue audience laughter.
Shirt’s the wrong word, he reminds himself. It’s a custom-made soccer jersey. Arashi Futsal Club. The staff at Non-no made them for the shoot, and they’d both just liked them so much they’d asked to take them home. He’s not sure which staff member made the mistake. It doesn’t matter. They’d been changing back into their own clothes, and during that time, the jerseys had been neatly folded, placed in bags, the bags then handed to each respective manager. No reason to double check.
A simple mistake. The jerseys are the same except for the names and numbers on the back.
For some reason, he doesn’t remember everything about the phone call that came two days after the shoot. But it was a phone call, not a LINE message.
He remembers that being the reason why he answered on the first ring.
Or at least he remembers convincing himself that that’s true.
“Hey” was probably said. After all these years, this person sometimes chooses to be impolite on purpose. “Hey, the Non-no shoot, the jersey. They gave me yours by accident.”
“Oh?” he probably said back, eyes watering from at least two hours of PyeongChang prep. He probably went to his room, probably found the bag on a pile of other clothes he hadn’t sorted through, probably took it out and confirmed it for himself. “Oh, looks like it.”
“Come by, we can swap.”
Memories can be tricky, of course, so the part where he made the decision to go out sometime around midnight instead of just bringing the bag to work the next time is kind of fuzzy.
The thing is, he’ll say if anyone ever asks, the thing is we each went home with the wrong shirt one day.
He drove, parked in an overnight garage two blocks away, toted the bag in after being buzzed inside. And when the door opened, Jun was standing there. Standing there in blue and red, holding a half-full wine glass and wearing Arashi Futsal Club with Sho’s name on the back.
“Come on in,” Jun had said, eyes playful and unguarded. This part isn’t too fuzzy. “Let’s swap.”
\ / \ / \ / \ / \ /
It’s kind of fucked up, jumping into something so impulsively after ignoring it, stifling it for so damn long. He knows that, he obviously knows that. But his goal moving forward is to plan less, isn’t it? To take time to relax, to make time for himself. Don’t think, Satoshi-kun’s hero would say. Feel.
\ / \ / \ / \ / \ /
He’d been there only the one other time, last fall, working on stray ideas for their unit song performance. All business. Across from each other, protected behind laptop screens, looking up but mostly letting eyes drift to take-out containers, to safer places. All business if anyone ever asks. Nobody ever does.
The shirt, the jersey thing, that was the actual beginning. (He supposes it might have started way earlier than that.)
Let’s swap.
That night there was no take-out, no laptops. He didn’t ask questions, taking the invite at face value. Locking the door, hanging up his coat, unlacing his sneakers. He was the one who parked in the overnight garage. He watched Jun turn around and laugh, slippers scuffing his floor as he walked deeper into his apartment, the letters of Sho’s name stitched onto the fabric between his shoulder blades.
He’d carried the bag he’d brought into the living room, left it beside the wine glass Jun had set down. If Jun had asked “do you think this is a bad idea?” Sho wouldn’t have known how to answer. But Jun hadn’t asked and Sho hadn’t answered.
Instead Sho had taken the hand freely offered, allowed that hand to bring him straight to the bedroom. Straight to the point, no preamble, no time to waste. (This person sometimes chooses to be impolite on purpose.)
His own shirt was off and on the floor before the jersey was. He was the first to get to feel hot breath against his own bare skin. A knowing smile, brown eyes burning.
“You like me in your clothes, Sho-san.”
He was welcomed to the mattress, welcomed to touch, welcomed inside. The jersey ended up balled up by the headboard, and he was clutching it in his fist by the time Jun’s legs wrapped around him, demands falling from his kiss-swollen lips. Sho didn’t think about who might have been in that bed with him before and who might come after.
In the morning, he was provided coffee and a light breakfast. He was given a coy smile. And when he got into his car, he was wearing the jersey with his own name underneath his heavy coat, tugging at the collar and unable to keep from breathing in the long-familiar scent that still lingered on it.
\ / \ / \ / \ / \ /
He’s rather surprised when their work relationship doesn’t change. Isn’t this the sort of thing that would ruin it? They stay in their same seats while they wait to be called to the set, make the same nothing small talk about weather and non-Arashi jobs. It’s like that night was a fever dream.
It’s not until he’s in Korea that it turns into more than just a one-night stand.
Jun’s somewhere noisy. “Hey!”
Sho doesn’t feel he deserves this. He answered on the first ring again, and look where it’s gotten him.
“Hey,” he says back, voice a little too loud in his empty hotel room.
“You’re not on TV right now,” Jun says.
“Nope,” he answers, exhausted from another day of racing from venue to venue. It’s fun, it’s rewarding, it’s fucking draining.
“Okay good, then it’s fine to talk.”
Sho rolls his eyes, smiling. It’s just after 1:00 AM, so for Jun, the night is still young. Sho’s ready to get under the covers and enjoy several prolonged hours of warmth before he’s back out in the chilly air. “What’s going on?”
“Question, do they really give out free condoms in the Olympic Village?”
He’s bent halfway over, just about to grab the cord for his phone charger. “What?”
“I’ve been asked to ask you since you are an Olympics expert.” There’s an odd edge to Jun’s voice, a dark teasing sound that makes Sho think back to that night, that maybe-not-so-isolated incident. He remembers Jun’s voice so much closer, the brush of his lips against his ear.
“Who asked?”
“Makken asked,” Jun says, and his noisy comrades cheer.
“Hi there, Sakurai-san,” comes Mackenyu’s voice from somewhere near Jun. “Sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to know. I read it online.”
At least someone is polite enough to apologize for the late-night call. “Good evening, Arata-san and friends,” he says. “Yes, they distribute condoms in the Olympic Village for the athletes.”
“Just for the athletes?” Jun asks, and Sho swallows, knowing Jun’s in mixed company. Sho wonders what he’s getting out of this call.
“That’s the goal,” he says. “Lot of pent-up energy, endorphins, people in prime condition, all that. Media’s not allowed in the Village so the athletes can focus. But I guess if their event’s over or they prefer to focus in different ways…you get the picture.”
He listens patiently while Jun relays the answer to his drinking pals, however many he’s gathered around him tonight. And then he says “I’ll be right back,” and Sho almost hangs up before realizing Jun was saying that to his table and not him.
The noise around him dies down a short time later.
“You still there?”
By now Sho’s put the phone down on the bedside table, has it on speaker so he can change out of his clothes and put them over the chair. “Yeah, I’m still here.”
“Can you bring some of the condoms back?”
Sho sighs. “I just told you they’re for the athletes.”
“You’ve never hooked up with an athlete, Sho-san? As you said, all those gorgeous people walking around in prime condition and you’ve probably had so many opportunities all these years…”
At that, he goes back and turns the speaker off, brings the phone back to his ear. “NTV is not paying me to sleep around here.”
Jun’s voice is sly, tempting. “I’m messing with you.”
“Thanks. I just worked a fifteen hour day.”
“Ssh, you’re so grumpy.” Sho barely hears what he says next. “Want me to talk you off?”
He has to be up in five hours. He takes a little too long to answer.
“Ah, forget it…”
“Wait.” Sho’s glad Jun isn’t here to delight in how embarrassed he is. “Wait.”
He’s not sure where Jun is right now in relation to his friends, if he’s just standing in the hall outside their private room, sequestered in a bathroom, somewhere else entirely. Won’t they come looking for him soon? And it’s that. It’s the idea of one of those young, budding actors coming out into the hall, one of those guys coming into the hall looking for the Matsumoto Jun they worship only to find him whispering dirty things into his phone. One of those guys wondering if it’s still Sakurai he’s talking to.
Sho’s tired, but somehow he finds the energy, the motivation for this, letting Jun’s hushed, filthy words reach him from not so very far away.
“I’d been waiting so long,” he hears when he can barely concentrate on keeping the phone by his ear. “I’d been waiting so long for you to fuck me.”
And he doesn’t know or care if that’s true, if Jun’s lying to screw with him or if Jun’s been harboring fantasies about it for just as long as Sho has. He doesn’t care if it’s true because in that moment, it just takes him right back, right back to Jun’s bed and to impulse and the smell of their sweat.
“Sho-san,” he hears. Still he’s Sho-san. Even with this he’s Sho-san, Sho-san, Sho-san. “Go on, go on.”
It’s not perfect, but it’s enough, and when his breathing starts to calm, the call’s still connected and he can vaguely hear Jun talking to someone, thanking someone, probably giving his card to the bar staff to cover his outrageous tab.
He listens to him for a while, feeling good but also amazed that Jun can just carry on with his evening. But finally he needs to sleep.
“Matsujun,” he says, Jun’s encouraging words still echoing in his mind. “Good night then.”
He hears Jun open a door, and his adoring masses welcome him back with drunken cheers.
“I should have called you in Rio,” Sho hears him say before the call ends.
All he can do is laugh, setting his alarm and turning off the light. “Fuck you.”
\ / \ / \ / \ / \ /
They don’t do anything on work time. They’re not foolish enough to do anything on work time. Jun calls him at 3:00 AM as the crank-up party for his drama dies down around him. Sho knows he’d prefer to party til dawn.
“You should come. They know you. You should come.”
When they were younger and Jun pulled this kind of shit, calling at unreasonable hours and making demands on his time, Sho had wanted to kill him. Stunned awake, those feelings are what come roaring back first.
But instead of voicing those thoughts, he simply says “pass” and hangs up on him.
Jun comes looking for forgiveness a few nights later. The call comes at 8:30 PM instead. “You don’t have to stay” is the closest Jun will come to “I’m sorry for disturbing you the other night.”
He brings along the small box he’d gotten from a dispenser in the men’s room of the airport in Korea. Jun’s astonished laughter at this additional surprise souvenir makes him smile. “Are they real?” Jun asks, fingers tracing the Olympic rings on the box.
Sho turns on the sofa to face him. He can’t read Korean, so he can’t be completely sure. “Are they real condoms? Yeah. Are they the condoms given to the athletes? I don’t think so. Probably just some local brand trying to cash in.”
Jun lets out a tsk of disappointment, sliding his glasses off and setting them on the table in front of them. He looks at Sho with feigned irritation. “You could have just lied to me.”
He smiles, leans in, bridges the distance and keeps his questions to himself. Why are we doing this? Where is this going? What do you mean you should have called me in Rio? (This all started with a shirt, but he supposes it might have started way earlier than that.)
Jun’s tongue is in his mouth, so he can’t ask him anything right now anyway.
He’s known and hasn’t known this skin, this shape, this form. He’s known it in the abstract, the body that’s Jun’s, from across the room, from across the studio, from across a dome. But this is different, good different, putting his fingers to flesh and realizing he still has so much to learn.
It’s hard to keep up, but he’s trying, he’s trying. It’s challenging, it’s overwhelming, keeping up with Matsumoto Jun. But if his instincts aren’t spot on, he isn’t punished. Jun simply takes his hand, puts it where he wants it. Jun simply pants into his ear, sitting astride him. “Here, over here.” Your lips, your tongue, your teeth. “Sho-san, right here.”
They both lose it when they open one of the condom packets and see that the Olympic rings have also been printed on the tip. “So tacky,” Jun says.
“What did you expect? What did you really expect?”
Jun shakes his head, tosses it aside. “Nope. Stay here.”
Sho lets out an exaggerated huff, head falling back against the sofa cushion as Jun moves off of him, walks to his bedroom. There’s no Olympic rings on the new condom Jun brings him, and Sho’s admittedly disappointed that his souvenir has been found lacking. But soon Jun’s back in his lap, sinking down onto him, and he decides it doesn’t really matter. Because he wants this, he wants this, the way Jun feels, the way Jun moves with him, figuring out the right steps without the choreography they otherwise depend on.
They might do this a hundred more times, they might never do this again. He doesn’t know, and that ought to scare him. Everything about this ought to scare him. But for some reason it doesn’t. It doesn’t.
There’s trust when Jun’s movements slow, running his fingers through the short strands of Sho’s hair. Jun meets Sho’s eyes for a few moments, easing himself off of him. There’s trust when Jun moves onto his hands and knees, asking for what he’d like next without words. Sho gives him what he wants, moving behind him, coming back and holding Jun by the hips. And he goes slow, slow, slow until Jun’s pushing back, demanding all of him. Saying his name, saying only “Sho” until they both fail to form words.
“You don’t have to stay,” Jun says again later when Sho doesn’t make any move to put his clothes back on.
“Would it bother you if I left, though?”
It’s the closest they’ve come to confronting the situation, to admitting out loud that this isn’t exactly normal.
Jun’s smile in response is rather mysterious, leaving it up to Sho to decide.
\ / \ / \ / \ / \ /
They don’t dislike each other. Sure, they’ve had their fair share of disagreements over the years, but it’s always been the work that really matters. Too many people have made sacrifices to support the five of them that disagreements never blossomed into anything more. And yet to hear some people tell their story, they can barely stand the sight of each other. They don’t get along and haven’t for some time.
And yet Sho starts to wake up in Jun’s bed or Jun starts to wake up in Sho’s bed once or twice a month, once or twice a week when schedules work (and they so rarely do). Sho thinks he might know Jun’s body better than his own now, knows just where to kiss, just where to let his fingers skim or linger. He always looks forward to the next time he’ll get to feel Jun’s thumb grazing his lips, Jun’s tongue at his pulse. The wet heat of Jun’s mouth around him, coaxing him toward the edge with teasing, punishing slowness.
He takes nothing for granted.
Work doesn’t change, and if the others suspect, they don’t ask. Private time is private time. They probably wouldn’t believe it anyway. Sho still has a hard enough time believing it, no matter how many times Jun kisses him, no matter how many times his sweat and Jun’s mix and linger on bedsheets. No matter how many times Sho doesn’t have to stay and still does.
Why are we doing this? Where is this going? Their answers might not match, not today, maybe never. Years ago, that might have left Sho unable to function. Not having a plan, not having an end goal.
But for now that’s fine.
They don’t dislike each other. They don’t love each other either, but they want each other, and for Sho, for now, that’s fine.
\ / \ / \ / \ / \ /
It all started with a shirt.
It’s been a year now, still undefined. Calling this thing they share “Untitled” might be too on the nose. When he opens his apartment door, Jun laughs at the sight of him.
“I was wondering where that went.”
Sho’s stolen back the jersey he brought over that first night, so tonight it says “MJ” between his own shoulder blades when he turns around and doesn’t wait to see if Jun will follow.
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Sakurai Sho/Matsumoto Jun
Summary: It all started with a shirt, but he supposes it might have started way earlier than that. Sho and Jun and the start of something new.
Notes/Warnings: Hello to anyone still hanging around here! I had back surgery a few months ago, but I’m doing so much better now. Thought I’d try easing my way back into this fanfic stuff, and these are the messy results LOL. This story is set pretty much now and in the near future. Story contains swearing, sex, and soccer jerseys.
don't say that you love me
just tell me that you want me
-tusk, fleetwood mac
\ / \ / \ / \ / \ /
It all started with a shirt, but he supposes it might have started way earlier than that.
But the shirt is the little anecdote he’d point to if anyone ever found out, ever read between the lines, ever just outright asked. Well, the thing is, Sho would say with more than twenty years of variety experience under his belt, the thing is we each went home with the wrong shirt one day. Cue audience laughter.
Shirt’s the wrong word, he reminds himself. It’s a custom-made soccer jersey. Arashi Futsal Club. The staff at Non-no made them for the shoot, and they’d both just liked them so much they’d asked to take them home. He’s not sure which staff member made the mistake. It doesn’t matter. They’d been changing back into their own clothes, and during that time, the jerseys had been neatly folded, placed in bags, the bags then handed to each respective manager. No reason to double check.
A simple mistake. The jerseys are the same except for the names and numbers on the back.
For some reason, he doesn’t remember everything about the phone call that came two days after the shoot. But it was a phone call, not a LINE message.
He remembers that being the reason why he answered on the first ring.
Or at least he remembers convincing himself that that’s true.
“Hey” was probably said. After all these years, this person sometimes chooses to be impolite on purpose. “Hey, the Non-no shoot, the jersey. They gave me yours by accident.”
“Oh?” he probably said back, eyes watering from at least two hours of PyeongChang prep. He probably went to his room, probably found the bag on a pile of other clothes he hadn’t sorted through, probably took it out and confirmed it for himself. “Oh, looks like it.”
“Come by, we can swap.”
Memories can be tricky, of course, so the part where he made the decision to go out sometime around midnight instead of just bringing the bag to work the next time is kind of fuzzy.
The thing is, he’ll say if anyone ever asks, the thing is we each went home with the wrong shirt one day.
He drove, parked in an overnight garage two blocks away, toted the bag in after being buzzed inside. And when the door opened, Jun was standing there. Standing there in blue and red, holding a half-full wine glass and wearing Arashi Futsal Club with Sho’s name on the back.
“Come on in,” Jun had said, eyes playful and unguarded. This part isn’t too fuzzy. “Let’s swap.”
\ / \ / \ / \ / \ /
It’s kind of fucked up, jumping into something so impulsively after ignoring it, stifling it for so damn long. He knows that, he obviously knows that. But his goal moving forward is to plan less, isn’t it? To take time to relax, to make time for himself. Don’t think, Satoshi-kun’s hero would say. Feel.
\ / \ / \ / \ / \ /
He’d been there only the one other time, last fall, working on stray ideas for their unit song performance. All business. Across from each other, protected behind laptop screens, looking up but mostly letting eyes drift to take-out containers, to safer places. All business if anyone ever asks. Nobody ever does.
The shirt, the jersey thing, that was the actual beginning. (He supposes it might have started way earlier than that.)
Let’s swap.
That night there was no take-out, no laptops. He didn’t ask questions, taking the invite at face value. Locking the door, hanging up his coat, unlacing his sneakers. He was the one who parked in the overnight garage. He watched Jun turn around and laugh, slippers scuffing his floor as he walked deeper into his apartment, the letters of Sho’s name stitched onto the fabric between his shoulder blades.
He’d carried the bag he’d brought into the living room, left it beside the wine glass Jun had set down. If Jun had asked “do you think this is a bad idea?” Sho wouldn’t have known how to answer. But Jun hadn’t asked and Sho hadn’t answered.
Instead Sho had taken the hand freely offered, allowed that hand to bring him straight to the bedroom. Straight to the point, no preamble, no time to waste. (This person sometimes chooses to be impolite on purpose.)
His own shirt was off and on the floor before the jersey was. He was the first to get to feel hot breath against his own bare skin. A knowing smile, brown eyes burning.
“You like me in your clothes, Sho-san.”
He was welcomed to the mattress, welcomed to touch, welcomed inside. The jersey ended up balled up by the headboard, and he was clutching it in his fist by the time Jun’s legs wrapped around him, demands falling from his kiss-swollen lips. Sho didn’t think about who might have been in that bed with him before and who might come after.
In the morning, he was provided coffee and a light breakfast. He was given a coy smile. And when he got into his car, he was wearing the jersey with his own name underneath his heavy coat, tugging at the collar and unable to keep from breathing in the long-familiar scent that still lingered on it.
\ / \ / \ / \ / \ /
He’s rather surprised when their work relationship doesn’t change. Isn’t this the sort of thing that would ruin it? They stay in their same seats while they wait to be called to the set, make the same nothing small talk about weather and non-Arashi jobs. It’s like that night was a fever dream.
It’s not until he’s in Korea that it turns into more than just a one-night stand.
Jun’s somewhere noisy. “Hey!”
Sho doesn’t feel he deserves this. He answered on the first ring again, and look where it’s gotten him.
“Hey,” he says back, voice a little too loud in his empty hotel room.
“You’re not on TV right now,” Jun says.
“Nope,” he answers, exhausted from another day of racing from venue to venue. It’s fun, it’s rewarding, it’s fucking draining.
“Okay good, then it’s fine to talk.”
Sho rolls his eyes, smiling. It’s just after 1:00 AM, so for Jun, the night is still young. Sho’s ready to get under the covers and enjoy several prolonged hours of warmth before he’s back out in the chilly air. “What’s going on?”
“Question, do they really give out free condoms in the Olympic Village?”
He’s bent halfway over, just about to grab the cord for his phone charger. “What?”
“I’ve been asked to ask you since you are an Olympics expert.” There’s an odd edge to Jun’s voice, a dark teasing sound that makes Sho think back to that night, that maybe-not-so-isolated incident. He remembers Jun’s voice so much closer, the brush of his lips against his ear.
“Who asked?”
“Makken asked,” Jun says, and his noisy comrades cheer.
“Hi there, Sakurai-san,” comes Mackenyu’s voice from somewhere near Jun. “Sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to know. I read it online.”
At least someone is polite enough to apologize for the late-night call. “Good evening, Arata-san and friends,” he says. “Yes, they distribute condoms in the Olympic Village for the athletes.”
“Just for the athletes?” Jun asks, and Sho swallows, knowing Jun’s in mixed company. Sho wonders what he’s getting out of this call.
“That’s the goal,” he says. “Lot of pent-up energy, endorphins, people in prime condition, all that. Media’s not allowed in the Village so the athletes can focus. But I guess if their event’s over or they prefer to focus in different ways…you get the picture.”
He listens patiently while Jun relays the answer to his drinking pals, however many he’s gathered around him tonight. And then he says “I’ll be right back,” and Sho almost hangs up before realizing Jun was saying that to his table and not him.
The noise around him dies down a short time later.
“You still there?”
By now Sho’s put the phone down on the bedside table, has it on speaker so he can change out of his clothes and put them over the chair. “Yeah, I’m still here.”
“Can you bring some of the condoms back?”
Sho sighs. “I just told you they’re for the athletes.”
“You’ve never hooked up with an athlete, Sho-san? As you said, all those gorgeous people walking around in prime condition and you’ve probably had so many opportunities all these years…”
At that, he goes back and turns the speaker off, brings the phone back to his ear. “NTV is not paying me to sleep around here.”
Jun’s voice is sly, tempting. “I’m messing with you.”
“Thanks. I just worked a fifteen hour day.”
“Ssh, you’re so grumpy.” Sho barely hears what he says next. “Want me to talk you off?”
He has to be up in five hours. He takes a little too long to answer.
“Ah, forget it…”
“Wait.” Sho’s glad Jun isn’t here to delight in how embarrassed he is. “Wait.”
He’s not sure where Jun is right now in relation to his friends, if he’s just standing in the hall outside their private room, sequestered in a bathroom, somewhere else entirely. Won’t they come looking for him soon? And it’s that. It’s the idea of one of those young, budding actors coming out into the hall, one of those guys coming into the hall looking for the Matsumoto Jun they worship only to find him whispering dirty things into his phone. One of those guys wondering if it’s still Sakurai he’s talking to.
Sho’s tired, but somehow he finds the energy, the motivation for this, letting Jun’s hushed, filthy words reach him from not so very far away.
“I’d been waiting so long,” he hears when he can barely concentrate on keeping the phone by his ear. “I’d been waiting so long for you to fuck me.”
And he doesn’t know or care if that’s true, if Jun’s lying to screw with him or if Jun’s been harboring fantasies about it for just as long as Sho has. He doesn’t care if it’s true because in that moment, it just takes him right back, right back to Jun’s bed and to impulse and the smell of their sweat.
“Sho-san,” he hears. Still he’s Sho-san. Even with this he’s Sho-san, Sho-san, Sho-san. “Go on, go on.”
It’s not perfect, but it’s enough, and when his breathing starts to calm, the call’s still connected and he can vaguely hear Jun talking to someone, thanking someone, probably giving his card to the bar staff to cover his outrageous tab.
He listens to him for a while, feeling good but also amazed that Jun can just carry on with his evening. But finally he needs to sleep.
“Matsujun,” he says, Jun’s encouraging words still echoing in his mind. “Good night then.”
He hears Jun open a door, and his adoring masses welcome him back with drunken cheers.
“I should have called you in Rio,” Sho hears him say before the call ends.
All he can do is laugh, setting his alarm and turning off the light. “Fuck you.”
\ / \ / \ / \ / \ /
They don’t do anything on work time. They’re not foolish enough to do anything on work time. Jun calls him at 3:00 AM as the crank-up party for his drama dies down around him. Sho knows he’d prefer to party til dawn.
“You should come. They know you. You should come.”
When they were younger and Jun pulled this kind of shit, calling at unreasonable hours and making demands on his time, Sho had wanted to kill him. Stunned awake, those feelings are what come roaring back first.
But instead of voicing those thoughts, he simply says “pass” and hangs up on him.
Jun comes looking for forgiveness a few nights later. The call comes at 8:30 PM instead. “You don’t have to stay” is the closest Jun will come to “I’m sorry for disturbing you the other night.”
He brings along the small box he’d gotten from a dispenser in the men’s room of the airport in Korea. Jun’s astonished laughter at this additional surprise souvenir makes him smile. “Are they real?” Jun asks, fingers tracing the Olympic rings on the box.
Sho turns on the sofa to face him. He can’t read Korean, so he can’t be completely sure. “Are they real condoms? Yeah. Are they the condoms given to the athletes? I don’t think so. Probably just some local brand trying to cash in.”
Jun lets out a tsk of disappointment, sliding his glasses off and setting them on the table in front of them. He looks at Sho with feigned irritation. “You could have just lied to me.”
He smiles, leans in, bridges the distance and keeps his questions to himself. Why are we doing this? Where is this going? What do you mean you should have called me in Rio? (This all started with a shirt, but he supposes it might have started way earlier than that.)
Jun’s tongue is in his mouth, so he can’t ask him anything right now anyway.
He’s known and hasn’t known this skin, this shape, this form. He’s known it in the abstract, the body that’s Jun’s, from across the room, from across the studio, from across a dome. But this is different, good different, putting his fingers to flesh and realizing he still has so much to learn.
It’s hard to keep up, but he’s trying, he’s trying. It’s challenging, it’s overwhelming, keeping up with Matsumoto Jun. But if his instincts aren’t spot on, he isn’t punished. Jun simply takes his hand, puts it where he wants it. Jun simply pants into his ear, sitting astride him. “Here, over here.” Your lips, your tongue, your teeth. “Sho-san, right here.”
They both lose it when they open one of the condom packets and see that the Olympic rings have also been printed on the tip. “So tacky,” Jun says.
“What did you expect? What did you really expect?”
Jun shakes his head, tosses it aside. “Nope. Stay here.”
Sho lets out an exaggerated huff, head falling back against the sofa cushion as Jun moves off of him, walks to his bedroom. There’s no Olympic rings on the new condom Jun brings him, and Sho’s admittedly disappointed that his souvenir has been found lacking. But soon Jun’s back in his lap, sinking down onto him, and he decides it doesn’t really matter. Because he wants this, he wants this, the way Jun feels, the way Jun moves with him, figuring out the right steps without the choreography they otherwise depend on.
They might do this a hundred more times, they might never do this again. He doesn’t know, and that ought to scare him. Everything about this ought to scare him. But for some reason it doesn’t. It doesn’t.
There’s trust when Jun’s movements slow, running his fingers through the short strands of Sho’s hair. Jun meets Sho’s eyes for a few moments, easing himself off of him. There’s trust when Jun moves onto his hands and knees, asking for what he’d like next without words. Sho gives him what he wants, moving behind him, coming back and holding Jun by the hips. And he goes slow, slow, slow until Jun’s pushing back, demanding all of him. Saying his name, saying only “Sho” until they both fail to form words.
“You don’t have to stay,” Jun says again later when Sho doesn’t make any move to put his clothes back on.
“Would it bother you if I left, though?”
It’s the closest they’ve come to confronting the situation, to admitting out loud that this isn’t exactly normal.
Jun’s smile in response is rather mysterious, leaving it up to Sho to decide.
\ / \ / \ / \ / \ /
They don’t dislike each other. Sure, they’ve had their fair share of disagreements over the years, but it’s always been the work that really matters. Too many people have made sacrifices to support the five of them that disagreements never blossomed into anything more. And yet to hear some people tell their story, they can barely stand the sight of each other. They don’t get along and haven’t for some time.
And yet Sho starts to wake up in Jun’s bed or Jun starts to wake up in Sho’s bed once or twice a month, once or twice a week when schedules work (and they so rarely do). Sho thinks he might know Jun’s body better than his own now, knows just where to kiss, just where to let his fingers skim or linger. He always looks forward to the next time he’ll get to feel Jun’s thumb grazing his lips, Jun’s tongue at his pulse. The wet heat of Jun’s mouth around him, coaxing him toward the edge with teasing, punishing slowness.
He takes nothing for granted.
Work doesn’t change, and if the others suspect, they don’t ask. Private time is private time. They probably wouldn’t believe it anyway. Sho still has a hard enough time believing it, no matter how many times Jun kisses him, no matter how many times his sweat and Jun’s mix and linger on bedsheets. No matter how many times Sho doesn’t have to stay and still does.
Why are we doing this? Where is this going? Their answers might not match, not today, maybe never. Years ago, that might have left Sho unable to function. Not having a plan, not having an end goal.
But for now that’s fine.
They don’t dislike each other. They don’t love each other either, but they want each other, and for Sho, for now, that’s fine.
\ / \ / \ / \ / \ /
It all started with a shirt.
It’s been a year now, still undefined. Calling this thing they share “Untitled” might be too on the nose. When he opens his apartment door, Jun laughs at the sight of him.
“I was wondering where that went.”
Sho’s stolen back the jersey he brought over that first night, so tonight it says “MJ” between his own shoulder blades when he turns around and doesn’t wait to see if Jun will follow.