JE/NEWS- "For the Love of God (or Five Times Tegoshi was Almost Found Out)"
Title: For the Love of God (or Five Times Tegoshi was Almost Found Out)
Universe: JE/ NewS
Theme/Topic: See title
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (with some TegoxUniverse, implied TegoxNagase, and special appearances by Sho, Koki, Nagase, and Douche!Jin)
Warnings/Spoilers: crack, random. Bad science, as I know nothing about bee pheromones. LOL
Word Count: 3,085
Summary: Sometimes, Tegoshi is weird.
Dedication: procreational’s request on my holiday request meme!
A/N: I don’t know, clearly the first thing that came to mind. Also, there is a small reference to Kung Fu Dunk in here, which was just so horrible a movie that it was truly hysterical.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement is meant by this!
1.
The universe has a life force.
It is a living, breathing, feeling thing and sometimes people forget that, sometimes they mistreat it without realizing what they’re doing or they ignore it or worst of all, they blame it for the bad things that happen to them. When they do things like that, the universe (understandably) has no choice but to fight back.
On the other hand, sometimes a few very special people realize that the universe is there, listening, looking for a connection, looking for kindness. All they have to do is believe.
It’s rare but it does happen; the result is a strange phenomenon that simple creatures simply call abnormally good luck. Slightly smarter creatures might call it some sort of strange conspiracy.
One day Shige-one of those smart creatures- is napping in the corner of the dressing room when he wakes up to the sound of Tegoshi babbling to himself by the window, laughing and carrying on a conversation with what Shige can only assume is someone on the other end of his cell phone connection.
“You know, I was thinking that even though you told me it’s going to snow from four today until late tomorrow morning, it would be nice if it all cleared up by Saturday, ne, since I’m going to play soccer on Saturday morning with Nagase-kun and Taichi-kun. Do you think that would be too weird all of a sudden?” Pause. Laugh. “No? Thanks!”
In a fit of annoyance, Shige sits up abruptly at the couch, poised to throw his empty water bottle at Tegoshi and tell him to shut up, because he just finished all of his semester finals this morning and he kind of wants to die.
It is in the split second between when he actually sees Tegoshi and when he launches the water bottle at his head that Shige blinks and realizes Tegoshi isn’t actually talking on the phone.
But before he can ask what the hell Tegoshi is doing or who he thinks he’s talking to, the flying water bottle somehow misses its mark completely, hits the edge of the windowsill, bounces off of the side of it, then the top of it, and slingshots right back at Shige with a surprising amount of force.
It hits him square in the forehead.
Tegoshi blinks. “Eh, Shige that was weird,” he says after a moment, awkwardly. And then laughs a little-once again-to himself.
Shige groans and grabs his iPod out of his backpack and turns the volume up as high as it will go; he tells himself he’s ignoring Tegoshi for the rest of the day.
He falls asleep at exactly 3:59 and ends up missing it when the first flakes of the evening’s heavy snowfall start to drift to the ground outside, promptly at 4:00.
Tegoshi turns back to the windowsill and flashes a quick thumbs up skyward.
On Saturday, it’s 70 degrees outside and sunny.
~~~~~
2.
Massu’s father used to tell him stories at night before bed, about fantastical creatures of ancient times; immortal beings who lived on a different spiritual plane of existence from humans altogether, never feeling the earthly pains of hunger or thirst.
“Eh, no eating?” Massu had asked his father in childish disbelief when he’d heard, and could not imagine anything in this world that would be able to live without something as important as food.
“They exist,” his father had assured him around a small smile, tucking Massu in at the end of the story and ruffling his hair fondly as he did. “But you shouldn’t worry too much, Taka. It’s very rare that a regular person like you or me would get to see such a being in our whole life.”
Massu has always believed in the things that his father tells him, and so if his father says that such creatures exist, then surely they do. Massu believes that they’re out there, even if he’ll probably never see one during all his years on this earth.
But despite these rather fantastical beliefs (and the possibilities they open up), Massu is pretty certain that Tegoshi is nothing but human.
Even though it seems that Tegoshi hasn’t eaten anything for about two days now.
Massu doesn’t know this because he pays particularly special attention to Tegoshi or anything; it just happens to be one of the things that Massu notices because when his bandmates eat, that means he gets their leftovers.
Lately, there have been no Tegoshi leftovers.
And Massu thinks he is kind of worried.
But Tegoshi looks perfectly fine and sounds perfectly fine; even when they’re all sitting together in the dressing room in-between shows and it’s quiet because they’re busy resting, Massu hasn’t heard Tegoshi’s tummy rumble once, even though his own has growled three times over the course of the last hour despite the fact that he’d eaten lunch just a little while ago.
He wonders if maybe he just missed something, like a power bar or an energy drink or a snack from Koyama that Tegoshi had taken when Massu wasn’t looking.
“No,” Koyama murmurs curiously, when Massu quietly asks him if he’s given anyone snacks today. “I forgot to bring cash with me when I left the hotel this morning, ne,” he admits, and looks back at Massu sheepishly.
Massu’s brow furrows, but not for the reasons Koyama thinks.
Koyama looks like he’s about to nudge Shige and ask to borrow some money for the vending machine, because it seems that Massu is hungry again.
But before he can, Massu sits up a little straighter on the couch and suddenly asks out loud, “Tesshi, have you eaten anything since we left Tokyo?”
Silence.
Tegoshi blinks, looking up from his psychology textbook. “Eh?” he glances around at his groupmates, who all seem to be staring at him. “That’s a weird question, Massu,” he replies after a beat, and laughs a little. Maybe nervously.
Massu pouts. “Well, I’m sure I haven’t seen you do it once, ne, and we’ve been together all this time.”
Everyone else looks thoughtful when he makes his declaration, trying to think of a time they saw Tegoshi eat over the past few days, because clearly Massu’s observations have to be wrong since they don’t make any sense. They just need to tell him to convince him, after all.
In the meantime, Tegoshi squirms a little under their collective gazes. “Massu, I know I said in that interview a few months ago that I don’t really have a lot of interest in food, but that doesn’t mean I don’t eat. That’s…that’s impossible, ne? Otherwise I wouldn’t be alive.”
Yamapi’s brow is furrowed, much in the same manner that Massu’s is. “It’s definitely impossible,” he echoes eventually, “but I can’t remember seeing you eat either, ne.”
Shige snorts. “Of course he did. Just yesterday there was lunch and…” he trails off when he suddenly remembers that lunch had come while Tegoshi had been rehearsing his solo; he can’t remember if the younger idol had eaten after that or not, because he hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes. He scowls. At Tegoshi. “You ate yesterday, right?”
Tegoshi blinks.
More silence.
Ryo just gets impatient, because clearly the whole idea of sitting around and debating this is ridiculous. “Oh god, what are you, his moms or something? Of course he ate; if he didn’t wouldn’t he be miserable right now considering that we’ve had three shows in the last two days? Humans need to eat to live, don’t they?”
A general murmur of agreement, as Massu supposes that makes sense.
Tegoshi looks pleased.
Up until Massu digs around in his bag and pushes a package of animal crackers at him anyway. Just in case.
The other members try not to look too interested in the proceedings as Tegoshi grudgingly tears it open and finishes the whole thing in front of them, where they can see.
“There,” Tegoshi says once he’s done, and crumples up the empty bag. “All humans need to eat.”
“Right,” the others reply after he’s finished, and aren’t quite sure why they were so interested in something so random and obvious. They quickly go back to their napping or their reading or their line memorization before the next show is scheduled to begin, because clearly they are just tired.
Tegoshi just sighs in relief and goes to rinse his mouth out.
~~~~~
3.
The in-flight movie to Hawaii is a bad Hong Kong action film that begins with a kid and his sensei, as they attempt to learn some sort of ancient technique called “Altering Universe,” out of a ghetto looking kung fu manual. Ryo blinks blearily at the screen when the sensei says something about the universe being made up of particles of energy that can be assembled, disassembled, frozen, and flash forwarded at will, if only one has the discipline and skill to feel out the flow of the universe’s billions of particles and become one with each and every one of them. “You can freeze time, or turn it backwards,” the sensei says, as he weaves an intricate pattern in the air with his hands and feet.
Ryo yawns and thinks that that’s retarded; in the seat ahead of them he hears it when Shige says something out loud to Koyama along similar lines. “It’s impossible to alter time. Maybe you can change someone’s perception of it, but actually manipulating time is a complete fantasy. Plus if they go backwards in time, doesn’t that just bring up a whole slew of possible paradoxes?”
Ryo yawns again and thinks that Shige’s retarded too, because he takes shit too seriously.
He glances back up at the movie and wonders how this idiot is going to change the universe by spinning around like he’s dancing.
Tegoshi, who is sitting in the seat next to him-the window seat because he asked for it all cute earlier and Ryo eventually gave in- leans his head against Ryo’s shoulder. He’s tiredly watching the movie too, and starts to murmur without thinking because he is only half-awake. Ryo catches bits of what he’s saying here and there, like when he mumbles something about how that he doesn’t think that the way the sensei is doing it looks right, that he thinks the movement of the sensei’s arms aren’t fluid enough because they’re too sharp, like he’s trying to cut through the flow of the universe instead of redirecting it. There’s no way he’ll be able to manipulate time doing it like that; he’ll probably just end up killing himself instead.
“What are you muttering about?” Ryo asks him, around another yawn.
Tegoshi blinks and stops talking for a second. “Dunno,” he replies eventually, and looks sheepish. “What was I saying?”
Ryo snorts and tells him to pay attention to himself before expecting others to do it for him. Tegoshi makes a petulant noise in the back of his throat at the reprimand that means he doesn’t really care, and then curls up closer and is quiet for a while afterwards.
A second later, on the screen, the sensei suddenly drops dead when the universe ultimately deems him and his kung fu technique unworthy.
“Huh,” Ryo breathes when he sees, and turns to look down at Tegoshi. He jostles the younger idol’s head on his shoulder a little. “How’d you know that was going to happen? Last time I checked, you weren’t a kung fu master.”
Tegoshi just blinks and yawns some more. “Mmm?”
Ryo rolls his eyes. “Have you seen this movie already? I bet you have.”
Tegoshi just chuckles sleepily and puts his hand up, waving it lazily in front of them a few times. “Maybe, ne. I can’t remember,” he answers breezily, and for some reason, when he does it just like that, Ryo can’t look away from the thin bones in his wrist or the fine curve of his fingers or the way the overhead lighting gleams off of his short, even fingernails with each meaningless little motion. Ryo thinks he must be really tired if he’s finding something like this so fascinating all of a sudden.
But before he can say anything about it either way, it seems like the next thing he knows, the movie’s credits are scrolling down the screen and they’re landing safe and sound in Honolulu for the upcoming season’s RUSS-K CM filming.
Ryo blinks and looks at his watch; he realizes he must have fallen asleep without knowing it.
From the seat next to him, Tegoshi beams-looking wide awake now- and asks him whether or not he had a nice nap.
~~~~~
4.
“Pheromones,” the narrator explains, as Koyama watches a hive full of drone bees swarming around their queen on his TV before bed, “are a chemical signal that the queen bee uses to convey instructions to her worker bees; through them, she tells each and every one them when she is hot or cold, when she needs to be fed, when she feels threatened, and most importantly, when she is ready to mate. It is one of nature’s most efficient and precise ways of communication between members of the same species.”
“Amazing,” Koyama breathes when he hears, and as he crawls into bed that night, thinks to himself that the natural world is full of mysteries that humans like him will never be able to fully understand.
The next day at work, Koyama arrives just in time to see Sho-kun mysteriously dash into the NewS meeting room with a sweater; he sees it when Sho-kun grins and wordlessly tosses it to Tegoshi before ducking back out again and going back to work.
Tegoshi puts the sweater on and looks happy without making a sound; the moment he does, Koyama laughingly thinks to himself that it’s a lot like pheromones, only cuter.
Three hours later, Koki shows up at their room as well, and nods casually at Tegoshi from the doorway; Tegoshi beams and grabs his bag, waving to his groupmates over his shoulder as he heads out for lunch.
“Everyone is so nice to Tego-nyan,” Koyama marvels out loud to himself, when he watches the two head off arm-in-arm, “they give him everything he needs and he doesn’t even need to ask them first, ne.”
Shige snorts. “Yeah, they do,” he replies, giving Koyama a telling look that may or may not suggest that Koyama is guilty of the exact same thing himself.
Koyama laughs and doesn’t think anything more of it.
At least until the end of the day, when they are all heading down the hallway on their way to the shared ride vans downstairs and they run into Jin in the hallway. When Jin sees them he promptly says something (loudly) to Ryo and Yamapi about how he totally did get invited to join Johnny’s All Star Soccer Team, it’s just that he doesn’t have time for it at all because of filming and stuff.
Ryo’s response is to kick Jin in the shin and tell him to go ahead and lose fifteen pounds before he wants to play all star at anything.
In the meantime, Shige automatically puts an arm around Tegoshi’s shoulder and asks him how his exams went, and if he got his grades back yet. “Isn’t it great that you don’t have to bring your books to the set of your movie now?” he asks.
Massu silently holds open the elevator door for them.
It all makes Koyama laugh nervously to himself and think that it’s really good that they’re all there for each other so automatically like that, without even having to think about it.
It’s just like what he saw on the Discovery channel last night, when the queen was cold, or hungry, or feeling threatened. Everything but the mating is similar, he thinks, and laughs to himself a little about the mating part.
And then Tegoshi’s phone rings.
The youngest member promptly lights up when he looks at the name on the display, and hastens to answer. “Nagase-kun!” he chirps happily, and even though it’s nearly ten o’clock at night, also says, “Of course I’ll come over later tonight, ne! I’ve got some time.”
Koyama gets into the van and sits next to Shige in the backseat while Tegoshi slides in after them to the middle. He lowers his voice a little as he talks, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece of his cell.
But even still, Koyama notices the way his eyes sparkle mysteriously in the dark, with every low-pitched murmur.
Koyama laughs nervously to himself again without knowing why; it prompts Shige to give him a funny look. “What the hell are you laughing about?” his best friend asks.
“I saw something on TV last night,” Koyama begins, feeling oddly uneasy when he does. It makes Shige roll his eyes.
“Shige,” the older member presses anyway, “do you think people have pheromones? Like bees?”
Shige stares at him.
Koyama isn’t sure why he’s so hopeful about it all of a sudden, but he is.
Then Shige sighs. “No,” he answers eventually, “No, I don’t think we have pheromones like that. If we did, we wouldn’t need to communicate to each other with words, right?”
Koyama sighs in relief at Shige’s answer and glances up at Tegoshi in the seat in front of him again, as Tegoshi continues to talk while using words on the phone to their senpai. “Right!” he breathes to Shige, and feels stupid for considering what he was considering for even a moment.
Powerful pheromones like that are things that only happen in the natural world after all.
It’s definitely not the sort of thing that regular humans like them can comprehend.
~~~~~
5.
When Yamapi opens the door to the dressing room after a grueling eighteen hours straight of drama filming one morning and sees an eight foot pair of wings glowing luminous white and golden sunshine out of Tegoshi’s back, he blinks once and then promptly closes the door again.
He thinks that maybe vivid hallucinations are a sign of overwork.
When Yamapi opens the door again a moment later and everything looks exactly as it should (and like it should have the first time, with Tegoshi blinking casually back at him sans feathers), he wonders if he should ask Johnny for a vacation.
Or maybe he should talk to Ueda instead, and ask him what fairies actually look like, and how one would know if he’s seen one or not.
Just out of curiosity.
END
EDITS PLZ.
Universe: JE/ NewS
Theme/Topic: See title
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (with some TegoxUniverse, implied TegoxNagase, and special appearances by Sho, Koki, Nagase, and Douche!Jin)
Warnings/Spoilers: crack, random. Bad science, as I know nothing about bee pheromones. LOL
Word Count: 3,085
Summary: Sometimes, Tegoshi is weird.
Dedication: procreational’s request on my holiday request meme!
A/N: I don’t know, clearly the first thing that came to mind. Also, there is a small reference to Kung Fu Dunk in here, which was just so horrible a movie that it was truly hysterical.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement is meant by this!
1.
The universe has a life force.
It is a living, breathing, feeling thing and sometimes people forget that, sometimes they mistreat it without realizing what they’re doing or they ignore it or worst of all, they blame it for the bad things that happen to them. When they do things like that, the universe (understandably) has no choice but to fight back.
On the other hand, sometimes a few very special people realize that the universe is there, listening, looking for a connection, looking for kindness. All they have to do is believe.
It’s rare but it does happen; the result is a strange phenomenon that simple creatures simply call abnormally good luck. Slightly smarter creatures might call it some sort of strange conspiracy.
One day Shige-one of those smart creatures- is napping in the corner of the dressing room when he wakes up to the sound of Tegoshi babbling to himself by the window, laughing and carrying on a conversation with what Shige can only assume is someone on the other end of his cell phone connection.
“You know, I was thinking that even though you told me it’s going to snow from four today until late tomorrow morning, it would be nice if it all cleared up by Saturday, ne, since I’m going to play soccer on Saturday morning with Nagase-kun and Taichi-kun. Do you think that would be too weird all of a sudden?” Pause. Laugh. “No? Thanks!”
In a fit of annoyance, Shige sits up abruptly at the couch, poised to throw his empty water bottle at Tegoshi and tell him to shut up, because he just finished all of his semester finals this morning and he kind of wants to die.
It is in the split second between when he actually sees Tegoshi and when he launches the water bottle at his head that Shige blinks and realizes Tegoshi isn’t actually talking on the phone.
But before he can ask what the hell Tegoshi is doing or who he thinks he’s talking to, the flying water bottle somehow misses its mark completely, hits the edge of the windowsill, bounces off of the side of it, then the top of it, and slingshots right back at Shige with a surprising amount of force.
It hits him square in the forehead.
Tegoshi blinks. “Eh, Shige that was weird,” he says after a moment, awkwardly. And then laughs a little-once again-to himself.
Shige groans and grabs his iPod out of his backpack and turns the volume up as high as it will go; he tells himself he’s ignoring Tegoshi for the rest of the day.
He falls asleep at exactly 3:59 and ends up missing it when the first flakes of the evening’s heavy snowfall start to drift to the ground outside, promptly at 4:00.
Tegoshi turns back to the windowsill and flashes a quick thumbs up skyward.
On Saturday, it’s 70 degrees outside and sunny.
~~~~~
2.
Massu’s father used to tell him stories at night before bed, about fantastical creatures of ancient times; immortal beings who lived on a different spiritual plane of existence from humans altogether, never feeling the earthly pains of hunger or thirst.
“Eh, no eating?” Massu had asked his father in childish disbelief when he’d heard, and could not imagine anything in this world that would be able to live without something as important as food.
“They exist,” his father had assured him around a small smile, tucking Massu in at the end of the story and ruffling his hair fondly as he did. “But you shouldn’t worry too much, Taka. It’s very rare that a regular person like you or me would get to see such a being in our whole life.”
Massu has always believed in the things that his father tells him, and so if his father says that such creatures exist, then surely they do. Massu believes that they’re out there, even if he’ll probably never see one during all his years on this earth.
But despite these rather fantastical beliefs (and the possibilities they open up), Massu is pretty certain that Tegoshi is nothing but human.
Even though it seems that Tegoshi hasn’t eaten anything for about two days now.
Massu doesn’t know this because he pays particularly special attention to Tegoshi or anything; it just happens to be one of the things that Massu notices because when his bandmates eat, that means he gets their leftovers.
Lately, there have been no Tegoshi leftovers.
And Massu thinks he is kind of worried.
But Tegoshi looks perfectly fine and sounds perfectly fine; even when they’re all sitting together in the dressing room in-between shows and it’s quiet because they’re busy resting, Massu hasn’t heard Tegoshi’s tummy rumble once, even though his own has growled three times over the course of the last hour despite the fact that he’d eaten lunch just a little while ago.
He wonders if maybe he just missed something, like a power bar or an energy drink or a snack from Koyama that Tegoshi had taken when Massu wasn’t looking.
“No,” Koyama murmurs curiously, when Massu quietly asks him if he’s given anyone snacks today. “I forgot to bring cash with me when I left the hotel this morning, ne,” he admits, and looks back at Massu sheepishly.
Massu’s brow furrows, but not for the reasons Koyama thinks.
Koyama looks like he’s about to nudge Shige and ask to borrow some money for the vending machine, because it seems that Massu is hungry again.
But before he can, Massu sits up a little straighter on the couch and suddenly asks out loud, “Tesshi, have you eaten anything since we left Tokyo?”
Silence.
Tegoshi blinks, looking up from his psychology textbook. “Eh?” he glances around at his groupmates, who all seem to be staring at him. “That’s a weird question, Massu,” he replies after a beat, and laughs a little. Maybe nervously.
Massu pouts. “Well, I’m sure I haven’t seen you do it once, ne, and we’ve been together all this time.”
Everyone else looks thoughtful when he makes his declaration, trying to think of a time they saw Tegoshi eat over the past few days, because clearly Massu’s observations have to be wrong since they don’t make any sense. They just need to tell him to convince him, after all.
In the meantime, Tegoshi squirms a little under their collective gazes. “Massu, I know I said in that interview a few months ago that I don’t really have a lot of interest in food, but that doesn’t mean I don’t eat. That’s…that’s impossible, ne? Otherwise I wouldn’t be alive.”
Yamapi’s brow is furrowed, much in the same manner that Massu’s is. “It’s definitely impossible,” he echoes eventually, “but I can’t remember seeing you eat either, ne.”
Shige snorts. “Of course he did. Just yesterday there was lunch and…” he trails off when he suddenly remembers that lunch had come while Tegoshi had been rehearsing his solo; he can’t remember if the younger idol had eaten after that or not, because he hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes. He scowls. At Tegoshi. “You ate yesterday, right?”
Tegoshi blinks.
More silence.
Ryo just gets impatient, because clearly the whole idea of sitting around and debating this is ridiculous. “Oh god, what are you, his moms or something? Of course he ate; if he didn’t wouldn’t he be miserable right now considering that we’ve had three shows in the last two days? Humans need to eat to live, don’t they?”
A general murmur of agreement, as Massu supposes that makes sense.
Tegoshi looks pleased.
Up until Massu digs around in his bag and pushes a package of animal crackers at him anyway. Just in case.
The other members try not to look too interested in the proceedings as Tegoshi grudgingly tears it open and finishes the whole thing in front of them, where they can see.
“There,” Tegoshi says once he’s done, and crumples up the empty bag. “All humans need to eat.”
“Right,” the others reply after he’s finished, and aren’t quite sure why they were so interested in something so random and obvious. They quickly go back to their napping or their reading or their line memorization before the next show is scheduled to begin, because clearly they are just tired.
Tegoshi just sighs in relief and goes to rinse his mouth out.
~~~~~
3.
The in-flight movie to Hawaii is a bad Hong Kong action film that begins with a kid and his sensei, as they attempt to learn some sort of ancient technique called “Altering Universe,” out of a ghetto looking kung fu manual. Ryo blinks blearily at the screen when the sensei says something about the universe being made up of particles of energy that can be assembled, disassembled, frozen, and flash forwarded at will, if only one has the discipline and skill to feel out the flow of the universe’s billions of particles and become one with each and every one of them. “You can freeze time, or turn it backwards,” the sensei says, as he weaves an intricate pattern in the air with his hands and feet.
Ryo yawns and thinks that that’s retarded; in the seat ahead of them he hears it when Shige says something out loud to Koyama along similar lines. “It’s impossible to alter time. Maybe you can change someone’s perception of it, but actually manipulating time is a complete fantasy. Plus if they go backwards in time, doesn’t that just bring up a whole slew of possible paradoxes?”
Ryo yawns again and thinks that Shige’s retarded too, because he takes shit too seriously.
He glances back up at the movie and wonders how this idiot is going to change the universe by spinning around like he’s dancing.
Tegoshi, who is sitting in the seat next to him-the window seat because he asked for it all cute earlier and Ryo eventually gave in- leans his head against Ryo’s shoulder. He’s tiredly watching the movie too, and starts to murmur without thinking because he is only half-awake. Ryo catches bits of what he’s saying here and there, like when he mumbles something about how that he doesn’t think that the way the sensei is doing it looks right, that he thinks the movement of the sensei’s arms aren’t fluid enough because they’re too sharp, like he’s trying to cut through the flow of the universe instead of redirecting it. There’s no way he’ll be able to manipulate time doing it like that; he’ll probably just end up killing himself instead.
“What are you muttering about?” Ryo asks him, around another yawn.
Tegoshi blinks and stops talking for a second. “Dunno,” he replies eventually, and looks sheepish. “What was I saying?”
Ryo snorts and tells him to pay attention to himself before expecting others to do it for him. Tegoshi makes a petulant noise in the back of his throat at the reprimand that means he doesn’t really care, and then curls up closer and is quiet for a while afterwards.
A second later, on the screen, the sensei suddenly drops dead when the universe ultimately deems him and his kung fu technique unworthy.
“Huh,” Ryo breathes when he sees, and turns to look down at Tegoshi. He jostles the younger idol’s head on his shoulder a little. “How’d you know that was going to happen? Last time I checked, you weren’t a kung fu master.”
Tegoshi just blinks and yawns some more. “Mmm?”
Ryo rolls his eyes. “Have you seen this movie already? I bet you have.”
Tegoshi just chuckles sleepily and puts his hand up, waving it lazily in front of them a few times. “Maybe, ne. I can’t remember,” he answers breezily, and for some reason, when he does it just like that, Ryo can’t look away from the thin bones in his wrist or the fine curve of his fingers or the way the overhead lighting gleams off of his short, even fingernails with each meaningless little motion. Ryo thinks he must be really tired if he’s finding something like this so fascinating all of a sudden.
But before he can say anything about it either way, it seems like the next thing he knows, the movie’s credits are scrolling down the screen and they’re landing safe and sound in Honolulu for the upcoming season’s RUSS-K CM filming.
Ryo blinks and looks at his watch; he realizes he must have fallen asleep without knowing it.
From the seat next to him, Tegoshi beams-looking wide awake now- and asks him whether or not he had a nice nap.
~~~~~
4.
“Pheromones,” the narrator explains, as Koyama watches a hive full of drone bees swarming around their queen on his TV before bed, “are a chemical signal that the queen bee uses to convey instructions to her worker bees; through them, she tells each and every one them when she is hot or cold, when she needs to be fed, when she feels threatened, and most importantly, when she is ready to mate. It is one of nature’s most efficient and precise ways of communication between members of the same species.”
“Amazing,” Koyama breathes when he hears, and as he crawls into bed that night, thinks to himself that the natural world is full of mysteries that humans like him will never be able to fully understand.
The next day at work, Koyama arrives just in time to see Sho-kun mysteriously dash into the NewS meeting room with a sweater; he sees it when Sho-kun grins and wordlessly tosses it to Tegoshi before ducking back out again and going back to work.
Tegoshi puts the sweater on and looks happy without making a sound; the moment he does, Koyama laughingly thinks to himself that it’s a lot like pheromones, only cuter.
Three hours later, Koki shows up at their room as well, and nods casually at Tegoshi from the doorway; Tegoshi beams and grabs his bag, waving to his groupmates over his shoulder as he heads out for lunch.
“Everyone is so nice to Tego-nyan,” Koyama marvels out loud to himself, when he watches the two head off arm-in-arm, “they give him everything he needs and he doesn’t even need to ask them first, ne.”
Shige snorts. “Yeah, they do,” he replies, giving Koyama a telling look that may or may not suggest that Koyama is guilty of the exact same thing himself.
Koyama laughs and doesn’t think anything more of it.
At least until the end of the day, when they are all heading down the hallway on their way to the shared ride vans downstairs and they run into Jin in the hallway. When Jin sees them he promptly says something (loudly) to Ryo and Yamapi about how he totally did get invited to join Johnny’s All Star Soccer Team, it’s just that he doesn’t have time for it at all because of filming and stuff.
Ryo’s response is to kick Jin in the shin and tell him to go ahead and lose fifteen pounds before he wants to play all star at anything.
In the meantime, Shige automatically puts an arm around Tegoshi’s shoulder and asks him how his exams went, and if he got his grades back yet. “Isn’t it great that you don’t have to bring your books to the set of your movie now?” he asks.
Massu silently holds open the elevator door for them.
It all makes Koyama laugh nervously to himself and think that it’s really good that they’re all there for each other so automatically like that, without even having to think about it.
It’s just like what he saw on the Discovery channel last night, when the queen was cold, or hungry, or feeling threatened. Everything but the mating is similar, he thinks, and laughs to himself a little about the mating part.
And then Tegoshi’s phone rings.
The youngest member promptly lights up when he looks at the name on the display, and hastens to answer. “Nagase-kun!” he chirps happily, and even though it’s nearly ten o’clock at night, also says, “Of course I’ll come over later tonight, ne! I’ve got some time.”
Koyama gets into the van and sits next to Shige in the backseat while Tegoshi slides in after them to the middle. He lowers his voice a little as he talks, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece of his cell.
But even still, Koyama notices the way his eyes sparkle mysteriously in the dark, with every low-pitched murmur.
Koyama laughs nervously to himself again without knowing why; it prompts Shige to give him a funny look. “What the hell are you laughing about?” his best friend asks.
“I saw something on TV last night,” Koyama begins, feeling oddly uneasy when he does. It makes Shige roll his eyes.
“Shige,” the older member presses anyway, “do you think people have pheromones? Like bees?”
Shige stares at him.
Koyama isn’t sure why he’s so hopeful about it all of a sudden, but he is.
Then Shige sighs. “No,” he answers eventually, “No, I don’t think we have pheromones like that. If we did, we wouldn’t need to communicate to each other with words, right?”
Koyama sighs in relief at Shige’s answer and glances up at Tegoshi in the seat in front of him again, as Tegoshi continues to talk while using words on the phone to their senpai. “Right!” he breathes to Shige, and feels stupid for considering what he was considering for even a moment.
Powerful pheromones like that are things that only happen in the natural world after all.
It’s definitely not the sort of thing that regular humans like them can comprehend.
~~~~~
5.
When Yamapi opens the door to the dressing room after a grueling eighteen hours straight of drama filming one morning and sees an eight foot pair of wings glowing luminous white and golden sunshine out of Tegoshi’s back, he blinks once and then promptly closes the door again.
He thinks that maybe vivid hallucinations are a sign of overwork.
When Yamapi opens the door again a moment later and everything looks exactly as it should (and like it should have the first time, with Tegoshi blinking casually back at him sans feathers), he wonders if he should ask Johnny for a vacation.
Or maybe he should talk to Ueda instead, and ask him what fairies actually look like, and how one would know if he’s seen one or not.
Just out of curiosity.
END
EDITS PLZ.