[JE] Five Reasons Why Jin Wears So Many Layers On-stage
Title: Five Reasons Why Jin Wears So Many Layers On-stage
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Fluff, crack, sap and angst in no particular order
Disclaimer: I don't own any of them, dammit.
Summary: I figured I'd try my hand at one of these 'Five...' things, so here we have five (actually, five and a half because no. 2 has an alternative ending) drabbles, getting progressively longer, that look at possible reasons for Jin's Arctic gear. Kame appears in all of them, and T-TUN show up once too. Enjoy!
Five Reasons Why Jin Wears So Many Layers On-stage
1. He's just that cold
Jin shivers in the dressing room, waiting for the call to take the stage with the rest of KAT-TUN. Over his black T-shirt he's already wearing a deep red jacket, and a long white coat over that, but he's still cold. He knows that once he gets out there, starts to move under the hot stage lights, he'll start to warm up, become so heated that he'll soon be sweating and desperate to remove layers.
But for now, he feels like an ice cube, and the malfunctioning air-conditioning doesn't help.
Kame looks at him critically, lips pursed, then sighs and says, "I think we're going to need more fur."
2.a) He wants to hide a few extra pounds
"You can't wear that!" Kame yells as he snatches the gigantic overcoat away from Jin. "We're supposed to match for the next couple of songs, and we can't do that if you disguise yourself as a bear!"
Jin makes a grab for the coat, misses, and settles for tying a flannel shirt round his waist, making sure the material covers as much of his stomach as possible. "How about this?"
Kame groans. "It's not pink. What's more, it clashes. And it's not part of the costume! Why do you have to keep doing this?"
"Because..." Jin looks at the floor, letting his bangs fall over his face so Kame can't see how red it is. "Because I'm fat."
"You are *not* fat," Kame tells him resolutely. "You look perfect."
"But I gained all that weight in LA! It was fine over there, and then I come back here and half the people I know look like twigs!" Jin rubs his tummy. "I'm working really hard to get back into shape but it still looks bad and I-mph!"
"You are *not* fat," Kame says again when he removes his lips from Jin's. "Your routine changed for six months, that's all, and now you're trying to get back to the way things used to be. Don't force yourself - and don't worry about it. I don't care if you look like a twig or an entire forest, so long as you're happy."
Jin unties the shirt, looking ruefully down at his front, and thinks that perhaps it won't matter too much. If he does enough hip rolls, the fans will never notice those few extra pounds.
"See," Kame says soothingly, "you look perfect. But if you really feel the need to lose more, I'll help you burn up some calories."
With Kame whispering suggestions for strenuous bedroom exercise in his ear, Jin considers that he might need to tie that shirt round his waist after all...to hide something other than excess weight.
2.b) He wants to hide a few *other* extra pounds - alternate ending to 2.a)
"Because..." Jin looks at the floor, letting his bangs fall over his face so Kame can't see how red it is. "Because I'm pregnant."
Kame sits down, head in his hands. "You can't be."
"But I am!" Jin wails. "I know we were so careful, but-"
"Jin! Guys cannot get pregnant. Even you should know that. The bloating's probably just indigestion, or something." Kame reaches out and probes under Jin's three layers of clothing to lay a hand on his tummy. Is it just his imagination, or is there something moving underneath the skin?
"Then explain the morning sickness!" Jin says with an indignant flourish. "And the weird food cravings!"
With this, Kame smirks, having figured out the cause of both these and the slight bloating. "You and Pi have got to stop having these late-night drinking sessions!"
3. He wants to hide Kame's handiwork
They're due on for the encore in two minutes. Kame's in the bathroom, Junno's massaging a cramp out of his leg and Ueda, Koki and Nakamaru are busy removing their outer layers.
Not Jin. He's still wearing a long-sleeved jacket over his shirt, complete with one of a series of identical scarves he's been wearing for the entire concert.
"Oi," Koki says as he grabs a towel to drape round his neck. "Off with the layers. The rest of us have been giving fanservice all night; it's got to be your turn by now."
Even Ueda is shirtless. "If I can do it, you can do it," he tells Jin.
Jin wraps his arms around himself and slowly edges back until he runs out of room. "I've got a cold?" he tries. "I...uh...I need to stay warm."
"You're already sweating like a pig," Nakamaru points out. "C'mon, you've got to be boiling in that lot. Take it off so the rest of us don't look strange."
Jin lets out a strangled gasp as the others hold him down while Koki does the honours. He struggles valiantly but they play dirty and tickle him, ensuring that he can't hit a damned thing, and he winds up spreadeagled on the floor; shirtless, scarfless and helpless.
The collective intake of breath from T-TUN is so powerful that it's a wonder they don't inhale everything in the room.
"What *are* those?" Junno marvels, sounding slightly horrified when he sees the small crescents covering Jin's chest.
"Nail marks?" Nakamaru suggests. "And those look like teethmarks." He points to the reddened bites that begin at Jin's throat.
"I don't really want to know what made those scars, do I?" Ueda asks darkly, carefully touching a nail to one of the many, slightly bloody crusts that mar Jin's skin at multiple points.
Koki starts to trace some of the marks across Jin's stomach, oblivious to the other man's squirms. "Hey, I think I can make some kanji out of these!"
A stern cough from the doorway makes them all look up. "We don't have time to sit around while you admire my handiwork," Kame says. "We're supposed to be half-way through Real Face by now!"
T-TUN wince as one man and slink off to the stage, leaving a red-faced Akanishi Jin lying in a dazed heap on the floor.
"Next time," Koki opines to Kame on his way out, "just get him tattooed with your name. It'll be a lot less painful."
"For ALL of us," Ueda concurs.
4. He needs the protection
They've always worn elaborate costumes on-stage, starting off with several layers so they can hold off on changing costumes for a little longer, stripping off one level at a time to make the audience scream. By the time the encore comes round, they're usually shirtless, or at least down to one thin covering of cloth.
Jin never used to have a problem with it. But after six months in LA...
Six months where he's not being constantly groped by well-meaning photographers who want to position him "just so", or by fans who strain across the barriers to touch him. Six months away from people who think it's their God-given right to remove everything that stands in their way, tearing off his clothes with their hands and their eyes and leaving him open and vulnerable. Six months of being anonymous, of knowing that his body is his own and not subject to the whims of dieticians, stylists, trainers, choreographers...the list seems endless. Six months where the only touches he receives are those he invites, and those are few and far between.
Now he's back in Japan, back with the people he loves and a job he enjoys, and the cracks are starting to appear. He's happy to touch people, to bat them comically on the head, or lean on their shoulders and pretend to sleep, but it makes him uncomfortable when hands reach for him.
Most hands. Not his family or his friends - they're safe. They won't ask too much of him, won't breach his barriers and make him bare his soul, because they already know him and he loves them for that.
It's easier when they're filming 'Cartoon KAT-TUN', because he's always between Nakamaru and Ueda and it's like having a pair of bodyguards. Even when they're off the couch, it's still the six of them together in close proximity, crew and guests notwithstanding, and Jin feels safer for it. He can wear what he wants, expose as much of his body as he cares to, and it doesn't seem so bad in the studio. After all, the viewers can't reach him there; the biggest threat is from the golden hands of the tickling god and they've already been warned to stay away from Jin's collarbone at the risk of losing their hearing.
During concerts, it's still the six of them, but there's so much more space that they might as well be apart. Jin feels the eyes of the audience boring into him, penetrating layer after layer to reach his very core. They want to touch him, to run their hands over his skin and make him theirs - to own him completely. He knows, realistically, that the security guards will get to any overzealous fan before anything can happen, and if hands brush against him as he makes his way round the venue, it will only be for a moment, one second he has to put up with it before the next one appears.
But at least if he wears heavy layers, he can armour himself against it for a little while. He won't be able to feel anything, and with nothing on display the fans' imaginations will have to work that extra bit harder to strip him down. It's hot under the stage lights and sometimes it's hard to move in so much clothing, but he clings onto the shield it offers for as long as he can and pretends that everything is normal.
It'll get better eventually, he thinks. He'll get used to it again, to being public property, and it's not as if he's the only one who has to put up with it. He knows he doesn't really have the right to complain - he could quit at any time, or explain his feelings to everyone and ask them to please be patient while he tries to adjust - but he can't help it when he gets upset, face going blank in a panic and wondering inside what the hell made him think he could do it all again.
Kame pops up behind him and hands him a black, fur-trimmed jacket. "Here," he says quietly. "Extra protection. The front row's really aggressive tonight."
Jin nods his thanks and dons the jacket automatically. "But I'll look out of place," he protests.
Kame grins and pulls out a clone of Jin's jacket, this one in white. "Not if I'm wearing one too," he says.
5. He wants Kame to remove them
"A blackout!" Kame fumes. "The final show of the tour and the power dies before we get through the second song!"
Jin quirks a smile at him. "Look at it this way: the tour gets extended by one day and we get an unexpected free evening to recover from last night's show." He flops down on his bed in their shared hotel room, closing his eyes against the last few rays of sun creeping in through the window. "I could do with the sleep."
Kame closes the curtains. "You're not going to sleep like that," he warns.
Thanks to the power failure, it was too much trouble to try to change back in the pitch-black dressing rooms, and everyone had gone back to the hotel in their costumes. Of course, since the show had ended so early, they'd all still been wearing three layers at the time. Everyone but Jin had braved the darkened corridors with torches to shed the outer two before leaving, since the weather was fairly warm outside, but he'd been reluctant to venture into the blackness, despite frequent assurances from Kame and the others that there were no ghosts lurking down there.
Consequently, Jin is wearing all three layers, and resembles nothing so much as a glam-rock beached whale as he lies on the bed.
Jin yawns. "Why not? Everyone keeps telling me I need to get some sleep, including you. Wake me up in a couple of hours, will you?"
Kame removes his own costume as he talks, carefully hanging it up to avoid wrinkles, and pulls on a pair of cut-offs. "I'm not your alarm clock, idiot. Anyway, if you sleep like that you'll ruin your costumes - not that it'll matter, because you'll boil to death long before tomorrow's show."
With some difficulty, Jin pushes himself up into a sitting position, grimacing as he hears a ruffle tear off where his sleeve has caught on the bedside table. "But there's so many laces to undo," he complains. "It took three men to tie me into this thing - how am I supposed to get it undone?"
"This thing" is apparently a coat, but looks more like a ruffled red and gold fishing net with the occasional solid panel.
Kame sighs and hovers over Jin. "Hold still. Don't breathe."
"That's what they said when they laced me up..."
It takes even Kame's nimble fingers five minutes to undo all the knots, and he offers mental thanks to whoever has decided that the rest of KAT-TUN do not have to suffer this particular outfit. He rolls Jin over to remove the final fastening, only to discover that the back actually unzips and by undoing the knots at the front he has unravelled the entire outfit. He yanks the zip down, almost catching it on the black jacket beneath, and roughly rolls Jin back again so he can pull the whole mess off him and toss it on the table.
"Hey!" Jin protests. "You don't need to get so rough. I'm trying to sleep, you know."
A scowl appears on Kame's face, making Jin hurry to blink away the first hints of sleepiness. "Stand up," Kame orders, and Jin obeys without question.
The next layer is nowhere near so difficult to remove - the long black jacket is belted at the front, and there are a couple of discreet buttons to keep it in place. Kame dispenses with these in a trice, and the jacket, too, is tossed on the table.
"Think you can manage the last one yourself?" Kame asks, voice laden with sarcasm.
Jin looks down at the charcoal pants and glittered, burgundy T-shirt, and replies with equal sarcasm, "Looks too tough for me to handle. You'll just have to help me with this one as well."
"Okay."
Jin is surprised when Kame takes his words at face value and guides him back down on the bed with a gentle hand and an impish grin. He doesn't object, though, not when Kame settles himself atop Jin and kisses him quite thoroughly.
"How is this helping me get out of my costume?" Jin asks when they come up for air.
Kame pulls the T-shirt half-way up Jin's chest and leaves it there so he can kiss underneath. The mischievous glint in his eyes has a matching sparkle in Jin's, and he's laughing when he tells him, "I'm working on it."
Jin smiles in self-satisfaction and strokes Kame's hair, which is all he can reach. Sleep can wait, he decides. Maybe there will be another blackout tomorrow.
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Fluff, crack, sap and angst in no particular order
Disclaimer: I don't own any of them, dammit.
Summary: I figured I'd try my hand at one of these 'Five...' things, so here we have five (actually, five and a half because no. 2 has an alternative ending) drabbles, getting progressively longer, that look at possible reasons for Jin's Arctic gear. Kame appears in all of them, and T-TUN show up once too. Enjoy!
Five Reasons Why Jin Wears So Many Layers On-stage
1. He's just that cold
Jin shivers in the dressing room, waiting for the call to take the stage with the rest of KAT-TUN. Over his black T-shirt he's already wearing a deep red jacket, and a long white coat over that, but he's still cold. He knows that once he gets out there, starts to move under the hot stage lights, he'll start to warm up, become so heated that he'll soon be sweating and desperate to remove layers.
But for now, he feels like an ice cube, and the malfunctioning air-conditioning doesn't help.
Kame looks at him critically, lips pursed, then sighs and says, "I think we're going to need more fur."
2.a) He wants to hide a few extra pounds
"You can't wear that!" Kame yells as he snatches the gigantic overcoat away from Jin. "We're supposed to match for the next couple of songs, and we can't do that if you disguise yourself as a bear!"
Jin makes a grab for the coat, misses, and settles for tying a flannel shirt round his waist, making sure the material covers as much of his stomach as possible. "How about this?"
Kame groans. "It's not pink. What's more, it clashes. And it's not part of the costume! Why do you have to keep doing this?"
"Because..." Jin looks at the floor, letting his bangs fall over his face so Kame can't see how red it is. "Because I'm fat."
"You are *not* fat," Kame tells him resolutely. "You look perfect."
"But I gained all that weight in LA! It was fine over there, and then I come back here and half the people I know look like twigs!" Jin rubs his tummy. "I'm working really hard to get back into shape but it still looks bad and I-mph!"
"You are *not* fat," Kame says again when he removes his lips from Jin's. "Your routine changed for six months, that's all, and now you're trying to get back to the way things used to be. Don't force yourself - and don't worry about it. I don't care if you look like a twig or an entire forest, so long as you're happy."
Jin unties the shirt, looking ruefully down at his front, and thinks that perhaps it won't matter too much. If he does enough hip rolls, the fans will never notice those few extra pounds.
"See," Kame says soothingly, "you look perfect. But if you really feel the need to lose more, I'll help you burn up some calories."
With Kame whispering suggestions for strenuous bedroom exercise in his ear, Jin considers that he might need to tie that shirt round his waist after all...to hide something other than excess weight.
2.b) He wants to hide a few *other* extra pounds - alternate ending to 2.a)
"Because..." Jin looks at the floor, letting his bangs fall over his face so Kame can't see how red it is. "Because I'm pregnant."
Kame sits down, head in his hands. "You can't be."
"But I am!" Jin wails. "I know we were so careful, but-"
"Jin! Guys cannot get pregnant. Even you should know that. The bloating's probably just indigestion, or something." Kame reaches out and probes under Jin's three layers of clothing to lay a hand on his tummy. Is it just his imagination, or is there something moving underneath the skin?
"Then explain the morning sickness!" Jin says with an indignant flourish. "And the weird food cravings!"
With this, Kame smirks, having figured out the cause of both these and the slight bloating. "You and Pi have got to stop having these late-night drinking sessions!"
3. He wants to hide Kame's handiwork
They're due on for the encore in two minutes. Kame's in the bathroom, Junno's massaging a cramp out of his leg and Ueda, Koki and Nakamaru are busy removing their outer layers.
Not Jin. He's still wearing a long-sleeved jacket over his shirt, complete with one of a series of identical scarves he's been wearing for the entire concert.
"Oi," Koki says as he grabs a towel to drape round his neck. "Off with the layers. The rest of us have been giving fanservice all night; it's got to be your turn by now."
Even Ueda is shirtless. "If I can do it, you can do it," he tells Jin.
Jin wraps his arms around himself and slowly edges back until he runs out of room. "I've got a cold?" he tries. "I...uh...I need to stay warm."
"You're already sweating like a pig," Nakamaru points out. "C'mon, you've got to be boiling in that lot. Take it off so the rest of us don't look strange."
Jin lets out a strangled gasp as the others hold him down while Koki does the honours. He struggles valiantly but they play dirty and tickle him, ensuring that he can't hit a damned thing, and he winds up spreadeagled on the floor; shirtless, scarfless and helpless.
The collective intake of breath from T-TUN is so powerful that it's a wonder they don't inhale everything in the room.
"What *are* those?" Junno marvels, sounding slightly horrified when he sees the small crescents covering Jin's chest.
"Nail marks?" Nakamaru suggests. "And those look like teethmarks." He points to the reddened bites that begin at Jin's throat.
"I don't really want to know what made those scars, do I?" Ueda asks darkly, carefully touching a nail to one of the many, slightly bloody crusts that mar Jin's skin at multiple points.
Koki starts to trace some of the marks across Jin's stomach, oblivious to the other man's squirms. "Hey, I think I can make some kanji out of these!"
A stern cough from the doorway makes them all look up. "We don't have time to sit around while you admire my handiwork," Kame says. "We're supposed to be half-way through Real Face by now!"
T-TUN wince as one man and slink off to the stage, leaving a red-faced Akanishi Jin lying in a dazed heap on the floor.
"Next time," Koki opines to Kame on his way out, "just get him tattooed with your name. It'll be a lot less painful."
"For ALL of us," Ueda concurs.
4. He needs the protection
They've always worn elaborate costumes on-stage, starting off with several layers so they can hold off on changing costumes for a little longer, stripping off one level at a time to make the audience scream. By the time the encore comes round, they're usually shirtless, or at least down to one thin covering of cloth.
Jin never used to have a problem with it. But after six months in LA...
Six months where he's not being constantly groped by well-meaning photographers who want to position him "just so", or by fans who strain across the barriers to touch him. Six months away from people who think it's their God-given right to remove everything that stands in their way, tearing off his clothes with their hands and their eyes and leaving him open and vulnerable. Six months of being anonymous, of knowing that his body is his own and not subject to the whims of dieticians, stylists, trainers, choreographers...the list seems endless. Six months where the only touches he receives are those he invites, and those are few and far between.
Now he's back in Japan, back with the people he loves and a job he enjoys, and the cracks are starting to appear. He's happy to touch people, to bat them comically on the head, or lean on their shoulders and pretend to sleep, but it makes him uncomfortable when hands reach for him.
Most hands. Not his family or his friends - they're safe. They won't ask too much of him, won't breach his barriers and make him bare his soul, because they already know him and he loves them for that.
It's easier when they're filming 'Cartoon KAT-TUN', because he's always between Nakamaru and Ueda and it's like having a pair of bodyguards. Even when they're off the couch, it's still the six of them together in close proximity, crew and guests notwithstanding, and Jin feels safer for it. He can wear what he wants, expose as much of his body as he cares to, and it doesn't seem so bad in the studio. After all, the viewers can't reach him there; the biggest threat is from the golden hands of the tickling god and they've already been warned to stay away from Jin's collarbone at the risk of losing their hearing.
During concerts, it's still the six of them, but there's so much more space that they might as well be apart. Jin feels the eyes of the audience boring into him, penetrating layer after layer to reach his very core. They want to touch him, to run their hands over his skin and make him theirs - to own him completely. He knows, realistically, that the security guards will get to any overzealous fan before anything can happen, and if hands brush against him as he makes his way round the venue, it will only be for a moment, one second he has to put up with it before the next one appears.
But at least if he wears heavy layers, he can armour himself against it for a little while. He won't be able to feel anything, and with nothing on display the fans' imaginations will have to work that extra bit harder to strip him down. It's hot under the stage lights and sometimes it's hard to move in so much clothing, but he clings onto the shield it offers for as long as he can and pretends that everything is normal.
It'll get better eventually, he thinks. He'll get used to it again, to being public property, and it's not as if he's the only one who has to put up with it. He knows he doesn't really have the right to complain - he could quit at any time, or explain his feelings to everyone and ask them to please be patient while he tries to adjust - but he can't help it when he gets upset, face going blank in a panic and wondering inside what the hell made him think he could do it all again.
Kame pops up behind him and hands him a black, fur-trimmed jacket. "Here," he says quietly. "Extra protection. The front row's really aggressive tonight."
Jin nods his thanks and dons the jacket automatically. "But I'll look out of place," he protests.
Kame grins and pulls out a clone of Jin's jacket, this one in white. "Not if I'm wearing one too," he says.
5. He wants Kame to remove them
"A blackout!" Kame fumes. "The final show of the tour and the power dies before we get through the second song!"
Jin quirks a smile at him. "Look at it this way: the tour gets extended by one day and we get an unexpected free evening to recover from last night's show." He flops down on his bed in their shared hotel room, closing his eyes against the last few rays of sun creeping in through the window. "I could do with the sleep."
Kame closes the curtains. "You're not going to sleep like that," he warns.
Thanks to the power failure, it was too much trouble to try to change back in the pitch-black dressing rooms, and everyone had gone back to the hotel in their costumes. Of course, since the show had ended so early, they'd all still been wearing three layers at the time. Everyone but Jin had braved the darkened corridors with torches to shed the outer two before leaving, since the weather was fairly warm outside, but he'd been reluctant to venture into the blackness, despite frequent assurances from Kame and the others that there were no ghosts lurking down there.
Consequently, Jin is wearing all three layers, and resembles nothing so much as a glam-rock beached whale as he lies on the bed.
Jin yawns. "Why not? Everyone keeps telling me I need to get some sleep, including you. Wake me up in a couple of hours, will you?"
Kame removes his own costume as he talks, carefully hanging it up to avoid wrinkles, and pulls on a pair of cut-offs. "I'm not your alarm clock, idiot. Anyway, if you sleep like that you'll ruin your costumes - not that it'll matter, because you'll boil to death long before tomorrow's show."
With some difficulty, Jin pushes himself up into a sitting position, grimacing as he hears a ruffle tear off where his sleeve has caught on the bedside table. "But there's so many laces to undo," he complains. "It took three men to tie me into this thing - how am I supposed to get it undone?"
"This thing" is apparently a coat, but looks more like a ruffled red and gold fishing net with the occasional solid panel.
Kame sighs and hovers over Jin. "Hold still. Don't breathe."
"That's what they said when they laced me up..."
It takes even Kame's nimble fingers five minutes to undo all the knots, and he offers mental thanks to whoever has decided that the rest of KAT-TUN do not have to suffer this particular outfit. He rolls Jin over to remove the final fastening, only to discover that the back actually unzips and by undoing the knots at the front he has unravelled the entire outfit. He yanks the zip down, almost catching it on the black jacket beneath, and roughly rolls Jin back again so he can pull the whole mess off him and toss it on the table.
"Hey!" Jin protests. "You don't need to get so rough. I'm trying to sleep, you know."
A scowl appears on Kame's face, making Jin hurry to blink away the first hints of sleepiness. "Stand up," Kame orders, and Jin obeys without question.
The next layer is nowhere near so difficult to remove - the long black jacket is belted at the front, and there are a couple of discreet buttons to keep it in place. Kame dispenses with these in a trice, and the jacket, too, is tossed on the table.
"Think you can manage the last one yourself?" Kame asks, voice laden with sarcasm.
Jin looks down at the charcoal pants and glittered, burgundy T-shirt, and replies with equal sarcasm, "Looks too tough for me to handle. You'll just have to help me with this one as well."
"Okay."
Jin is surprised when Kame takes his words at face value and guides him back down on the bed with a gentle hand and an impish grin. He doesn't object, though, not when Kame settles himself atop Jin and kisses him quite thoroughly.
"How is this helping me get out of my costume?" Jin asks when they come up for air.
Kame pulls the T-shirt half-way up Jin's chest and leaves it there so he can kiss underneath. The mischievous glint in his eyes has a matching sparkle in Jin's, and he's laughing when he tells him, "I'm working on it."
Jin smiles in self-satisfaction and strokes Kame's hair, which is all he can reach. Sleep can wait, he decides. Maybe there will be another blackout tomorrow.