Gift fic for satsumatsu
To: satsumatsu
From: miscetera
SEASON'S GREETINGS!
Title: Stretches of Your Shifting Shadow
Pairing/Group: Nino/Jun
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None.
Notes: Happy holidays, satsumatsu! I hope that this will be a heartwarming piece to read during the holiday season for you. :) A huge thank you goes to my beta for all her unwavering support. ♥
Summary: Nino doesn't tell Jun that he is moving in.
On the way home from the recording studio, snores boom heavy as hammers against the walls of the van.
Jun is teetering on the edge of consciousness when he hears Nino's voice slither through the darkness from the back row. Peeking open an eye, he sees from the rearview mirror that Nino is poking at Sho to pass a slip of paper forward. Groggily, Sho takes it and wiggles it at Jun from between the seat and the window.
It takes all of Jun's squinting power to read the characters scribbled small and scrawny. I'm staying over, it reads, not a question.
But Jun gives an answer anyway as he nods once, knowing that Nino is watching, waiting. He does not look back, though, focusing his eyes instead on the shadows that sweep across the concrete. With the streetlamps shining on the wet pavement, the black and organic shapes drift near and far as the van takes them forward.
Apart, their five outlines on the sidewalk swim on, impossibly lonely.
"You know when you're moving into someone's apartment but that person doesn't seem to notice?" Nino says to Sho the next morning while they wait for their photo shoot to begin.
Sho blinks up over his laptop. "I really don't," he says. When Nino shrugs and pretends that that's the end of the conversation, Sho sighs and gives in with a resigned, "Why?"
"Just thinking," Nino says to see Sho sputter impatiently. He balances his head on a fist, resting half his upper body over the table. "Jun-kun hasn't realized yet that I've been planting my stuff all around his apartment."
Sho tilts his head at Nino. "You know, you usually talk about moving in with someone before you do it," he says.
"I figure it's harder to say no after he sees that I don't take up that much room," Nino reasons.
"Why would he say no anyway?"
Nino draws a circle on the table and then traces it in reverse. "Just a precaution."
Sho begins, "I think you should talk-" but swallows the rest of his sentence when Jun pushes open the door and comes back into the room with a cup of tea.
"What's going on?" he asks, glancing between the two of them who have both gone silent.
"We were-" Sho says, shooting Nino a meaningful look.
Nino kicks him under the table. "-planning Aiba-kun's birthday party. Since he said he wanted one that wasn't related to Christmas."
"I'm getting a party?" Aiba's voice sounds from behind Jun. He bounds into the room, his eyes sparkling bright and excited.
Sho clears nonexistent mucus from his throat and kicks Nino back.
Nino bites his tongue. "Well," he says, "you are now."
Every year around Christmas, they seem to be answering the same questions on repeat. They come to expect the questionnaires asking, "How would your ideal Christmas date go?" or "Who do you want to spend Christmas with this year?" It takes Nino a little off guard when the questions about how Arashi would want their future families to spend Christmas together begin appearing.
"I guess it's because we're getting up there, age-wise," Aiba says, balancing a basket of chips in his lap. He is working on building the fourth layer of his chip pyramid over Nino's drama script.
Sho pats Ohno on the back while Ohno just continues to check the day's tide patterns.
"What did you guys write?" Aiba asks.
Nino keeps quiet because he has yet to complete the questionnaire, preoccupied with curiosity over what Jun wrote because he is sure that Jun has composed an essay, a beautiful one about light and candles and his children with their noses pressed against the window pane, their breaths fogging up the glass in small, white puffs.
It is not until Nino finds Jun's questionnaire unattended during a break in filming that he realizes he had been wrong. The lines provided for the answer lie bare. On Jun's paper, they look pathetic, like they are stretching for something off the page, out of reach.
Throughout the next week, Jun develops the habit of leaving his apartment before sunrise and returning when night casts the world ebony black. He just doesn't find much of a point staying there when there is an empty expanse in front of him, spaces he can't fill on his own.
Often, he does not even make it to the bed when he falls through the door. He scrunches himself on the couch instead, which is comfortable enough most nights. But tonight, when he collapses onto the couch, he feels a pillow under his head that is definitely not his, especially not with the way the huge cartoon eyes seem to be staring at him.
In a bleary state of semi-consciousness, he pushes the pillow aside, attributing the strange vision to sleep-deprivation. The moment he closes his eyes, sleep embraces him with warm arms.
Strange mosaics fill his dreams. They shift and turn and try to find their place until the masquerade of dancing shapes and colors come to a halt and a picture finds focus. It seems like a family portrait, like the one hanging in the foyer of his parents' home, except Jun is standing where his father should be and in the place of Jun, his sister and mother are faceless figures. They stand with their backs pin-straight.
He imagines them with smiles stiff as wax. He imagines them without shadows.
It's like something out of a twentieth century Hollywood film, the ones starring Meg Ryan or, older still, Clark Gable. This should be off-putting, or should at the very least slow the pulse racing in Jun's wrist, but it isn't quite so convenient. The rough patterns of the wallpaper biting into the palms of his hands are uncomfortable and they're standing in a dusty old corner in this strange hotel they've never stayed at on tour, but neither of those things restrain the threads of warmth that course through Jun's body because Nino's body presses flesh against his and if he holds his breath, he can feel Nino's blood pounding.
When Jun pauses before Nino's lips, Nino smiles a little, the lines of his face upturned and encouraging, a lighthouse in the sea of darkness. They lean in on each other, for a moment sharing the same breath of hot air. Nino opens his mouth, taking more than his share of the oxygen, but before he forms words, white light strikes them-a different genre of movies altogether: the type that makes Jun feel teenage despite that those feelings should have been left so far in the past. When he looks up at the source of intrusion, he sees Aiba and Ohno and Sho pointing a flashlight at them from the other end of the hall.
"This happens," Nino grumbles, "when you leave clues."
To the other three's credit, though, they don't give Jun and Nino a particularly hard time. Sho says the press would have a field day with this; they should be more careful about it in public. Ohno looks at logo on the bag Nino's holding and gives his approval for the takeout they ate. Aiba asks why they chose this particular corner to have their Moment.
Jun would answer that it is because certain people were being loud next door with the Juniors, and because it is exciting, frankly, the high of being at the hotel on tour added on to the thrill of the possibility of being caught the way they did, but that's really not Aiba's business. After a few beats of silence, Nino shoots Jun a nervous look and bats at Aiba, sending the three of them packing with the leftovers from their dinner.
But afterwards when they go down to Nino's room, on the opposite side of the hotel from the raucous of the Aiba Society party, the tension is weird, knocked askew by the intrusion. Nino seems calm enough by that time, unaffected even, as he plops down on the couch and pats to the space next to him. He's smiling, but without teeth, a softly disappointed kind of smile.
It dawns on Jun then that maybe they did have a kind of climactic moment out there. He knows he should ask for Nino to say what he was going to, but he finds it hard to communicate this to his mouth when Nino is leaning in again, close enough to create the illusion of touching. Nino probably knows he isn't making words easier because for one, it is not his style, but also maybe because the moment has passed and it is just no longer the right time.
Jun lets it go, even if the fluttery, unsettling feeling in his gut tells him he'll regret it.
"Have your rooms always been this small?" Jun asks because he is sure that everyone else's hotel room is twice this size.
"No, but they shrink every time people used to living in big, pretentious apartments insult them." Nino stirs his coffee, which is becoming increasingly Irish. "You're out of Scotch, by the way."
"How drunk are you? You're holding it in your hand," Jun points out.
"That's for me," Nino says around a grin. "You are out of Scotch."
"Share," Jun says disapprovingly.
"Come and get it," Nino challenges, taking a gulp of his Irish coffee and holding it in his mouth.
When alcohol rings in his veins, Nino becomes a different person, someone whose mind doesn't turn at immeasurable speeds, who doesn't think so much as he acts. When Nino is drunk, he learns how to give up bits of himself, and that to Jun is irresistible. Jun finds himself shifting closer, more of an impulse than a conscious act, and they still aren't touching but they could be because with just the lift of a hand Jun could press his fingers against Nino's jaw, temple, neck, mouth. Jun cannot form the words with alcohol knotting his tongue but if he could, he would flood the distance between them with truths he wouldn't dare let slip save for during the whispers of night, every word telling Nino how gorgeous, unbelievably gorgeous he looks right now: loose-limbed, bright-eyed, and not even trying.
The first wave of liquid that dribbles into his mouth is bitter, all coffee, black, and it isn't until seconds later when the Scotch comes chasing. The blend is revolting against Jun's tongue, but with Nino's mouth warm and open against his, he can't bring himself to care. When Jun's hand finds Nino's and slips their fingers into a lock, Jun feels against Nino's wrist the bump of a pulse, pounding heavy like it is knocking for entrance into the depths of Jun's core. With a gasp as Nino's tongue invades his mouth, sweeping through like a storm, Jun opens the door, welcomes him in.
Upon returning to Tokyo, Jun spends a night running around making sure things are as he had left them. It's a routine he does not remember developing but cannot get rid of now even when he is conscious of it. When he finally makes his way home, exhausted but put at ease, he trips over a box of CDs he does not remember leaving in the living room. He feels around in the dark, putting one foot forward to test uncharted territory until he reaches his bedroom. By then, his vision has adjusted and he sees with clarity that Nino had beaten him into his own bed.
"Hey," Jun says quietly, an arm snaking around Nino's waist as he slips under the covers.
"Ngh," Nino groans. "Leave a message after the tone."
"I thought my place was big and pretentious," Jun says.
"For one person it is," Nino replies.
"And this isn't your home, you know," Jun whispers into the shell of Nino's ear, "even if you've probably spent more time here than there in the last month."
"Okay," Nino says.
And Jun thinks he can agree to that. Because it was okay, more than okay, he decides, that Nino is here, wiggling close to Jun until their curves and corners bend into a fit, snug and tight. They are warmer together than apart.
Nino knows that Jun is awake from the way he tenses with every crack of thunder outside. The sudden storm was what had woken Nino in the middle of the night, too. The difference is that Nino, strumming the strings of his guitar, is trying to distract himself from the whistles and drums and ribbons of light whereas Jun is trying to pretend he just isn't listening. After a few minutes when the clamor of the storm only crescendos, Jun gives up.
He rolls around to face Nino. "Did you leave that here again?" he asks, motioning to Nino's guitar.
Nino makes a neutral sound. His eyes chase Jun's as they follow the line of Nino's shoulder down to his wrist. Jun reaches out to trace the path with his fingers, his touch light like the fluttering wings of an origami sparrow folded out of tissue paper. When he reaches the end, his hand lands with a hush on the pad of post-its Nino had been scribbling on. "A new song?" Jun asks.
"Maybe," Nino says. "I don't know. Just lines."
"I can't imagine being inspired in the middle of the night," Jun admits. "Artists are amazing people."
"Most of them are liars, you know," Nino says, because more often than not, art is a beautiful way of saying the ugly; because more often than not, artists speak words empty like a stage set only for beauty, truth forgotten at the costume racks. They hold up their lies like shields, rejecting before they are rejected.
"Them?" Jun echoes.
Nino laughs, but not like anything is really funny.
"Do you think the liars ever find a home where they let themselves be honest?" Jun asks.
When Nino wordlessly places his guitar back in its case, his sleeve catches in the strings, eliciting a ripple of some cacophonous progression of notes, all pitches flat. As if the lightning flashing beyond the trees had reached into his throat and snatched away his defenses, Nino finds himself unable to answer. Jun doesn't make him.
On the morning of the twenty-fourth, Aiba ducks into the van, bringing in the holiday cheer along with four shopping bags. "So who is proud of me?" he asks, barely able to contain his excitement. If he were a dog, his tail would be wagging like a windshield wiper in the middle of a flash-storm.
"Of the way you tracked snow in here, or...?" Jun says.
"I got my holiday shopping done before Christmas this year!" Aiba squeals.
Jun winces against the volume of Aiba's voice. "It's more like, 'I got my holiday shopping done this year period.'"
"Hey, I had presents for everyone last year," Aiba protests. "Remember that sweater I got you."
"I remember," Jun says, "you calling me in line at Beams with about eight of the same sweater and asking me to lend you a thousand yen because you were low on cash."
"And now if you want to do Octuplet Day, you can," Aiba says, cheekily self-righteous like a kid, "but anyway, I'm giving you guys your Christmas presents now so that at my party, I can pretend like I'm just having a normal birthday party instead of one combined with celebrating Christmas."
When Jun turns around to receive the red paper bag Aiba is trying to stuff between the seats instead of just bringing it over the seats, he meets Nino's eyes which look struck, the textbook deer-caught-in-headlights. Sho mirrors the same wide-eyed stare. When Jun sees Ohno peer into his bag from Aiba happily, oblivious to the panic in the bus, Jun finds that he has never believed so much in the doctrine that ignorance is bliss.
While Aiba searches with the costume artist for a scarf gone MIA (courtesy of Nino), the four of them huddle around a small circular table in an emergency group conference.
"In our defense," Nino says, "the first time we brought it up, it was a lie."
"That was your defense?" Jun hisses.
Nino prods Sho. "You go."
"I wish we could go," Sho says. "We have jobs scheduled all day and we need to be at the company party at night."
"But we need to be there for him," Jun says, and what he means is that they need to be family when Aiba's real family isn't around.
"If our manager runs out to buy a cake now, we can still make it in time to celebrate during lunch break," Ohno offers, unexpectedly commonsensical.
They stare at him until Jun breaks the silence and says, glancing down at his watch, "Everyone be in the greenroom in twelve hundred hours?"
When Jun starts in on them with military time, Nino realizes how much more this might mean to Jun than it does even to Aiba.
Jun finishes his solo cuts first, and he rushes home to retrieve his Christmas present for Aiba. He has time to replace it by the time the Christmas party at Matsuoka's house rolls around tomorrow. But when he walks in, he immediately pulls back to check the number plate. He has Nino on the phone in ten seconds.
At first he doesn't say a word. He only fumes.
"Jun-kun?" Nino says when he answers. "Where are you? We're all looking for you."
"Home," Jun says.
A pause. "Any chance you installed heavy curtains that block out all daylight?"
"So that I can't see your-may I add, very, very impressive-collection of cards on my coffee table? Which is only one among everything you own in my apartment?" Jun asks.
"I was going to tell you."
Jun shakes his head, at a loss for what to say in his confusion and frustration for all the conversations he and Nino haven't been having the past few weeks. "You know, I don't have time to do this with you right now," Jun says. "Is Aiba-kun done with his cuts?"
"He is, but he disappeared into the restroom and he's been in there for the past thirty minutes," Nino explains. "Also, I think a couple of the staff from ItteQ! just passed by looking for Becky, so put two and two together..."
"Okay, you know what? I don't need the details right now," Jun says, harsher than he intended even though he knows it's not that Nino doesn't care. He's just better than Jun at taking things down to scale, at figuring that everything will end up okay, which it will be, probably, but Jun sometimes-just sometimes wishes that Nino would take things other people care about more seriously. Or that he himself could take things less seriously. "In case he finishes up in the next ten minutes, keep him busy for ten more. I'll be right there."
Jun hears Nino take a breath, maybe for words, maybe for a sigh, but Jun is already throwing a rushed goodbye and hanging up. It is only after he stuffs his phone in his pocket that he realizes he might have just crafted the beginnings of a misunderstanding.
During the party, Nino watches Jun float around the room keeping everyone's glasses filled and making sure that no one is getting drunk enough to create a scene later in the day. He doesn't try to approach Jun and apologize. He doesn't see the point.
And when Aiba creeps up on him as they clean up and tells Nino to stop frowning because "It's okay, you know, even if you didn't remember until this morning (the staring contest in the van totally gave you guys away) because I'm touched by all the effort you guys put into this and I'm so happy, really, really," Nino feels like the biggest child in the room, like the last person who should be with moving in with someone, never mind Jun, who is careful and mature and unafraid of responsibility. Nino could apologize, but to Jun and all that he could have, his apology would end a curse.
The next day when Jun comes home, he doesn't run into the case of CDs in the living room. When he flicks on the lights, he sees that the pillows are gone too. His bed is empty, and all of Nino's vests and cardigans have disappeared from his closet. Jun clenches his jaw as he falls across his bed, flinging an arm over his eyes.
That night, in his dreams, his faceless family vanishes. What replaces it all is Nino and his long, thin shadow, stretching for something beyond Jun's unconscious, something beyond reach.
Before Kouhaku, Nino pulls all the stops to avoid being within speaking distance of Jun. These attempts end in various states of success and serve to thoroughly puzzle all of TOKIO, who are sharing a dressing room with Arashi.
It is only as they are lined up to appear on stage that they are huddled together at the side of the stage and Jun pokes Nino in the side to get his attention. He speaks fast because he's afraid of Nino trying to run away again, even if there is no place to go this time.
"I was only ever angry about the fact that you didn't think I wanted the same things you did," Jun murmurs against Nino's ear.
On instinct, Nino jerks away. After a beat, he says, "Do think this is the best place to have this conversation?" but at least he's responding.
"You wouldn't listen anywhere else," Jun says.
"Those guys can hear us," Nino says.
"Clear as day," Aiba confirms.
"If you could enunciate a little more," Ohno turns around to say from the front of the line.
But Jun only ignores them. He grabs Nino by the shoulders and stares until Nino bites the inside of his cheeks and says, "I just kept thinking..."
"Not good for the body," Aiba interjects.
"Read the atmosphere," Jun shushes, a bit desperately, because time is ticking before they have to take the stage.
"...and I feel like I'm standing in the way of something important, of you finding someone who's grown up and responsible and wouldn't make promises and forget and-don't you think you want more than an escape artist? Everything you could have written on that questionnaire about spending Christmas with your future family, it would have all suited you."
"If you thought so, why did you keep moving in?"
"Because-" Nino begins, then drops his voice. "Because I was hoping I would suit you better," he mumbles, so quietly Jun almost doesn't catch it in the buzz of the studio that had suddenly fallen silent.
But before he can reply with anything, his words die on his tongue as his thoughts drown against thundering applause. The director motions them forward. Jun throws Nino one lingering glance before he straightens his back, puts on his smile, and places all that is Arashi before Matsumoto Jun for the remaining hours of the year.
On the way home, it is Jun's turn to pass notes.
Come back to me, he writes, but Nino doesn't even look at it before stuffing it into his pocket and closing his eyes. He doesn't follow Jun off the van when they stop in front of Jun's apartment.
Judging by the angle of the dark blurs that stretch across the room, it is a little past three when Jun hears the jangling of keys at the door. He holds his breath as he lies in bed staring up at the ceiling, trying to find rhyme and reason in the pattern above.
Footsteps.
If he cocks his head to the left, an eagle soars above. If he squints and strains his neck backwards into his pillow, some semblance of a dove emerges. There are billions of shapes and configurations that appear and vanish on his ceiling.
The steady steps stop at his bedroom door.
But Jun finds that he doesn't care about the figures above because when he closes his eyes, he hears a voice with sharp rises in pitch; he smells a scent like his own shampoo intermingled with a faint layer of cologne; he feels the touch of a hand, small and calloused by strings, tracing up his spine.
The door clicks open and Jun sees at first Nino's silhouette before the shadows adjust and he sees his face. His eyes are ensconced in a dark cave that makes his expression difficult to read, and it is only when Nino comes close enough for Jun to hear the stuttering of his every breath as he says, "What are you, stupid? I'm not your fan; don't quote songs at me," holding up Jun's slip of paper, that Jun gets it: gets that they are the same in being afraid of putting themselves out there without some line of defense; of not wanting to be left behind so badly that they are quick to push people away just so they aren't the ones on the receiving end of the push; that Nino never thought that artists were liars because they both know the honesty of real artists burn them to the core; that Nino never wanted to trick Jun into anything or lead them places they both didn't agree on, but that he was just scared of hearing no because they are the same in so many ways, especially in taking things to heart.
And so when Jun finally murmurs the words he held through the new year into Nino's mouth, he feels Nino swallow them, each syllable funneling down his throat and draining through his blood into his heart.
The next morning, Jun watches with his arms crossed as Nino drags all of his things out from the storage closet in Jun's apartment. Nino isn't even sheepish about not really having moved back.
"I hate packing," he says in way of explanation.
Jun whacks at him for being stupidly obnoxious and dramatic, but he doesn't try to hide the fact that he is smiling behind it all. It's good to start off the year with some truth.
On the first day of work, Ohno remarks that Jun and Nino look refreshingly happy entering the greenroom together.
"What did you guys do over the break?" Sho asks.
"Things that don't help with Japan's declining population," Aiba chirps, nodding proudly at his chip tower. Over the course of the break, he seems to have perfected its architecture. "I suppose I am this group's last hope for creating a second generation Arashi."
Sho and Ohno look slightly bemused over how they were ruled out from being able to procreate, but it is Nino who throws his head in his hands and groans, "Oh, God."
"What's wrong?" Sho and Jun immediately crowd him, concerned that maybe the end-of-the-year stress had brought up him a brain aneurysm.
"Just imagined five Aiba-chans running around?" Ohno asks, watching Aiba carefully place the last chip on the top of the tower.
"It was blinding," Nino gripes.
"Like a Christmas miracle? Like Jesus?" Aiba does a little spin, accidentally knocking over his art project. He pouts at it, distraught over its destruction.
Nino stares at him in disbelief but can't help the laughter that bubbles past his lips. "Sure," he says tolerantly because it's nice to be generous to people you love once in a while, "just like that."
That night, as they ride home, their shadows blend until Jun can no longer tell what belongs to whom, until the deep blue, the true, the hues of the milky dust rage together in a moving, dynamic cloud that shifts and shifts in rhythm, the premonition of storm. A storm that threatened eleven years ago to sweep the world off its feet.
And it hits Jun that this is it.
The next time anyone asks how Jun envisions his family, he answers just that.
From: miscetera
SEASON'S GREETINGS!
Title: Stretches of Your Shifting Shadow
Pairing/Group: Nino/Jun
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None.
Notes: Happy holidays, satsumatsu! I hope that this will be a heartwarming piece to read during the holiday season for you. :) A huge thank you goes to my beta for all her unwavering support. ♥
Summary: Nino doesn't tell Jun that he is moving in.
On the way home from the recording studio, snores boom heavy as hammers against the walls of the van.
Jun is teetering on the edge of consciousness when he hears Nino's voice slither through the darkness from the back row. Peeking open an eye, he sees from the rearview mirror that Nino is poking at Sho to pass a slip of paper forward. Groggily, Sho takes it and wiggles it at Jun from between the seat and the window.
It takes all of Jun's squinting power to read the characters scribbled small and scrawny. I'm staying over, it reads, not a question.
But Jun gives an answer anyway as he nods once, knowing that Nino is watching, waiting. He does not look back, though, focusing his eyes instead on the shadows that sweep across the concrete. With the streetlamps shining on the wet pavement, the black and organic shapes drift near and far as the van takes them forward.
Apart, their five outlines on the sidewalk swim on, impossibly lonely.
"You know when you're moving into someone's apartment but that person doesn't seem to notice?" Nino says to Sho the next morning while they wait for their photo shoot to begin.
Sho blinks up over his laptop. "I really don't," he says. When Nino shrugs and pretends that that's the end of the conversation, Sho sighs and gives in with a resigned, "Why?"
"Just thinking," Nino says to see Sho sputter impatiently. He balances his head on a fist, resting half his upper body over the table. "Jun-kun hasn't realized yet that I've been planting my stuff all around his apartment."
Sho tilts his head at Nino. "You know, you usually talk about moving in with someone before you do it," he says.
"I figure it's harder to say no after he sees that I don't take up that much room," Nino reasons.
"Why would he say no anyway?"
Nino draws a circle on the table and then traces it in reverse. "Just a precaution."
Sho begins, "I think you should talk-" but swallows the rest of his sentence when Jun pushes open the door and comes back into the room with a cup of tea.
"What's going on?" he asks, glancing between the two of them who have both gone silent.
"We were-" Sho says, shooting Nino a meaningful look.
Nino kicks him under the table. "-planning Aiba-kun's birthday party. Since he said he wanted one that wasn't related to Christmas."
"I'm getting a party?" Aiba's voice sounds from behind Jun. He bounds into the room, his eyes sparkling bright and excited.
Sho clears nonexistent mucus from his throat and kicks Nino back.
Nino bites his tongue. "Well," he says, "you are now."
Every year around Christmas, they seem to be answering the same questions on repeat. They come to expect the questionnaires asking, "How would your ideal Christmas date go?" or "Who do you want to spend Christmas with this year?" It takes Nino a little off guard when the questions about how Arashi would want their future families to spend Christmas together begin appearing.
"I guess it's because we're getting up there, age-wise," Aiba says, balancing a basket of chips in his lap. He is working on building the fourth layer of his chip pyramid over Nino's drama script.
Sho pats Ohno on the back while Ohno just continues to check the day's tide patterns.
"What did you guys write?" Aiba asks.
Nino keeps quiet because he has yet to complete the questionnaire, preoccupied with curiosity over what Jun wrote because he is sure that Jun has composed an essay, a beautiful one about light and candles and his children with their noses pressed against the window pane, their breaths fogging up the glass in small, white puffs.
It is not until Nino finds Jun's questionnaire unattended during a break in filming that he realizes he had been wrong. The lines provided for the answer lie bare. On Jun's paper, they look pathetic, like they are stretching for something off the page, out of reach.
Throughout the next week, Jun develops the habit of leaving his apartment before sunrise and returning when night casts the world ebony black. He just doesn't find much of a point staying there when there is an empty expanse in front of him, spaces he can't fill on his own.
Often, he does not even make it to the bed when he falls through the door. He scrunches himself on the couch instead, which is comfortable enough most nights. But tonight, when he collapses onto the couch, he feels a pillow under his head that is definitely not his, especially not with the way the huge cartoon eyes seem to be staring at him.
In a bleary state of semi-consciousness, he pushes the pillow aside, attributing the strange vision to sleep-deprivation. The moment he closes his eyes, sleep embraces him with warm arms.
Strange mosaics fill his dreams. They shift and turn and try to find their place until the masquerade of dancing shapes and colors come to a halt and a picture finds focus. It seems like a family portrait, like the one hanging in the foyer of his parents' home, except Jun is standing where his father should be and in the place of Jun, his sister and mother are faceless figures. They stand with their backs pin-straight.
He imagines them with smiles stiff as wax. He imagines them without shadows.
It's like something out of a twentieth century Hollywood film, the ones starring Meg Ryan or, older still, Clark Gable. This should be off-putting, or should at the very least slow the pulse racing in Jun's wrist, but it isn't quite so convenient. The rough patterns of the wallpaper biting into the palms of his hands are uncomfortable and they're standing in a dusty old corner in this strange hotel they've never stayed at on tour, but neither of those things restrain the threads of warmth that course through Jun's body because Nino's body presses flesh against his and if he holds his breath, he can feel Nino's blood pounding.
When Jun pauses before Nino's lips, Nino smiles a little, the lines of his face upturned and encouraging, a lighthouse in the sea of darkness. They lean in on each other, for a moment sharing the same breath of hot air. Nino opens his mouth, taking more than his share of the oxygen, but before he forms words, white light strikes them-a different genre of movies altogether: the type that makes Jun feel teenage despite that those feelings should have been left so far in the past. When he looks up at the source of intrusion, he sees Aiba and Ohno and Sho pointing a flashlight at them from the other end of the hall.
"This happens," Nino grumbles, "when you leave clues."
To the other three's credit, though, they don't give Jun and Nino a particularly hard time. Sho says the press would have a field day with this; they should be more careful about it in public. Ohno looks at logo on the bag Nino's holding and gives his approval for the takeout they ate. Aiba asks why they chose this particular corner to have their Moment.
Jun would answer that it is because certain people were being loud next door with the Juniors, and because it is exciting, frankly, the high of being at the hotel on tour added on to the thrill of the possibility of being caught the way they did, but that's really not Aiba's business. After a few beats of silence, Nino shoots Jun a nervous look and bats at Aiba, sending the three of them packing with the leftovers from their dinner.
But afterwards when they go down to Nino's room, on the opposite side of the hotel from the raucous of the Aiba Society party, the tension is weird, knocked askew by the intrusion. Nino seems calm enough by that time, unaffected even, as he plops down on the couch and pats to the space next to him. He's smiling, but without teeth, a softly disappointed kind of smile.
It dawns on Jun then that maybe they did have a kind of climactic moment out there. He knows he should ask for Nino to say what he was going to, but he finds it hard to communicate this to his mouth when Nino is leaning in again, close enough to create the illusion of touching. Nino probably knows he isn't making words easier because for one, it is not his style, but also maybe because the moment has passed and it is just no longer the right time.
Jun lets it go, even if the fluttery, unsettling feeling in his gut tells him he'll regret it.
"Have your rooms always been this small?" Jun asks because he is sure that everyone else's hotel room is twice this size.
"No, but they shrink every time people used to living in big, pretentious apartments insult them." Nino stirs his coffee, which is becoming increasingly Irish. "You're out of Scotch, by the way."
"How drunk are you? You're holding it in your hand," Jun points out.
"That's for me," Nino says around a grin. "You are out of Scotch."
"Share," Jun says disapprovingly.
"Come and get it," Nino challenges, taking a gulp of his Irish coffee and holding it in his mouth.
When alcohol rings in his veins, Nino becomes a different person, someone whose mind doesn't turn at immeasurable speeds, who doesn't think so much as he acts. When Nino is drunk, he learns how to give up bits of himself, and that to Jun is irresistible. Jun finds himself shifting closer, more of an impulse than a conscious act, and they still aren't touching but they could be because with just the lift of a hand Jun could press his fingers against Nino's jaw, temple, neck, mouth. Jun cannot form the words with alcohol knotting his tongue but if he could, he would flood the distance between them with truths he wouldn't dare let slip save for during the whispers of night, every word telling Nino how gorgeous, unbelievably gorgeous he looks right now: loose-limbed, bright-eyed, and not even trying.
The first wave of liquid that dribbles into his mouth is bitter, all coffee, black, and it isn't until seconds later when the Scotch comes chasing. The blend is revolting against Jun's tongue, but with Nino's mouth warm and open against his, he can't bring himself to care. When Jun's hand finds Nino's and slips their fingers into a lock, Jun feels against Nino's wrist the bump of a pulse, pounding heavy like it is knocking for entrance into the depths of Jun's core. With a gasp as Nino's tongue invades his mouth, sweeping through like a storm, Jun opens the door, welcomes him in.
Upon returning to Tokyo, Jun spends a night running around making sure things are as he had left them. It's a routine he does not remember developing but cannot get rid of now even when he is conscious of it. When he finally makes his way home, exhausted but put at ease, he trips over a box of CDs he does not remember leaving in the living room. He feels around in the dark, putting one foot forward to test uncharted territory until he reaches his bedroom. By then, his vision has adjusted and he sees with clarity that Nino had beaten him into his own bed.
"Hey," Jun says quietly, an arm snaking around Nino's waist as he slips under the covers.
"Ngh," Nino groans. "Leave a message after the tone."
"I thought my place was big and pretentious," Jun says.
"For one person it is," Nino replies.
"And this isn't your home, you know," Jun whispers into the shell of Nino's ear, "even if you've probably spent more time here than there in the last month."
"Okay," Nino says.
And Jun thinks he can agree to that. Because it was okay, more than okay, he decides, that Nino is here, wiggling close to Jun until their curves and corners bend into a fit, snug and tight. They are warmer together than apart.
Nino knows that Jun is awake from the way he tenses with every crack of thunder outside. The sudden storm was what had woken Nino in the middle of the night, too. The difference is that Nino, strumming the strings of his guitar, is trying to distract himself from the whistles and drums and ribbons of light whereas Jun is trying to pretend he just isn't listening. After a few minutes when the clamor of the storm only crescendos, Jun gives up.
He rolls around to face Nino. "Did you leave that here again?" he asks, motioning to Nino's guitar.
Nino makes a neutral sound. His eyes chase Jun's as they follow the line of Nino's shoulder down to his wrist. Jun reaches out to trace the path with his fingers, his touch light like the fluttering wings of an origami sparrow folded out of tissue paper. When he reaches the end, his hand lands with a hush on the pad of post-its Nino had been scribbling on. "A new song?" Jun asks.
"Maybe," Nino says. "I don't know. Just lines."
"I can't imagine being inspired in the middle of the night," Jun admits. "Artists are amazing people."
"Most of them are liars, you know," Nino says, because more often than not, art is a beautiful way of saying the ugly; because more often than not, artists speak words empty like a stage set only for beauty, truth forgotten at the costume racks. They hold up their lies like shields, rejecting before they are rejected.
"Them?" Jun echoes.
Nino laughs, but not like anything is really funny.
"Do you think the liars ever find a home where they let themselves be honest?" Jun asks.
When Nino wordlessly places his guitar back in its case, his sleeve catches in the strings, eliciting a ripple of some cacophonous progression of notes, all pitches flat. As if the lightning flashing beyond the trees had reached into his throat and snatched away his defenses, Nino finds himself unable to answer. Jun doesn't make him.
On the morning of the twenty-fourth, Aiba ducks into the van, bringing in the holiday cheer along with four shopping bags. "So who is proud of me?" he asks, barely able to contain his excitement. If he were a dog, his tail would be wagging like a windshield wiper in the middle of a flash-storm.
"Of the way you tracked snow in here, or...?" Jun says.
"I got my holiday shopping done before Christmas this year!" Aiba squeals.
Jun winces against the volume of Aiba's voice. "It's more like, 'I got my holiday shopping done this year period.'"
"Hey, I had presents for everyone last year," Aiba protests. "Remember that sweater I got you."
"I remember," Jun says, "you calling me in line at Beams with about eight of the same sweater and asking me to lend you a thousand yen because you were low on cash."
"And now if you want to do Octuplet Day, you can," Aiba says, cheekily self-righteous like a kid, "but anyway, I'm giving you guys your Christmas presents now so that at my party, I can pretend like I'm just having a normal birthday party instead of one combined with celebrating Christmas."
When Jun turns around to receive the red paper bag Aiba is trying to stuff between the seats instead of just bringing it over the seats, he meets Nino's eyes which look struck, the textbook deer-caught-in-headlights. Sho mirrors the same wide-eyed stare. When Jun sees Ohno peer into his bag from Aiba happily, oblivious to the panic in the bus, Jun finds that he has never believed so much in the doctrine that ignorance is bliss.
While Aiba searches with the costume artist for a scarf gone MIA (courtesy of Nino), the four of them huddle around a small circular table in an emergency group conference.
"In our defense," Nino says, "the first time we brought it up, it was a lie."
"That was your defense?" Jun hisses.
Nino prods Sho. "You go."
"I wish we could go," Sho says. "We have jobs scheduled all day and we need to be at the company party at night."
"But we need to be there for him," Jun says, and what he means is that they need to be family when Aiba's real family isn't around.
"If our manager runs out to buy a cake now, we can still make it in time to celebrate during lunch break," Ohno offers, unexpectedly commonsensical.
They stare at him until Jun breaks the silence and says, glancing down at his watch, "Everyone be in the greenroom in twelve hundred hours?"
When Jun starts in on them with military time, Nino realizes how much more this might mean to Jun than it does even to Aiba.
Jun finishes his solo cuts first, and he rushes home to retrieve his Christmas present for Aiba. He has time to replace it by the time the Christmas party at Matsuoka's house rolls around tomorrow. But when he walks in, he immediately pulls back to check the number plate. He has Nino on the phone in ten seconds.
At first he doesn't say a word. He only fumes.
"Jun-kun?" Nino says when he answers. "Where are you? We're all looking for you."
"Home," Jun says.
A pause. "Any chance you installed heavy curtains that block out all daylight?"
"So that I can't see your-may I add, very, very impressive-collection of cards on my coffee table? Which is only one among everything you own in my apartment?" Jun asks.
"I was going to tell you."
Jun shakes his head, at a loss for what to say in his confusion and frustration for all the conversations he and Nino haven't been having the past few weeks. "You know, I don't have time to do this with you right now," Jun says. "Is Aiba-kun done with his cuts?"
"He is, but he disappeared into the restroom and he's been in there for the past thirty minutes," Nino explains. "Also, I think a couple of the staff from ItteQ! just passed by looking for Becky, so put two and two together..."
"Okay, you know what? I don't need the details right now," Jun says, harsher than he intended even though he knows it's not that Nino doesn't care. He's just better than Jun at taking things down to scale, at figuring that everything will end up okay, which it will be, probably, but Jun sometimes-just sometimes wishes that Nino would take things other people care about more seriously. Or that he himself could take things less seriously. "In case he finishes up in the next ten minutes, keep him busy for ten more. I'll be right there."
Jun hears Nino take a breath, maybe for words, maybe for a sigh, but Jun is already throwing a rushed goodbye and hanging up. It is only after he stuffs his phone in his pocket that he realizes he might have just crafted the beginnings of a misunderstanding.
During the party, Nino watches Jun float around the room keeping everyone's glasses filled and making sure that no one is getting drunk enough to create a scene later in the day. He doesn't try to approach Jun and apologize. He doesn't see the point.
And when Aiba creeps up on him as they clean up and tells Nino to stop frowning because "It's okay, you know, even if you didn't remember until this morning (the staring contest in the van totally gave you guys away) because I'm touched by all the effort you guys put into this and I'm so happy, really, really," Nino feels like the biggest child in the room, like the last person who should be with moving in with someone, never mind Jun, who is careful and mature and unafraid of responsibility. Nino could apologize, but to Jun and all that he could have, his apology would end a curse.
The next day when Jun comes home, he doesn't run into the case of CDs in the living room. When he flicks on the lights, he sees that the pillows are gone too. His bed is empty, and all of Nino's vests and cardigans have disappeared from his closet. Jun clenches his jaw as he falls across his bed, flinging an arm over his eyes.
That night, in his dreams, his faceless family vanishes. What replaces it all is Nino and his long, thin shadow, stretching for something beyond Jun's unconscious, something beyond reach.
Before Kouhaku, Nino pulls all the stops to avoid being within speaking distance of Jun. These attempts end in various states of success and serve to thoroughly puzzle all of TOKIO, who are sharing a dressing room with Arashi.
It is only as they are lined up to appear on stage that they are huddled together at the side of the stage and Jun pokes Nino in the side to get his attention. He speaks fast because he's afraid of Nino trying to run away again, even if there is no place to go this time.
"I was only ever angry about the fact that you didn't think I wanted the same things you did," Jun murmurs against Nino's ear.
On instinct, Nino jerks away. After a beat, he says, "Do think this is the best place to have this conversation?" but at least he's responding.
"You wouldn't listen anywhere else," Jun says.
"Those guys can hear us," Nino says.
"Clear as day," Aiba confirms.
"If you could enunciate a little more," Ohno turns around to say from the front of the line.
But Jun only ignores them. He grabs Nino by the shoulders and stares until Nino bites the inside of his cheeks and says, "I just kept thinking..."
"Not good for the body," Aiba interjects.
"Read the atmosphere," Jun shushes, a bit desperately, because time is ticking before they have to take the stage.
"...and I feel like I'm standing in the way of something important, of you finding someone who's grown up and responsible and wouldn't make promises and forget and-don't you think you want more than an escape artist? Everything you could have written on that questionnaire about spending Christmas with your future family, it would have all suited you."
"If you thought so, why did you keep moving in?"
"Because-" Nino begins, then drops his voice. "Because I was hoping I would suit you better," he mumbles, so quietly Jun almost doesn't catch it in the buzz of the studio that had suddenly fallen silent.
But before he can reply with anything, his words die on his tongue as his thoughts drown against thundering applause. The director motions them forward. Jun throws Nino one lingering glance before he straightens his back, puts on his smile, and places all that is Arashi before Matsumoto Jun for the remaining hours of the year.
On the way home, it is Jun's turn to pass notes.
Come back to me, he writes, but Nino doesn't even look at it before stuffing it into his pocket and closing his eyes. He doesn't follow Jun off the van when they stop in front of Jun's apartment.
Judging by the angle of the dark blurs that stretch across the room, it is a little past three when Jun hears the jangling of keys at the door. He holds his breath as he lies in bed staring up at the ceiling, trying to find rhyme and reason in the pattern above.
Footsteps.
If he cocks his head to the left, an eagle soars above. If he squints and strains his neck backwards into his pillow, some semblance of a dove emerges. There are billions of shapes and configurations that appear and vanish on his ceiling.
The steady steps stop at his bedroom door.
But Jun finds that he doesn't care about the figures above because when he closes his eyes, he hears a voice with sharp rises in pitch; he smells a scent like his own shampoo intermingled with a faint layer of cologne; he feels the touch of a hand, small and calloused by strings, tracing up his spine.
The door clicks open and Jun sees at first Nino's silhouette before the shadows adjust and he sees his face. His eyes are ensconced in a dark cave that makes his expression difficult to read, and it is only when Nino comes close enough for Jun to hear the stuttering of his every breath as he says, "What are you, stupid? I'm not your fan; don't quote songs at me," holding up Jun's slip of paper, that Jun gets it: gets that they are the same in being afraid of putting themselves out there without some line of defense; of not wanting to be left behind so badly that they are quick to push people away just so they aren't the ones on the receiving end of the push; that Nino never thought that artists were liars because they both know the honesty of real artists burn them to the core; that Nino never wanted to trick Jun into anything or lead them places they both didn't agree on, but that he was just scared of hearing no because they are the same in so many ways, especially in taking things to heart.
And so when Jun finally murmurs the words he held through the new year into Nino's mouth, he feels Nino swallow them, each syllable funneling down his throat and draining through his blood into his heart.
The next morning, Jun watches with his arms crossed as Nino drags all of his things out from the storage closet in Jun's apartment. Nino isn't even sheepish about not really having moved back.
"I hate packing," he says in way of explanation.
Jun whacks at him for being stupidly obnoxious and dramatic, but he doesn't try to hide the fact that he is smiling behind it all. It's good to start off the year with some truth.
On the first day of work, Ohno remarks that Jun and Nino look refreshingly happy entering the greenroom together.
"What did you guys do over the break?" Sho asks.
"Things that don't help with Japan's declining population," Aiba chirps, nodding proudly at his chip tower. Over the course of the break, he seems to have perfected its architecture. "I suppose I am this group's last hope for creating a second generation Arashi."
Sho and Ohno look slightly bemused over how they were ruled out from being able to procreate, but it is Nino who throws his head in his hands and groans, "Oh, God."
"What's wrong?" Sho and Jun immediately crowd him, concerned that maybe the end-of-the-year stress had brought up him a brain aneurysm.
"Just imagined five Aiba-chans running around?" Ohno asks, watching Aiba carefully place the last chip on the top of the tower.
"It was blinding," Nino gripes.
"Like a Christmas miracle? Like Jesus?" Aiba does a little spin, accidentally knocking over his art project. He pouts at it, distraught over its destruction.
Nino stares at him in disbelief but can't help the laughter that bubbles past his lips. "Sure," he says tolerantly because it's nice to be generous to people you love once in a while, "just like that."
That night, as they ride home, their shadows blend until Jun can no longer tell what belongs to whom, until the deep blue, the true, the hues of the milky dust rage together in a moving, dynamic cloud that shifts and shifts in rhythm, the premonition of storm. A storm that threatened eleven years ago to sweep the world off its feet.
And it hits Jun that this is it.
The next time anyone asks how Jun envisions his family, he answers just that.