Bits and pieces
These are false starts, drabbles, things that for whatever reason I don't think will ever go any farther but that I need to post in order to get on with my life. Various characters, genres, and ratings. Length ranges from two sentences to just under a thousand words. Any warnings are marked in the cut text.
Jin
Smoke. Thick and gritty on his tongue, coating his sensitive singer's throat and pouring into his lungs. He breathes his first breath of non-recycled air in twelve hours, his first breath on another continent, and that's what he tastes. Smoke.
He swallows hard, licks chapped lips once, then again. He's here because he wanted to work on his English, he knows that much. It all made sense five thousand miles ago, but now there's a stern-looking man herding them all into a line and demanding that they have their passports out--at least that's what he thinks the foreign words mean, loud and fast and terrifying as they are.
He doesn't need English, though, to understand the images on the airport television screens. Flames gut a home behind a solemn-faced blonde reporter before the camera cuts to a helicopter flying over a fire-ravaged mountainside. He looks out the tiny window behind the customs officer to see what he can already feel in his mouth, layers of brown smoke lying low along the sky.
The officer waves at him to come forward, and he fumbles in his bag for his passport. The man has Yamamoto on his name badge and almond eyes just like his, and something in him breathes a sigh of relief that he won’t have to confront the strangeness just yet. After a few curt questions in Japanese, he's handed back his passport. The man nods him through, and his last words are in English.
"Welcome to the United States, Jin Akanishi."
------------
LA sprawls over the seashore and out into the desert, having long ago swallowed up the oil fields and orchards that brought it to life. He'd thought it'd be like Tokyo, but Los Angeles is a different type of big, a lazy swathe of concrete that rumbles with both seismic and political tension.
He hides himself in its very heart, renting a tiny apartment downtown, in the area they call Little Tokyo. He can't see the resemblance, but most of the people speak some Japanese, and he hopes that little bit of constancy will be enough.
The first thing he does the next day, even before getting food, is buy a cell phone, one that can make international calls. Then he unpacks his suitcase. It's strange--he’s worn more fabric over the course of a three-hour concert than he's brought with him for the next six months. He pokes at the TV, and spends more time than he intended flipping through the channels. After asking his new landlady for directions, he heads to the Japanese market where the cashier stares at him for a moment when he tries to pay in yen before realizing his mistake and fumbling in his wallet for the unfamiliar American bills. He has no idea whether she gives him the right change.
That evening, he sends mail to his friends, to his mother, to KAT-TUN, lying back on his bed staring up at the ceiling. I’m here, the messages say. It’s bigger than I thought it’d be. The phone's tiny screen glows a bright blue in the dark, holding back the weight of the night sky.
Taguchi replies almost immediately.
--------------
Kame mails him their schedule, the way he always does. The first time, Jin sends him a mail reminding him, with a pang in the center of his chest, that he's no longer in Japan, can't possibly go to any of the photoshoots or TV appearances for the day. But every afternoon, just as he's finishing his classes, he feels the buzz in his pocket and knows it's Kame. It's 6am in Tokyo, and as he skims through the list, he finds himself thinking of how much fun Taguchi's going to have with the circus photoshoot and wondering what Koki and Maru have planned for their duo appearance on Shounen Club. He's reluctant to mention it to Kame again, but when he does, Kame says only, "Everyone in KAT-TUN needs to know what's going on."
--------------
He's been there a month when the first box arrives. It's beautifully (but densely) packed to the brim with snacks. No note, no return address, just food and his name written on the box in careful, precise English script. He smiles. Kame knows him so well. It's why they were such good friends as Juniors.
He's not sure what they are now, after the fight, but it's a good sign.
Ryo/Ueda
"We," says Yamapi, drawing himself up to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jin, "have decided to stage an intervention."
Ryo eyes the two of them suspiciously from the couch. "I'm sorry. Did you say intervention?"
Jin nods vigorously. "Because we think--"
"--it would be helpful--"
"--inter-group relations--"
"--you and Ueda--"
"Guys," Ryo says, "I don't care what you--wait, me and Ueda?"
"Yes," Yamapi says, "Jin and I think that your feud with Ueda, what was it you said, Jin--"
"'Unecessary strain and tension,'" Jin offers, looking very proud of himself.
"Yes, that," Pi says. "Tension. On our groups."
"Have you been talking to Koyama lately?" Ryo asks suspiciously. "Besides, Pi, that was years ago. And it wasn't even real in the first place.”
"Regardless!" Jin says. "You're still not on good terms."
"I can't possibly be on good terms with him!" Ryo huffs. "I never see him!"
"Exactly!" Pi beams. "Which is why we've arranged for the two of you to spend a week together in Sendai."
Ryo gapes at him. "Do you two morons even know what an intervention is?"
Jin shrugs. "I asked Maru and he told me to ask some guy named Dr. Phil."
Ryo smacks his face with his palm. "I always forget how retarded you two are."
Yamapi ignores him and pulls out an envelope. "All your tickets and reservation information is in here."
He tries to give the envelope to Ryo, but the other man crosses his arms and refuses to take it. "Pi, be reasonable. I don't have time. I'm in two groups. I can't possibly take a week off--I'm too busy."
"Not anymore you aren't!" says Yamapi.
"What?!" Ryo yelps.
"Not too busy," Yamapi hastily amends. "Not no longer in News or Kanjani8."
Ryo glares at him. "Don't do that to me, Pi."
"Anyways," Jin says, "We contacted your manager, well, Pi contacted him, and got stuff moved for you. You need to be up at 4 tomorrow for a shoot, by the way."
Ryo falls back onto the couch and covers his eyes. "What did I ever do to deserve friends like this?"
"You'll thank us later," says Yamapi.
"And don't worry about Ueda," Jin adds, "We've got a plan for him."
"The poor bastard." Ryo sighs. "Go. Plot your retarded plots. I'm not having any part of them."
"But Ryo!" Jin whines.
"No," Ryo says. "Bad Jin. Bad Yamapi. Go bother Shige or someone."
They stare at him sadly, and Ryo almost relents. "Look, guys, I appreciate the thought, but I'm perfectly able to take care of things on my own."
---
Clearly, Ryo was not able to take care of things on his own. If he was in control of his life, he wouldn't be sitting on the bullet train on his way to Sendai. Jin and Pi, despite the truly impressive amount of fail they were capable of generating together, had actually done a remarkably thorough job of cornering him with their plan.
Ryo had been dragged from studio to interview to photoshoot all week by his traitor of a manager. He'd barely had time to eat, let alone try to rework his new schedule or find some way to thwart his two best friends' plots.
Yamapi had leveraged his position as News' leader very well, suggesting to Johnny that maybe Ryo should take a week to record his life in picture diary form in a different city.
Yamapi had then conspired with Jin to lock Ryo out of his house that morning and take all the money and credit cards out of his wallet. They'd forbidden any of his friends to provide him shelter and threatened dire consequences to anyone at the jimusho who might think of helping him.
The two of them had then dropped Ryo off at the station, and if Ryo wanted to sleep somewhere warm tonight, he'd have to use the train ticket to get to the hotel Jin had chosen for him in Sendai. Ryo was actually slightly looking forward to that--Jin had good taste in accommodations. That didn't mean he was forgiving either of his best friends anytime soon, though.
He's not sure where Ueda is, and he hopes that the other man has escaped Jin and Pi's clutches, if only so that Ryo can have the whole of their accommodations to himself. He doesn't actually owe Jin's bandmate any ill will--I mean, sure, he'd teased him about the whole fairies thing, but then, so had half the Jimusho.
As the train travels farther and farther away from Tokyo and his meddling best friends, Ryo begins to relax. He can think of a number of things he's wanted to do and simply hasn't had time for lately. It'll be nice to have some time to himself, might actually be fun, though he'll deny it to his friends with his last breath. He's smiling as he falls asleep, his first real nap in weeks.
The taxi driver he rides with the hotel afterwards, though, completely kills his good mood. It wasn't his fault that the sudden flurries of snow had tied up traffic, but the man just wouldn't stop talking and kept looping the same Arashi single over and over. Ryo is proud of himself for not punching the man, especially when he'd started singing along.
Ryo/Jin
Ryo is smaller, but he's forceful. When he shoves Jin backwards into the wall, Jin doesn't even have time to catch his breath before Ryo's stealing it from him, lips hard and fierce as they press Jin's apart.
Aimiya
The only way Nino can be sure Aiba loves him is to make him cry. He pushes and prods, all sneers and snickers and sharp words, waiting desperately for Aiba’s check to twitch and the first tear to fall.
When it does, Nino’s fingers are there to wipe it away. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and Aiba nods and forgives him and Nino feels a little piece of himself die.
Afterwards, Nino never wants to do it again. But he knows he will--he’s selfish, after all. Selfish and so very scared that this wonderful bright thing will leave him. And he doesn’t want to be alone.
Aiba
Aiba has always wondered what his own blood would look like. Not smeared across his arm from a scrape, but all pooled together, in a drinking glass, maybe. Once he starts thinking about it, he can’t stop. So one day he tries it, and it’s beautiful, drip-dripping onto his white plates. But at work the next day, Nino’s sharp eyes notice the bandaid on his wrist and Aiba knows he has to lie-Nino won’t understand. So he tells him it was a rough filming session, that one of the bracelets they made him wear rubbed and gave him a rash. Nino is suspicious, Aiba knows, and he’ll have to do better to hide the angry red flesh. He’s more careful next time, making small, shallow cuts on his hip, the only place where no one will see. And if anyone ever asks, he’d walked into a table corner at the last shoot, so sorry, really he’s just a very clumsy person.
They ask him what is most precious to him, and he’s about to say my family, because it’s what he always says, and it’s true, but for some reason all he can see swimming before his eyes is that perfect red bead against the pale skin of his hip. He swallows and stares at the interviewer. She looks expectantly back at him, waiting for his answer.
He gives her his best grin. My life, he says, it’s the most precious thing.
Jin
Smoke. Thick and gritty on his tongue, coating his sensitive singer's throat and pouring into his lungs. He breathes his first breath of non-recycled air in twelve hours, his first breath on another continent, and that's what he tastes. Smoke.
He swallows hard, licks chapped lips once, then again. He's here because he wanted to work on his English, he knows that much. It all made sense five thousand miles ago, but now there's a stern-looking man herding them all into a line and demanding that they have their passports out--at least that's what he thinks the foreign words mean, loud and fast and terrifying as they are.
He doesn't need English, though, to understand the images on the airport television screens. Flames gut a home behind a solemn-faced blonde reporter before the camera cuts to a helicopter flying over a fire-ravaged mountainside. He looks out the tiny window behind the customs officer to see what he can already feel in his mouth, layers of brown smoke lying low along the sky.
The officer waves at him to come forward, and he fumbles in his bag for his passport. The man has Yamamoto on his name badge and almond eyes just like his, and something in him breathes a sigh of relief that he won’t have to confront the strangeness just yet. After a few curt questions in Japanese, he's handed back his passport. The man nods him through, and his last words are in English.
"Welcome to the United States, Jin Akanishi."
------------
LA sprawls over the seashore and out into the desert, having long ago swallowed up the oil fields and orchards that brought it to life. He'd thought it'd be like Tokyo, but Los Angeles is a different type of big, a lazy swathe of concrete that rumbles with both seismic and political tension.
He hides himself in its very heart, renting a tiny apartment downtown, in the area they call Little Tokyo. He can't see the resemblance, but most of the people speak some Japanese, and he hopes that little bit of constancy will be enough.
The first thing he does the next day, even before getting food, is buy a cell phone, one that can make international calls. Then he unpacks his suitcase. It's strange--he’s worn more fabric over the course of a three-hour concert than he's brought with him for the next six months. He pokes at the TV, and spends more time than he intended flipping through the channels. After asking his new landlady for directions, he heads to the Japanese market where the cashier stares at him for a moment when he tries to pay in yen before realizing his mistake and fumbling in his wallet for the unfamiliar American bills. He has no idea whether she gives him the right change.
That evening, he sends mail to his friends, to his mother, to KAT-TUN, lying back on his bed staring up at the ceiling. I’m here, the messages say. It’s bigger than I thought it’d be. The phone's tiny screen glows a bright blue in the dark, holding back the weight of the night sky.
Taguchi replies almost immediately.
--------------
Kame mails him their schedule, the way he always does. The first time, Jin sends him a mail reminding him, with a pang in the center of his chest, that he's no longer in Japan, can't possibly go to any of the photoshoots or TV appearances for the day. But every afternoon, just as he's finishing his classes, he feels the buzz in his pocket and knows it's Kame. It's 6am in Tokyo, and as he skims through the list, he finds himself thinking of how much fun Taguchi's going to have with the circus photoshoot and wondering what Koki and Maru have planned for their duo appearance on Shounen Club. He's reluctant to mention it to Kame again, but when he does, Kame says only, "Everyone in KAT-TUN needs to know what's going on."
--------------
He's been there a month when the first box arrives. It's beautifully (but densely) packed to the brim with snacks. No note, no return address, just food and his name written on the box in careful, precise English script. He smiles. Kame knows him so well. It's why they were such good friends as Juniors.
He's not sure what they are now, after the fight, but it's a good sign.
Ryo/Ueda
"We," says Yamapi, drawing himself up to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jin, "have decided to stage an intervention."
Ryo eyes the two of them suspiciously from the couch. "I'm sorry. Did you say intervention?"
Jin nods vigorously. "Because we think--"
"--it would be helpful--"
"--inter-group relations--"
"--you and Ueda--"
"Guys," Ryo says, "I don't care what you--wait, me and Ueda?"
"Yes," Yamapi says, "Jin and I think that your feud with Ueda, what was it you said, Jin--"
"'Unecessary strain and tension,'" Jin offers, looking very proud of himself.
"Yes, that," Pi says. "Tension. On our groups."
"Have you been talking to Koyama lately?" Ryo asks suspiciously. "Besides, Pi, that was years ago. And it wasn't even real in the first place.”
"Regardless!" Jin says. "You're still not on good terms."
"I can't possibly be on good terms with him!" Ryo huffs. "I never see him!"
"Exactly!" Pi beams. "Which is why we've arranged for the two of you to spend a week together in Sendai."
Ryo gapes at him. "Do you two morons even know what an intervention is?"
Jin shrugs. "I asked Maru and he told me to ask some guy named Dr. Phil."
Ryo smacks his face with his palm. "I always forget how retarded you two are."
Yamapi ignores him and pulls out an envelope. "All your tickets and reservation information is in here."
He tries to give the envelope to Ryo, but the other man crosses his arms and refuses to take it. "Pi, be reasonable. I don't have time. I'm in two groups. I can't possibly take a week off--I'm too busy."
"Not anymore you aren't!" says Yamapi.
"What?!" Ryo yelps.
"Not too busy," Yamapi hastily amends. "Not no longer in News or Kanjani8."
Ryo glares at him. "Don't do that to me, Pi."
"Anyways," Jin says, "We contacted your manager, well, Pi contacted him, and got stuff moved for you. You need to be up at 4 tomorrow for a shoot, by the way."
Ryo falls back onto the couch and covers his eyes. "What did I ever do to deserve friends like this?"
"You'll thank us later," says Yamapi.
"And don't worry about Ueda," Jin adds, "We've got a plan for him."
"The poor bastard." Ryo sighs. "Go. Plot your retarded plots. I'm not having any part of them."
"But Ryo!" Jin whines.
"No," Ryo says. "Bad Jin. Bad Yamapi. Go bother Shige or someone."
They stare at him sadly, and Ryo almost relents. "Look, guys, I appreciate the thought, but I'm perfectly able to take care of things on my own."
---
Clearly, Ryo was not able to take care of things on his own. If he was in control of his life, he wouldn't be sitting on the bullet train on his way to Sendai. Jin and Pi, despite the truly impressive amount of fail they were capable of generating together, had actually done a remarkably thorough job of cornering him with their plan.
Ryo had been dragged from studio to interview to photoshoot all week by his traitor of a manager. He'd barely had time to eat, let alone try to rework his new schedule or find some way to thwart his two best friends' plots.
Yamapi had leveraged his position as News' leader very well, suggesting to Johnny that maybe Ryo should take a week to record his life in picture diary form in a different city.
Yamapi had then conspired with Jin to lock Ryo out of his house that morning and take all the money and credit cards out of his wallet. They'd forbidden any of his friends to provide him shelter and threatened dire consequences to anyone at the jimusho who might think of helping him.
The two of them had then dropped Ryo off at the station, and if Ryo wanted to sleep somewhere warm tonight, he'd have to use the train ticket to get to the hotel Jin had chosen for him in Sendai. Ryo was actually slightly looking forward to that--Jin had good taste in accommodations. That didn't mean he was forgiving either of his best friends anytime soon, though.
He's not sure where Ueda is, and he hopes that the other man has escaped Jin and Pi's clutches, if only so that Ryo can have the whole of their accommodations to himself. He doesn't actually owe Jin's bandmate any ill will--I mean, sure, he'd teased him about the whole fairies thing, but then, so had half the Jimusho.
As the train travels farther and farther away from Tokyo and his meddling best friends, Ryo begins to relax. He can think of a number of things he's wanted to do and simply hasn't had time for lately. It'll be nice to have some time to himself, might actually be fun, though he'll deny it to his friends with his last breath. He's smiling as he falls asleep, his first real nap in weeks.
The taxi driver he rides with the hotel afterwards, though, completely kills his good mood. It wasn't his fault that the sudden flurries of snow had tied up traffic, but the man just wouldn't stop talking and kept looping the same Arashi single over and over. Ryo is proud of himself for not punching the man, especially when he'd started singing along.
Ryo/Jin
Ryo is smaller, but he's forceful. When he shoves Jin backwards into the wall, Jin doesn't even have time to catch his breath before Ryo's stealing it from him, lips hard and fierce as they press Jin's apart.
Aimiya
The only way Nino can be sure Aiba loves him is to make him cry. He pushes and prods, all sneers and snickers and sharp words, waiting desperately for Aiba’s check to twitch and the first tear to fall.
When it does, Nino’s fingers are there to wipe it away. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and Aiba nods and forgives him and Nino feels a little piece of himself die.
Afterwards, Nino never wants to do it again. But he knows he will--he’s selfish, after all. Selfish and so very scared that this wonderful bright thing will leave him. And he doesn’t want to be alone.
Aiba
Aiba has always wondered what his own blood would look like. Not smeared across his arm from a scrape, but all pooled together, in a drinking glass, maybe. Once he starts thinking about it, he can’t stop. So one day he tries it, and it’s beautiful, drip-dripping onto his white plates. But at work the next day, Nino’s sharp eyes notice the bandaid on his wrist and Aiba knows he has to lie-Nino won’t understand. So he tells him it was a rough filming session, that one of the bracelets they made him wear rubbed and gave him a rash. Nino is suspicious, Aiba knows, and he’ll have to do better to hide the angry red flesh. He’s more careful next time, making small, shallow cuts on his hip, the only place where no one will see. And if anyone ever asks, he’d walked into a table corner at the last shoot, so sorry, really he’s just a very clumsy person.
They ask him what is most precious to him, and he’s about to say my family, because it’s what he always says, and it’s true, but for some reason all he can see swimming before his eyes is that perfect red bead against the pale skin of his hip. He swallows and stares at the interviewer. She looks expectantly back at him, waiting for his answer.
He gives her his best grin. My life, he says, it’s the most precious thing.