(no subject)
Title: Airs and Social Graces
Fandom/Pairings: NEWS/Perfume crossover, Shige/Nocchi, Hikaru/A~Chan
Summary: She understands loving your group, but she doesn't get NEWS and their member-ai.
A/N: Prompt from bathrumsnberlin. This turned out so much angstier than I was expecting! Also! Much longer. Hahahaha.
Nocchi pretends like she understands their member-ai. She knows loving one's group is important, especially with the entertainment field like it is these days, cutthroat and vicious, the world waiting for you to fall so someone younger, prettier, better can step in.
And she loves Perfume. She loves Kashiyuka and her dollyness, how she claps her hands and squeals because she's always happy. She love's A~chan and her airheadedness, how she's sweet like a child, the way all that evaporates when it's time to do business with their manager.
She holds their hands on the subway because she loves them. They're so perfectly in sync because they trust each other and they spend nearly every second together. She can't really imagine any kind of life without Kashiyuka and A~chan.
So she understands loving your group, but she doesn't get NEWS and their member-ai.
She tivo's all of NEWS's talk show appearances and watches them late at night when she can pretend she's not being a jealous girlfriend. She watches how Masuda-kun keeps his hand on Shige's elbow, how Tegoshi-kun keeps blinking at him and leaning over to whisper. Shige laughs at them and pushes Tegoshi-kun away, but he doesn't seem to mind at all when Tegoshi-kun's back in his space a few seconds later.
She reads their interviews about how he's getting closer to Yamashita-san, how Nishikido-kun's changed over the years, and there's something inside of her that clinches every time Shige mails her to say he's going to be late, practice ran over, he lost track of time, his manager wanted to talk to him. She doesn't even believe him every time, because she knows he's busy, but she can make time for him so she doesn't see why he can't make time for her. She knows it's got to be Yamashita-san and Nishikdio-kun, because Shige never called off before they started paying him attention.
They used to not like him, she knows, back when she first met him, backstage at some show, years ago when he was still in the back with the other cygnets and she hadn't grown into her teeth or legs. They'd started texting because they were lonely, because they had friends in their groups that didn't understand, but NEWS seems to understand now, and his phone is full of messages that draw his attention away from her like honey.
She wonders if this is just how it is, drifting apart after years together, after years of crying late at night about harsh critics and how much their legs and backs hurt. He still says he loves her when he sees her, but he never sees her anymore because Koyama-san needs his help with something, he's got filming, NEWS is doing dinner, sorry, can we reschedule for tomorrow?
Most of the time, tomorrow never comes because he's got other obligations.
When they fight about it (of course they fight about it, Nocchi won't sit back and take it, she's given up her chance at industry friends, trying to hide this from everyone) he says she's imagining it, and it gets better for a day or two. He'll text her and it's almost like five years ago when he was different, when he had blood in his heart and more time in his hands. But he forgets (of course he forgets) and he's got to help Nishikido run lines for his new drama.
It's different when A~chan gets her own Johnnys. At first, Nocchi knows how it's going to be, he's going to break poor A~chan's heart because his group is more important, and since there's more of them, it's more time away, and Nocchi knows how fragile A~chan's heart really is.
Nocchi doesn't say anything, nothing about how Johnnys are fickle and he's going to forget about dates and phone calls are going to be cut off by half a dozen boys setting someone's hair on fire and how his group is going to be more important than anything else. Nocchi doesn't say anything because she knows A~chan would never believe her anyways, and besides, Nocchi wants to be wrong about this.
Nocchi is wrong about this.
For all that Yaotome claims his girlfriend is another member of his group, cementing Nocchi's belief that Johnnys groups share the same heart, he's great, the kind of boyfriend Shige used to be before his group started liking him. Even after debuting, and even after graduating, and Nocchi wonders why Yaotome doesn't need as much time with his group, why A~chan's still so important.
The thing about Nocchi is that she's a realist. A~chan and Kashiyuka are the dreamer and the idealist but Nocchi is who keeps them grounded. She's the one that gets A~chan to stop babbling and the one that pulls up Kashiyuka's shirt when it's slipping and she knows about stopping things before they go too far. She knows it's over when she watches DVD clips of their concert tour, the one were he was so tired he could barely make it through five minutes of forced conversation with her, but he could beam and joke around with Yamashita-san whenever the camera caught them in hidden corners.
There's been signs for years, but she's ignored them, pretended he wasn't becoming something different.
When she tells him, he doesn't cry like she once thought he might, back when he was weaker and didn't have so much faith in himself. She watches him walk away and pick up his phone, and she wonders who he's calling, if it's Koyama-san or Tegoshi-kun, because she doesn't have a doubt it's someone from NEWS, someone who will sigh and say I guess it wasn't meant to be and invite him out for drinks.
She catches them on Music Station a few days later when she's flipping channels and trying to rearrange her life now that she doesn't have to worry about career-breaking Johnnys, and Shige looks much the same, his eyes bright where he's sitting at the end of the line. She watches for a minute and tries to find some little clue that he's still thinking about her like he used to back when all this first started, his fingers twisting the ring she gave him or tapping out her name in Morse code on his leg.
He doesn't though, because he's too busy smiling at Nishikido-kun and listening to everything Yamashita-san has to say, and she wishes she could figure out what they have that makes Shige love them.
Fandom/Pairings: NEWS/Perfume crossover, Shige/Nocchi, Hikaru/A~Chan
Summary: She understands loving your group, but she doesn't get NEWS and their member-ai.
A/N: Prompt from bathrumsnberlin. This turned out so much angstier than I was expecting! Also! Much longer. Hahahaha.
Nocchi pretends like she understands their member-ai. She knows loving one's group is important, especially with the entertainment field like it is these days, cutthroat and vicious, the world waiting for you to fall so someone younger, prettier, better can step in.
And she loves Perfume. She loves Kashiyuka and her dollyness, how she claps her hands and squeals because she's always happy. She love's A~chan and her airheadedness, how she's sweet like a child, the way all that evaporates when it's time to do business with their manager.
She holds their hands on the subway because she loves them. They're so perfectly in sync because they trust each other and they spend nearly every second together. She can't really imagine any kind of life without Kashiyuka and A~chan.
So she understands loving your group, but she doesn't get NEWS and their member-ai.
She tivo's all of NEWS's talk show appearances and watches them late at night when she can pretend she's not being a jealous girlfriend. She watches how Masuda-kun keeps his hand on Shige's elbow, how Tegoshi-kun keeps blinking at him and leaning over to whisper. Shige laughs at them and pushes Tegoshi-kun away, but he doesn't seem to mind at all when Tegoshi-kun's back in his space a few seconds later.
She reads their interviews about how he's getting closer to Yamashita-san, how Nishikido-kun's changed over the years, and there's something inside of her that clinches every time Shige mails her to say he's going to be late, practice ran over, he lost track of time, his manager wanted to talk to him. She doesn't even believe him every time, because she knows he's busy, but she can make time for him so she doesn't see why he can't make time for her. She knows it's got to be Yamashita-san and Nishikdio-kun, because Shige never called off before they started paying him attention.
They used to not like him, she knows, back when she first met him, backstage at some show, years ago when he was still in the back with the other cygnets and she hadn't grown into her teeth or legs. They'd started texting because they were lonely, because they had friends in their groups that didn't understand, but NEWS seems to understand now, and his phone is full of messages that draw his attention away from her like honey.
She wonders if this is just how it is, drifting apart after years together, after years of crying late at night about harsh critics and how much their legs and backs hurt. He still says he loves her when he sees her, but he never sees her anymore because Koyama-san needs his help with something, he's got filming, NEWS is doing dinner, sorry, can we reschedule for tomorrow?
Most of the time, tomorrow never comes because he's got other obligations.
When they fight about it (of course they fight about it, Nocchi won't sit back and take it, she's given up her chance at industry friends, trying to hide this from everyone) he says she's imagining it, and it gets better for a day or two. He'll text her and it's almost like five years ago when he was different, when he had blood in his heart and more time in his hands. But he forgets (of course he forgets) and he's got to help Nishikido run lines for his new drama.
It's different when A~chan gets her own Johnnys. At first, Nocchi knows how it's going to be, he's going to break poor A~chan's heart because his group is more important, and since there's more of them, it's more time away, and Nocchi knows how fragile A~chan's heart really is.
Nocchi doesn't say anything, nothing about how Johnnys are fickle and he's going to forget about dates and phone calls are going to be cut off by half a dozen boys setting someone's hair on fire and how his group is going to be more important than anything else. Nocchi doesn't say anything because she knows A~chan would never believe her anyways, and besides, Nocchi wants to be wrong about this.
Nocchi is wrong about this.
For all that Yaotome claims his girlfriend is another member of his group, cementing Nocchi's belief that Johnnys groups share the same heart, he's great, the kind of boyfriend Shige used to be before his group started liking him. Even after debuting, and even after graduating, and Nocchi wonders why Yaotome doesn't need as much time with his group, why A~chan's still so important.
The thing about Nocchi is that she's a realist. A~chan and Kashiyuka are the dreamer and the idealist but Nocchi is who keeps them grounded. She's the one that gets A~chan to stop babbling and the one that pulls up Kashiyuka's shirt when it's slipping and she knows about stopping things before they go too far. She knows it's over when she watches DVD clips of their concert tour, the one were he was so tired he could barely make it through five minutes of forced conversation with her, but he could beam and joke around with Yamashita-san whenever the camera caught them in hidden corners.
There's been signs for years, but she's ignored them, pretended he wasn't becoming something different.
When she tells him, he doesn't cry like she once thought he might, back when he was weaker and didn't have so much faith in himself. She watches him walk away and pick up his phone, and she wonders who he's calling, if it's Koyama-san or Tegoshi-kun, because she doesn't have a doubt it's someone from NEWS, someone who will sigh and say I guess it wasn't meant to be and invite him out for drinks.
She catches them on Music Station a few days later when she's flipping channels and trying to rearrange her life now that she doesn't have to worry about career-breaking Johnnys, and Shige looks much the same, his eyes bright where he's sitting at the end of the line. She watches for a minute and tries to find some little clue that he's still thinking about her like he used to back when all this first started, his fingers twisting the ring she gave him or tapping out her name in Morse code on his leg.
He doesn't though, because he's too busy smiling at Nishikido-kun and listening to everything Yamashita-san has to say, and she wishes she could figure out what they have that makes Shige love them.