[FANFIC] [ONE SHOT] Any moment you could cause the skies to fall
Title: Any moment you could cause the skies to fall
Pairing/Characters: Jinguji Yuta/Nakamura Reia
Rating: PG-13.
Warnings: Underage boys kissing. A bit of teenage angst.
Word Count: 3,858
Notes: I had a really good time writing this and I really hope you like it ;D. Thanks to my lovely beta <3 I adore you. Title and inspiration came from Pajaro Sunrise's song Long forgotten flowers.
Summary: It is impossible not to single out Jinguji; he is kind of short, and his head is way too big for his small, skinny frame. He is awkward and beautiful, and trying too hard.
The first time Reia sees Jinguji, that he really sees him, is at rehearsal, between walls that are suffocating even in winter and with the aircon on, and mirrors, dozens of mirrors.
At first, Reia is hardly impressed. Jinguji is one more in the horde of fresh juniors, too eager and too terrified, big eyes and too many mistakes. At thirteen years old, Reia considers himself a veteran in the agency, and all this fresh, inexperienced meat irks him a little, even if he is still able to smile at them.
It is impossible not to single out Jinguji; he is kind of short, and his head is way too big for his small, skinny frame. He is awkward and beautiful, and trying too hard. Reia’s eyes are drawn to him often in spite of himself.
Reia doesn’t know quite what to think. Jinguji is sloppy and his lack of technique is almost defiant, but there is something in there, a kind of intensity that is really hard to ignore.
Jinguji’s eyes find his fleetingly in the mirror, and Jinguji’s crooked smile is so exaggerated that Reia can only laugh softly as he looks away.
The choreographer scolds them, of course, but somehow it doesn’t sting. Jinguji’s pout in the mirror turns into a real smile when Reia’s eyes meet his again.
During the rest of the rehearsal, Reia can swallow enough of his giggles so the choreographer doesn’t admonishes him again every time their eyes meet, but he smiles through the rest of the practice anyway.
***
It’s their first large scale live performance. Not for Reia -he is sort of a veteran at this, after all; but it is for Jinguji and a quiet, shy boy named Genki that Jinguji has been mercilessly poking into talking to them, as well as a bunch of other kids Reia apparently hangs out with now.
Genki is seriously into baseball, has great grades at school and is an overall organized guy. Reia likes him. He just wishes Genki relaxed more around them, that he opened up more, because he is sure there is a person he would just love to get to know better underneath each one of Genki’s awkward silences. Reia still can't understand why Genki fell into Jinguji's “clique” (because obviously, just a few weeks into it, Jinguji has already formed a sort of entourage), he is just so soft and caring, it makes Reia want to protect him.
Jinguji is like a force of nature, a really obnoxious and painful one. He is almost arrogant, he thinks he is the very best among them, the one who knows all there is to know about everything. Reia finds him annoying and fascinating. He supposes it is more or less the same mixture of rapture and barely contained desire to punch Jinguji in the face that binds this group of people together around him.
"I am so nervous~" Jinguji singsongs annoyingly, shaking Reia by his shoulders and then hugging him.
"Go pester Genki," Reia huffs, as he disengages grumpily from Jinguji's arms.
"He yelled at me to leave him alone when he was doing his stretches," Jinguji whines.
Reia is sure Genki did not yell; he might have been a little cold, maybe even a bit rough when talking, but he could not yell at anyone if his life depended on it.
"I'm sure you deserved it," Reia answers anyway, barely keeping himself from laughing when Jinguji snaps.
"Hey! That's mean!" Jinguji half pouts, half grimaces, and Reia is torn between snorting and informing Jinguji that he is not, in fact, too cool to pout, when the lights go out in the venue.
This is it.
Jinguji squeals, shrilly and hysteric, and even if it gets swallowed by similar screams from a couple of thousand fangirls, Reia can hear it.
It keeps replaying in his mind through the entire concert, bubbling in laughter just a tiny bit under his skin, threatening to giggle itself out.
It remains there. Days. Weeks. All the way through Jinguji's pompous and boisterous stories, that are as phony as his attitude; through Jinguji's fake laughter at something this Shori guy says that is not funny at all. Even when Jinguji is too lazy to go to the combini to get lunch and ropes Reia into doing it for him, and thanks him with a blinding plastic smile and a wink Jinguji must think that looks cool but is just overacted and kind of silly. Through it all, the memory remains.
It is not the Jinguji persona, that super cool entity, that sloppy and strained fabrication; that is not what Reia likes. It is the cracks and fissures in it. Jinguji's true laughter -that sounds cracked and too high pitched, and that Reia doesn’t get to hear often enough for his taste; Jinguji’s real pouts, Jinguji’s frustrated huffs when he just can’t get the choreography right no matter how hard he tries; everything that Reia can spot underneath when Jinguji is caught unguarded. That is what Reia likes. And he likes it a lot.
***
At some point of life, years after, Jinguji gets taller and even skinnier. He also gets a solo on Shounen Club, and this is all they hear about from the debriefing meeting until the day of the actual filming. Genki gets a solo too, which is deemed unimportant. Reia gets to do tricks on his skateboard, but he doesn’t even bother commenting about it.
It’s sound check time, and Reia’s eyes are unavoidably dragged to Jinguji as he goes through the dance routine once again, while the techs meddle with lighting and smoke effects. Jinguji’s hips have become even more dangerous with time, and Reia never knows whether to feel envious or embarrassed by it.
By Reia’s side, Genki doesn’t seem to have that problem, an affectionate smile lifting one corner of his mouth.
“Flashy,” Reia whispers. Expectedly, Genki just sighs.
“He is just so… shiny,” Genki says, a little bit of admiration coloring his words -but Genki is smart enough to never talk like this when he is in Jinguji’s hearing range, or they’d never hear the end of it.
Genki opens up a lot more these days, and he seems to have finally found some confidence in himself, or maybe he just had to develop it as he was pushed to the front more and more. Reia likes that he can talk to him more like an equal now, that he doesn’t have to be as delicate as he had to at the beginning; Reia is a considerate boy, but stressing over every time he said something uncaring and Genki cried was tiresome.
Jinguji, on the other hand, has never stopped acting jittery and a little edgy around Genki, in a way that reminds Reia of a little puppy seeking attention. Reia likes puppies, but this annoys him and he can’t pinpoint why.
"He is too full of it," Reia says. And it's hardly talking behind someone’s back if Reia has said so to Jinguji's face, more than once even. They are close; fifty texts a day even on the days they have work together prove it -because for some reason Jinguji communicates better by emoji ridden messages than by voicing his thoughts. But that doesn’t mean Reia can’t see Jinguji’s blatant faults, and he has never been good at hiding what he thinks.
“Jin-chan can appear to be conceited and all,” Genki says, with a soft chuckle and a softer inflection. “But he gets lonely really easily."
Jinguji’s is giving his hips another workout, glaring bravado in full swing, and Reia just sighs.
The costume looks a little baggy on Jinguji, out of yet another growth spurt, his limbs longer and leaner than the month before. He has been going to the gym a lot, trying to buff up, because this week he wants to be Kento-kun, and have nice looking muscles and gain weight.
Jinguji wants to be Kimura Takuya, wants to move like Kamenashi and Akanishi did back in the day; he wants to sing like Taiga or maybe like Tegoshi-kun. He wants to be so many people, do so many different things, and Reia can’t help but think that’s dumb and ridiculous, because Jinguji is just right, just the way he is.
But Reia would never, ever, tell him that.
***
It is a pretty unremarkable Saturday, the afternoon slowly bleeding into the evening, and Reia is busy gathering his things to leave.
“Come home with me.” Jinguji’s voice says from behind Reia, his tone demanding and flat; but Reia knows him enough by now to know this is the way Jinguji’s asks for things.
Reia can say no, of course, and it would be no big deal. Jinguji has many flaws, but holding grudges isn’t on the list; he is quick in anger but even quicker in forgetting and forgiving. Reia likes this.
“I have to ask my mom.” Reia recites the words, but he is saying yes and they both know it.
“I’ll be waiting for you outside.” Jinguji says, sounding bossy, as usual, as he walks out of the room.
Sometimes, Reia is the only one that can feel Jinguji’s hidden smiles.
Jinguji’s room is big and cluttered with things, just as Reia remembers from his other visits. It is the first time he stays the night, though, and he is idly contemplating where Jinguji can clear enough space to lay a futon on when Jinguji talks.
“You don’t mind sharing the bed, do you?” Jinguji’s voice has an edge of hesitation hidden deep beneath the smug facade, and Reia feels something strange moving inside him, a kind of warmth he doesn’t normally get when dealing with Jinguji.
“I don’t mind,” Reia says, the smile clear and present in his voice.
It is difficult to fall asleep that night, in spite of being used to sharing his bed because his sisters really like sleeping with him; but Jinguji is holding him like a security blanket, spooning him, inhaling him like he was oxygen to a drowning man. And then it clicks; the lonely house, the cold, the silence. He gets lonely really easily.
“You can’t sleep?” Reia whispers, and Jinguji burrows his face harder on Reia’s neck.
“My mother is abroad, I’m old enough to be left alone.” Reia feels Jinguji’s words on his skin. “I hate it.”
Reia just nods. He is not used to this level of raw honesty coming from this one, and he is a little at loss as of what to do. So he lets Jinguji hug him tight, lets him sniff at him all he wants, and wonders at the weird sensation on the pit of his stomach, at the way his skin prickles, at the sadness he feels when he contemplates the fact that come Monday, when they are at work again, Jinguji won’t say a word about this.
***
Reia isn’t sure when it starts, maybe with the landslide of magazine shoots staring Jinguji and Genki, maybe even well before all that.
“Hey! Iwahashi!”
And since when does Jinguji call Genki by his last name?
Reia watches, in silence, feigning nonchalance while he is perched on a chair, one leg under his body, the other dangling over the edge. It is a cold day, even if it is spring and outside the sun shines brightly in the sky.
This is just an early rehearsal, which means there aren’t so many cameras around, at least not official ones, but nevertheless Jinguji’s arm is around Genki’s waist and they are laughing at something, a stupid ridiculous thing Jinguji said, Reia can bet.
It is perplexing, strange; this is the overeager way Jinguji has been acting around Genki since forever only tenfold, like he is trying to look cooler around Genki right now, cool enough to call their friend by their frikkin’ last name. It is technically a colder form of address, and it should mean Jinguji is trying to put some distance between him and Genki, only Reia knows it doesn’t. It bothers him.
“It’s just work,” a softly accented voice says quietly, and when he turns around, Reia finds Marius sitting on the chair beside him, a little hunched, his eyes glued to Genki and Jinguji and their sickening sweet exchange at the other end of the room. And with the way the things have been going on in Sexy Zone for all eternity, Marius is bound to know what he is talking about. But still…
“I don’t mind,” Reia says. The way Marius looks at him tells Reia exactly how convincing his words are. “Really.”
And why should Reia mind, anyway?
He shrugs, more for his sake than for Marius’. They are at work, he can’t afford to be honest with himself right now.
“Just… if you need to talk or something…” Marius says shyly, his voice is small and there is a pinkish tint on his cheeks.
Reia smiles, because Marius is a giant, but he’s also only fourteen and just a kid trying to be comforting. Even though he is sitting, and hunched, Reia has to stretch a little on his own chair to pet Marius hair.
“Thank you,” Reia says, and he really means it, even if there is a strange aftertaste in his soul that stays there all day.
***
“Genki likes girls, you know?” The words fly past Reia’s lips without him exactly giving them permission to do so. He is not usually this blunt, but Jinguji has been staring starry-eyed at Genki for the past twenty minutes and it’s obnoxious. He needs to stop.
“Cool.” Jinguji throws a secret smile at Reia that he doesn’t know what to think of. “I don’t.”
Reia blushes, even though he started this exchange, he even steered it this way. But he meant it as banter, or so he tells himself. He isn’t even sure of anyone’s preferences, he hadn’t mind till now.
“Oh,” Reia says when he can speak again. And it shouldn’t come as such a revelation, he has known this guy for years now, and never once has Jinguji mentioned any girl that he likes. But, it turns out there is a difference between wondering and knowing for sure. “I won’t tell.”
Jinguji just winks at him, but there’s none of the previous closeness in it, and it just feels fake; it leaves Reia feeling strangely empty inside after Jinguji leaves.
***
Reia dreams about volcanic eruptions and cataclysms, about earth breaking under his feet and molten stone running through his veins. Cracks and fissures, and everything falling into pieces in between.
But what burns his skin isn’t lava or fire, is Jinguji’s uninhibited laughter, his whispered words in the dark, the rare flashes of stark honesty in Jinguji’s eyes. It engulfs him and swallows him, and he wakes up drenched in sweat and exhilaration, his terrified heart beating wildly in his chest, desire riding his blood in earnest.
He buries his head in his pillow, trying not to scream and wake up his sisters, because, really? Jinguji? Isn’t life hard enough as it is?
He tries to sleep, but his pulse is racing and it refuses to slow down, his mind melting as the world keeps spinning, and spinning, and spinning...
***
“No, that’s one, two, and then down,” Jinguji says, his concentration face on, a strange gentleness oozing out of him along with the nervousness that is standard by now when he is with Genki.
Jinguji has been trying to help Genki with a tricky part of the choreography for the last ten minutes, brushing off anyone who talks to him -and that includes Reia. Reia already had to deal with them arriving at work together, and even Kishi asked him if he was okay. This is becoming ridiculous.
“Hey…” Reia says, trying again to get Jinguji’s attention, to get his eyes to meet Reia’s in the mirror once more, to no avail. He feels a little pathetic at the way Jinguji’s rejection hurts.
It’s normal, Reia guesses. He is no longer in the same unit as those two, and his dance steps are different, but still...
He manages to keep it together until Jinguji actually comes his way after the rehearsal has ended and sits nonchalantly beside Reia. And there is a ring on his finger. That matches the one Reia saw on Genki’s finger.
“Matching rings?” Reia asks, happy when his voice doesn’t break that much. His chest hurts, his throat hurts, his stomach is tight and the tips of his fingers feel numb.
The room is suddenly empty, not one other Junior around as witness. And Jinguji looks uncomfortable.
“Iwahashi said we should…”
The spike of heat is clearly jealousy, and Reia can’t escape it, doesn’t want to fight it.
“Still pinning after him? Really? After all this time?” Maybe it is the venom in Reia’s words, but Jinguji looks aggravated.
“Eh?” Is the only thing Jinguji seems to be able to force out, and it just riles Reia further.
“Wake up, you idiot!” Reia isn’t really prone to crying in spite of his somewhat girly look (and why the hell are tears supposed to be ‘girly’ when Genki cries more than Reia’s two sisters combined, he will never understand), his frustration often making him throw things at the other person instead. But this time the salty water just scorches his eyes from behind his eyelids, refusing to be contained; and he isn’t even sad. He only wants to shake Jinguji until something akin to understanding sparks into that big, stubborn, stupid head with awful hair. “There are other people too! Stop being an idiot and look at me! Notice me!”
Jinguji’s face of absolute surprise should make him laugh, but Reia only wants to punch it. So he fists his hands and turns around, grabs his things as quickly as he can and runs away.
***
“It’s not Genki.”
Jinguji is in Reia’s bedroom, two hours after being yelled at and in spite of the instructions Reia gave his mom because he didn’t want to see anyone. Reia looks up at him, through puffy red, swollen eyes, and still wants to punch him.
“Don’t do this.” Go away.
“It’s not him, okay?” Jinguji’s voice sounds odd, a bit higher than usual, but Reia is too busy hiding all his emotions to pay too much attention to it. “Management made us wear those stupid rings…”
“Shori, then.”
“What?! What the hell are you talking about?!”
Reia crosses his arms and tries to lift an eyebrow, tries to appear defiant and wholesome even if his hands are shaking. “Your drooling is quite obvious.”
“Cut it out.” Jinguji’s tone is low, subdued, totally out of character. And for a couple of seconds he lowers his head, breathes in deep, and Reia can only stand and stare in confusion. Then Jinguji looks at him, and he is blushing, and Reia can even see that Jinguji himself knows it, and has half a second to wonder about Jinguji being able to do something as uncool as blush and not throw himself off a bridge or Tokyo Tower or something.
But then Jinguji takes two steps closer, grabs one of Reia’s wrists so hard it hurts, and pulls at him with enough strength to topple Reia forward. And then Jinguji is hugging him, and Reia’s pulse is beating so loud in his ears he can’t hear anything else for a while.
Jinguji is taller than Reia now, his sweet girly perfume is too damn strong, and he is still all angles against Reia’s body, lean and illogically warm.
Reia’s right arm is trapped between them and his left one lies limply at his side, immobilized by Jinguji’s arms circling his shoulders. It’s uncomfortable, it’s even a bit embarrassing, and Reia doesn’t want to move. Ever again.
“Idiot…” Jinguji’s voice is muffled by Reia’s hair, but he can hear it well enough. “You are such an idiot…”
***
They kiss for the first time one week later, in a bathroom stall, because Jinguji is classy like that.
It’s Reia’s first kiss, and maybe Jinguji’s too because Reia is almost sure that incident with Kuramoto eons ago doesn’t really count. He isn’t going to ask Jinguji though; he doesn’t want to listen to the version where Jinguji has kissed dozens of Juniors and some sempai. This is special, details notwithstanding.
So, Reia enjoys the present, right here, right now; enjoys the way Jinguji clumsily presses him against the wall, the way he doesn’t quite know what to do with his hands but ends up placing them a little awkwardly on Reia’s waist. He enjoys the slight tremor of Jinguji’s lips just before they start moving against his.
Jinguji's kiss is so much like his personality that it could be funny if Reia was paying the right kind of attention. He is careless and a bit too harsh, devastating passion that bruises Reia’s lips and makes blood simmer in his veins, reverberating in his very bones, in his soul. He holds onto Jinguji’s shoulders, digs his fingers into them in a way that should be painful, but Jinguji doesn’t seem to mind, because he just fists his hands on Reia’s T-shirt, brings him closer still.
Desire burns low, like an ember somewhere in Reia’s body, and he pushes Jinguji away a little, because it’s terrifying and because he needs to come up for air too. There is a smug smirk fluttering in Jinguji’s lips when they break apart, but Reia just laughs, because Jinguji can be an insufferable brat most of the time, but he likes him anyway.
“Hey!” Jinguji’s indignation just fuels Reia’s mirth, making him laugh harder. “It’s rude to laugh after someone kisses you!”
It is a real pout, and Jinguji is blushing, which shouldn’t please Reia as much as it does. As it is, however, he only giggles some more, and kisses Jinguji’s pout away, threading his fingers through Jinguji’s hair and making a mess of it.
And for a while, it doesn’t matter if Jinguji has indeed kissed half the Jimusho, because Reia is the only one that has seen him blush, and that has to count for something.
The look Marius throws at them when they finally emerge from the bathroom is a little too knowing for a fourteen year old boy, even if he is in Sexy Zone, but Reia just smiles at him.
"What was that?" Jinguji asks, possession dripping from every syllable of his words.
Reia rolls his eyes. “Behave,” he chides, and suppresses a giggle when Jinguji lowers his eyes, the closest to obedience he will ever get.
Marius might just be the only one in the Agency to actually feel happy about this relationship, so Reia winks at him and watches him light up and smile before going away.
“You are mine, you know?” Jinguji holds onto Reia’s waist from behind, burying his face on Reia’s neck and taking a deep breath.
“You are an idiot,” Reia answers and rolls his eyes. Because it is a little scary, but what he wants to say instead is I know.
Pairing/Characters: Jinguji Yuta/Nakamura Reia
Rating: PG-13.
Warnings: Underage boys kissing. A bit of teenage angst.
Word Count: 3,858
Notes: I had a really good time writing this and I really hope you like it ;D. Thanks to my lovely beta <3 I adore you. Title and inspiration came from Pajaro Sunrise's song Long forgotten flowers.
Summary: It is impossible not to single out Jinguji; he is kind of short, and his head is way too big for his small, skinny frame. He is awkward and beautiful, and trying too hard.
The first time Reia sees Jinguji, that he really sees him, is at rehearsal, between walls that are suffocating even in winter and with the aircon on, and mirrors, dozens of mirrors.
At first, Reia is hardly impressed. Jinguji is one more in the horde of fresh juniors, too eager and too terrified, big eyes and too many mistakes. At thirteen years old, Reia considers himself a veteran in the agency, and all this fresh, inexperienced meat irks him a little, even if he is still able to smile at them.
It is impossible not to single out Jinguji; he is kind of short, and his head is way too big for his small, skinny frame. He is awkward and beautiful, and trying too hard. Reia’s eyes are drawn to him often in spite of himself.
Reia doesn’t know quite what to think. Jinguji is sloppy and his lack of technique is almost defiant, but there is something in there, a kind of intensity that is really hard to ignore.
Jinguji’s eyes find his fleetingly in the mirror, and Jinguji’s crooked smile is so exaggerated that Reia can only laugh softly as he looks away.
The choreographer scolds them, of course, but somehow it doesn’t sting. Jinguji’s pout in the mirror turns into a real smile when Reia’s eyes meet his again.
During the rest of the rehearsal, Reia can swallow enough of his giggles so the choreographer doesn’t admonishes him again every time their eyes meet, but he smiles through the rest of the practice anyway.
***
It’s their first large scale live performance. Not for Reia -he is sort of a veteran at this, after all; but it is for Jinguji and a quiet, shy boy named Genki that Jinguji has been mercilessly poking into talking to them, as well as a bunch of other kids Reia apparently hangs out with now.
Genki is seriously into baseball, has great grades at school and is an overall organized guy. Reia likes him. He just wishes Genki relaxed more around them, that he opened up more, because he is sure there is a person he would just love to get to know better underneath each one of Genki’s awkward silences. Reia still can't understand why Genki fell into Jinguji's “clique” (because obviously, just a few weeks into it, Jinguji has already formed a sort of entourage), he is just so soft and caring, it makes Reia want to protect him.
Jinguji is like a force of nature, a really obnoxious and painful one. He is almost arrogant, he thinks he is the very best among them, the one who knows all there is to know about everything. Reia finds him annoying and fascinating. He supposes it is more or less the same mixture of rapture and barely contained desire to punch Jinguji in the face that binds this group of people together around him.
"I am so nervous~" Jinguji singsongs annoyingly, shaking Reia by his shoulders and then hugging him.
"Go pester Genki," Reia huffs, as he disengages grumpily from Jinguji's arms.
"He yelled at me to leave him alone when he was doing his stretches," Jinguji whines.
Reia is sure Genki did not yell; he might have been a little cold, maybe even a bit rough when talking, but he could not yell at anyone if his life depended on it.
"I'm sure you deserved it," Reia answers anyway, barely keeping himself from laughing when Jinguji snaps.
"Hey! That's mean!" Jinguji half pouts, half grimaces, and Reia is torn between snorting and informing Jinguji that he is not, in fact, too cool to pout, when the lights go out in the venue.
This is it.
Jinguji squeals, shrilly and hysteric, and even if it gets swallowed by similar screams from a couple of thousand fangirls, Reia can hear it.
It keeps replaying in his mind through the entire concert, bubbling in laughter just a tiny bit under his skin, threatening to giggle itself out.
It remains there. Days. Weeks. All the way through Jinguji's pompous and boisterous stories, that are as phony as his attitude; through Jinguji's fake laughter at something this Shori guy says that is not funny at all. Even when Jinguji is too lazy to go to the combini to get lunch and ropes Reia into doing it for him, and thanks him with a blinding plastic smile and a wink Jinguji must think that looks cool but is just overacted and kind of silly. Through it all, the memory remains.
It is not the Jinguji persona, that super cool entity, that sloppy and strained fabrication; that is not what Reia likes. It is the cracks and fissures in it. Jinguji's true laughter -that sounds cracked and too high pitched, and that Reia doesn’t get to hear often enough for his taste; Jinguji’s real pouts, Jinguji’s frustrated huffs when he just can’t get the choreography right no matter how hard he tries; everything that Reia can spot underneath when Jinguji is caught unguarded. That is what Reia likes. And he likes it a lot.
***
At some point of life, years after, Jinguji gets taller and even skinnier. He also gets a solo on Shounen Club, and this is all they hear about from the debriefing meeting until the day of the actual filming. Genki gets a solo too, which is deemed unimportant. Reia gets to do tricks on his skateboard, but he doesn’t even bother commenting about it.
It’s sound check time, and Reia’s eyes are unavoidably dragged to Jinguji as he goes through the dance routine once again, while the techs meddle with lighting and smoke effects. Jinguji’s hips have become even more dangerous with time, and Reia never knows whether to feel envious or embarrassed by it.
By Reia’s side, Genki doesn’t seem to have that problem, an affectionate smile lifting one corner of his mouth.
“Flashy,” Reia whispers. Expectedly, Genki just sighs.
“He is just so… shiny,” Genki says, a little bit of admiration coloring his words -but Genki is smart enough to never talk like this when he is in Jinguji’s hearing range, or they’d never hear the end of it.
Genki opens up a lot more these days, and he seems to have finally found some confidence in himself, or maybe he just had to develop it as he was pushed to the front more and more. Reia likes that he can talk to him more like an equal now, that he doesn’t have to be as delicate as he had to at the beginning; Reia is a considerate boy, but stressing over every time he said something uncaring and Genki cried was tiresome.
Jinguji, on the other hand, has never stopped acting jittery and a little edgy around Genki, in a way that reminds Reia of a little puppy seeking attention. Reia likes puppies, but this annoys him and he can’t pinpoint why.
"He is too full of it," Reia says. And it's hardly talking behind someone’s back if Reia has said so to Jinguji's face, more than once even. They are close; fifty texts a day even on the days they have work together prove it -because for some reason Jinguji communicates better by emoji ridden messages than by voicing his thoughts. But that doesn’t mean Reia can’t see Jinguji’s blatant faults, and he has never been good at hiding what he thinks.
“Jin-chan can appear to be conceited and all,” Genki says, with a soft chuckle and a softer inflection. “But he gets lonely really easily."
Jinguji’s is giving his hips another workout, glaring bravado in full swing, and Reia just sighs.
The costume looks a little baggy on Jinguji, out of yet another growth spurt, his limbs longer and leaner than the month before. He has been going to the gym a lot, trying to buff up, because this week he wants to be Kento-kun, and have nice looking muscles and gain weight.
Jinguji wants to be Kimura Takuya, wants to move like Kamenashi and Akanishi did back in the day; he wants to sing like Taiga or maybe like Tegoshi-kun. He wants to be so many people, do so many different things, and Reia can’t help but think that’s dumb and ridiculous, because Jinguji is just right, just the way he is.
But Reia would never, ever, tell him that.
***
It is a pretty unremarkable Saturday, the afternoon slowly bleeding into the evening, and Reia is busy gathering his things to leave.
“Come home with me.” Jinguji’s voice says from behind Reia, his tone demanding and flat; but Reia knows him enough by now to know this is the way Jinguji’s asks for things.
Reia can say no, of course, and it would be no big deal. Jinguji has many flaws, but holding grudges isn’t on the list; he is quick in anger but even quicker in forgetting and forgiving. Reia likes this.
“I have to ask my mom.” Reia recites the words, but he is saying yes and they both know it.
“I’ll be waiting for you outside.” Jinguji says, sounding bossy, as usual, as he walks out of the room.
Sometimes, Reia is the only one that can feel Jinguji’s hidden smiles.
Jinguji’s room is big and cluttered with things, just as Reia remembers from his other visits. It is the first time he stays the night, though, and he is idly contemplating where Jinguji can clear enough space to lay a futon on when Jinguji talks.
“You don’t mind sharing the bed, do you?” Jinguji’s voice has an edge of hesitation hidden deep beneath the smug facade, and Reia feels something strange moving inside him, a kind of warmth he doesn’t normally get when dealing with Jinguji.
“I don’t mind,” Reia says, the smile clear and present in his voice.
It is difficult to fall asleep that night, in spite of being used to sharing his bed because his sisters really like sleeping with him; but Jinguji is holding him like a security blanket, spooning him, inhaling him like he was oxygen to a drowning man. And then it clicks; the lonely house, the cold, the silence. He gets lonely really easily.
“You can’t sleep?” Reia whispers, and Jinguji burrows his face harder on Reia’s neck.
“My mother is abroad, I’m old enough to be left alone.” Reia feels Jinguji’s words on his skin. “I hate it.”
Reia just nods. He is not used to this level of raw honesty coming from this one, and he is a little at loss as of what to do. So he lets Jinguji hug him tight, lets him sniff at him all he wants, and wonders at the weird sensation on the pit of his stomach, at the way his skin prickles, at the sadness he feels when he contemplates the fact that come Monday, when they are at work again, Jinguji won’t say a word about this.
***
Reia isn’t sure when it starts, maybe with the landslide of magazine shoots staring Jinguji and Genki, maybe even well before all that.
“Hey! Iwahashi!”
And since when does Jinguji call Genki by his last name?
Reia watches, in silence, feigning nonchalance while he is perched on a chair, one leg under his body, the other dangling over the edge. It is a cold day, even if it is spring and outside the sun shines brightly in the sky.
This is just an early rehearsal, which means there aren’t so many cameras around, at least not official ones, but nevertheless Jinguji’s arm is around Genki’s waist and they are laughing at something, a stupid ridiculous thing Jinguji said, Reia can bet.
It is perplexing, strange; this is the overeager way Jinguji has been acting around Genki since forever only tenfold, like he is trying to look cooler around Genki right now, cool enough to call their friend by their frikkin’ last name. It is technically a colder form of address, and it should mean Jinguji is trying to put some distance between him and Genki, only Reia knows it doesn’t. It bothers him.
“It’s just work,” a softly accented voice says quietly, and when he turns around, Reia finds Marius sitting on the chair beside him, a little hunched, his eyes glued to Genki and Jinguji and their sickening sweet exchange at the other end of the room. And with the way the things have been going on in Sexy Zone for all eternity, Marius is bound to know what he is talking about. But still…
“I don’t mind,” Reia says. The way Marius looks at him tells Reia exactly how convincing his words are. “Really.”
And why should Reia mind, anyway?
He shrugs, more for his sake than for Marius’. They are at work, he can’t afford to be honest with himself right now.
“Just… if you need to talk or something…” Marius says shyly, his voice is small and there is a pinkish tint on his cheeks.
Reia smiles, because Marius is a giant, but he’s also only fourteen and just a kid trying to be comforting. Even though he is sitting, and hunched, Reia has to stretch a little on his own chair to pet Marius hair.
“Thank you,” Reia says, and he really means it, even if there is a strange aftertaste in his soul that stays there all day.
***
“Genki likes girls, you know?” The words fly past Reia’s lips without him exactly giving them permission to do so. He is not usually this blunt, but Jinguji has been staring starry-eyed at Genki for the past twenty minutes and it’s obnoxious. He needs to stop.
“Cool.” Jinguji throws a secret smile at Reia that he doesn’t know what to think of. “I don’t.”
Reia blushes, even though he started this exchange, he even steered it this way. But he meant it as banter, or so he tells himself. He isn’t even sure of anyone’s preferences, he hadn’t mind till now.
“Oh,” Reia says when he can speak again. And it shouldn’t come as such a revelation, he has known this guy for years now, and never once has Jinguji mentioned any girl that he likes. But, it turns out there is a difference between wondering and knowing for sure. “I won’t tell.”
Jinguji just winks at him, but there’s none of the previous closeness in it, and it just feels fake; it leaves Reia feeling strangely empty inside after Jinguji leaves.
***
Reia dreams about volcanic eruptions and cataclysms, about earth breaking under his feet and molten stone running through his veins. Cracks and fissures, and everything falling into pieces in between.
But what burns his skin isn’t lava or fire, is Jinguji’s uninhibited laughter, his whispered words in the dark, the rare flashes of stark honesty in Jinguji’s eyes. It engulfs him and swallows him, and he wakes up drenched in sweat and exhilaration, his terrified heart beating wildly in his chest, desire riding his blood in earnest.
He buries his head in his pillow, trying not to scream and wake up his sisters, because, really? Jinguji? Isn’t life hard enough as it is?
He tries to sleep, but his pulse is racing and it refuses to slow down, his mind melting as the world keeps spinning, and spinning, and spinning...
***
“No, that’s one, two, and then down,” Jinguji says, his concentration face on, a strange gentleness oozing out of him along with the nervousness that is standard by now when he is with Genki.
Jinguji has been trying to help Genki with a tricky part of the choreography for the last ten minutes, brushing off anyone who talks to him -and that includes Reia. Reia already had to deal with them arriving at work together, and even Kishi asked him if he was okay. This is becoming ridiculous.
“Hey…” Reia says, trying again to get Jinguji’s attention, to get his eyes to meet Reia’s in the mirror once more, to no avail. He feels a little pathetic at the way Jinguji’s rejection hurts.
It’s normal, Reia guesses. He is no longer in the same unit as those two, and his dance steps are different, but still...
He manages to keep it together until Jinguji actually comes his way after the rehearsal has ended and sits nonchalantly beside Reia. And there is a ring on his finger. That matches the one Reia saw on Genki’s finger.
“Matching rings?” Reia asks, happy when his voice doesn’t break that much. His chest hurts, his throat hurts, his stomach is tight and the tips of his fingers feel numb.
The room is suddenly empty, not one other Junior around as witness. And Jinguji looks uncomfortable.
“Iwahashi said we should…”
The spike of heat is clearly jealousy, and Reia can’t escape it, doesn’t want to fight it.
“Still pinning after him? Really? After all this time?” Maybe it is the venom in Reia’s words, but Jinguji looks aggravated.
“Eh?” Is the only thing Jinguji seems to be able to force out, and it just riles Reia further.
“Wake up, you idiot!” Reia isn’t really prone to crying in spite of his somewhat girly look (and why the hell are tears supposed to be ‘girly’ when Genki cries more than Reia’s two sisters combined, he will never understand), his frustration often making him throw things at the other person instead. But this time the salty water just scorches his eyes from behind his eyelids, refusing to be contained; and he isn’t even sad. He only wants to shake Jinguji until something akin to understanding sparks into that big, stubborn, stupid head with awful hair. “There are other people too! Stop being an idiot and look at me! Notice me!”
Jinguji’s face of absolute surprise should make him laugh, but Reia only wants to punch it. So he fists his hands and turns around, grabs his things as quickly as he can and runs away.
***
“It’s not Genki.”
Jinguji is in Reia’s bedroom, two hours after being yelled at and in spite of the instructions Reia gave his mom because he didn’t want to see anyone. Reia looks up at him, through puffy red, swollen eyes, and still wants to punch him.
“Don’t do this.” Go away.
“It’s not him, okay?” Jinguji’s voice sounds odd, a bit higher than usual, but Reia is too busy hiding all his emotions to pay too much attention to it. “Management made us wear those stupid rings…”
“Shori, then.”
“What?! What the hell are you talking about?!”
Reia crosses his arms and tries to lift an eyebrow, tries to appear defiant and wholesome even if his hands are shaking. “Your drooling is quite obvious.”
“Cut it out.” Jinguji’s tone is low, subdued, totally out of character. And for a couple of seconds he lowers his head, breathes in deep, and Reia can only stand and stare in confusion. Then Jinguji looks at him, and he is blushing, and Reia can even see that Jinguji himself knows it, and has half a second to wonder about Jinguji being able to do something as uncool as blush and not throw himself off a bridge or Tokyo Tower or something.
But then Jinguji takes two steps closer, grabs one of Reia’s wrists so hard it hurts, and pulls at him with enough strength to topple Reia forward. And then Jinguji is hugging him, and Reia’s pulse is beating so loud in his ears he can’t hear anything else for a while.
Jinguji is taller than Reia now, his sweet girly perfume is too damn strong, and he is still all angles against Reia’s body, lean and illogically warm.
Reia’s right arm is trapped between them and his left one lies limply at his side, immobilized by Jinguji’s arms circling his shoulders. It’s uncomfortable, it’s even a bit embarrassing, and Reia doesn’t want to move. Ever again.
“Idiot…” Jinguji’s voice is muffled by Reia’s hair, but he can hear it well enough. “You are such an idiot…”
***
They kiss for the first time one week later, in a bathroom stall, because Jinguji is classy like that.
It’s Reia’s first kiss, and maybe Jinguji’s too because Reia is almost sure that incident with Kuramoto eons ago doesn’t really count. He isn’t going to ask Jinguji though; he doesn’t want to listen to the version where Jinguji has kissed dozens of Juniors and some sempai. This is special, details notwithstanding.
So, Reia enjoys the present, right here, right now; enjoys the way Jinguji clumsily presses him against the wall, the way he doesn’t quite know what to do with his hands but ends up placing them a little awkwardly on Reia’s waist. He enjoys the slight tremor of Jinguji’s lips just before they start moving against his.
Jinguji's kiss is so much like his personality that it could be funny if Reia was paying the right kind of attention. He is careless and a bit too harsh, devastating passion that bruises Reia’s lips and makes blood simmer in his veins, reverberating in his very bones, in his soul. He holds onto Jinguji’s shoulders, digs his fingers into them in a way that should be painful, but Jinguji doesn’t seem to mind, because he just fists his hands on Reia’s T-shirt, brings him closer still.
Desire burns low, like an ember somewhere in Reia’s body, and he pushes Jinguji away a little, because it’s terrifying and because he needs to come up for air too. There is a smug smirk fluttering in Jinguji’s lips when they break apart, but Reia just laughs, because Jinguji can be an insufferable brat most of the time, but he likes him anyway.
“Hey!” Jinguji’s indignation just fuels Reia’s mirth, making him laugh harder. “It’s rude to laugh after someone kisses you!”
It is a real pout, and Jinguji is blushing, which shouldn’t please Reia as much as it does. As it is, however, he only giggles some more, and kisses Jinguji’s pout away, threading his fingers through Jinguji’s hair and making a mess of it.
And for a while, it doesn’t matter if Jinguji has indeed kissed half the Jimusho, because Reia is the only one that has seen him blush, and that has to count for something.
The look Marius throws at them when they finally emerge from the bathroom is a little too knowing for a fourteen year old boy, even if he is in Sexy Zone, but Reia just smiles at him.
"What was that?" Jinguji asks, possession dripping from every syllable of his words.
Reia rolls his eyes. “Behave,” he chides, and suppresses a giggle when Jinguji lowers his eyes, the closest to obedience he will ever get.
Marius might just be the only one in the Agency to actually feel happy about this relationship, so Reia winks at him and watches him light up and smile before going away.
“You are mine, you know?” Jinguji holds onto Reia’s waist from behind, burying his face on Reia’s neck and taking a deep breath.
“You are an idiot,” Reia answers and rolls his eyes. Because it is a little scary, but what he wants to say instead is I know.