JE/NEWS/KAT-TUN- "Real Men Wear Pink"
Title: Real Men Wear Pink
Universe: JE/ NewS/KAT-TUN
Theme/Topic: Tegoki? I don’t know what their pairing name is.
Rating: PG
Character/Pairing/s: Tegoshi+Koki, mentions of KAT-TUN members, and random background stampedes of wild Nagase-saurus
Warnings/Spoilers: Stupidity as per usual. Probably some huge timeline screw ups.
Word Count: 2,280
Summary: In 2006, Koki’s image needs some softening and Johnny knows exactly how to get it done.
Dedication: imifumei’s request on my request meme! Sort of.
A/N: Yeah I blatantly stole lines from Ouran. WHAT. At least I’m done. One to go. SOB.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
To a lot of people who just look at him without knowing any better, the Tanaka Koki-kun of 2006 is kind of scary. Well okay maybe not outright scary, but overall, sort of unappealing to the primary target audience of most J-pop factory groups image wise. Maybe it has something to do with the shaved head, or the ability to very dramatically drop kick Taguchi at will from across the room, or the totally gangsta walk and the shiny bling and the fact that in the next few weeks, he’s going to order a custom made diamond studded grill that will feature the letters “JOKER” going across his front teeth in half karat studs just as soon as the money starts rolling in from the current round of commercials he’s doing with Jin for OXY. Whatever it is, it seems that a lot of the market research J&A is doing on the subject suggests that to women over the age of fifty and girls under the age of thirteen, Tanaka Koki is the number one Johnny that they would not like to be left alone with on a late night subway train or in a dark alleyway.
“That’s just how I look!” Koki says when they tell him as such, and informs those assholes in market research that they don’t know anything; old ladies love him (though maybe not as much as they love Kame, but there’s not a lot he can do about that), and if he ever saw a girl under thirteen alone in a dark alleyway he’d totally offer to walk her home if he didn’t have anywhere else to be.
The assholes in market research don’t care; they tell him very flatly that they need to expand his appeal to twelve year old girls too, because presumably, the test panels all suggest that in this day and age, they’re the only ones still crazy enough to actually buy all seven versions of any group’s debut single outside of ARASHI.
“But I like my image,” Koki tries to tell them. “It's like I’m not your typical Johnny’s idol."
“Haha that’s great but we like money,” they say in response, and that’s that.
The fact that they not only like money but in all actuality, love money is pressed upon him again not long afterwards, when Johnny-san points a finger at Koki and says, “YOU,” just before the announcement for Koki’s role alongside Nagase-kun in My Boss My Hero is scheduled to go out, “YOU need a Lovely Item.”
Koki blinks. “What the shit is a Lovely Item?” he asks eventually, because that is not one of the many English words he has ever used in any of his rap lyrics (though it could be one day, because he thinks he could get “item” to rhyme with “system” and he’s had it in his head for a while now to write a stanza that is all about sticking it to the man, whoever the man may be).
But Johnny-san doesn’t answer him; he just smiles and offers Koki some candy from his pocket before telling him to go to back to work; everything will be made clear to him in the morning.
~~~~~
Except in the morning Koki discovers he is no longer a drama starring Nagase Tomoya and Tanaka Koki; instead he sees on the morning news shows that he is now in a drama starring Nagase Tomoya, Tanaka Koki, and Tegoshi Yuya.
By the end of the day’s media blitz, it gets even worse than that; it goes from the drama starring Nagase Tomoya, Tanaka Koki, and Tegoshi Yuya to the drama starring Nagase Tomoya, Tegoshi Yuya, and Tanaka Koki.
Koki does not want a Lovely Item if a Lovely Item means getting third billing in a drama with a senpai he respects and a kouhai who he still kind of resents given the whole random debut fiasco three years ago.
Truth be told, if this is the only other option, he’d rather stay that guy that old women and under aged girls think will grope them on a train.
When he goes to complain about it, Johnny-san just smiles mysteriously from his chair and silently offers Koki more candy.
Koki decides that the next few months are going to suck.
~~~~~
“I was really surprised when I heard I’d be playing this role!” Tegoshi chirps on the first day of rehearsals some weeks later, all smiles and chubby cheeks and nervous wonder as he fidgets in front of his two senpai cutely. “But I’m glad I’ll be allowed to do it with two people who I really respect, ne,” he adds, hopeful and sweet. Koki blinks and tells himself not to look at it directly in the eye while Nagase does; a few seconds later Nagase also does a goofy thing with his face and melts around the edges and grabs Tegoshi by the shoulders as he randomly blurts, “I want to buy you cake and happiness.”
Tegoshi laughs, Koki rolls his eyes, and Nagase breathes through his mouth a little bit for the rest of the day.
~~~~~
When Koki finishes reading through all of the scripts sometime later he is a little bit miffed when he realizes that he has about half as many lines as Tegoshi’s character does and that he’s not scheduled to go on all of the interview appearances for the drama like Tegoshi is.
It might have some effect on how he responds when Tegoshi approaches him one day and asks him if they can rehearse one of their common scenes together because he’s having trouble figuring out what to do with his intonation; Koki looks him over for a moment and then tells him he’s working on something else right now, maybe later.
The kid’s face gets visibly disappointed then, and there’s a bit of a pouty lip, and Koki tears his eyes away and chants not cute, not cute, not cute, over and over again in his head while thinking of mutilated puppies until the urge to apologize and buy presents goes away. He’s hanging on to his gangsta image no matter what anyone says, or how pouty a lip can get.
In the meantime, Nagase has come out of nowhere, wild-eyed and nostrils flaring like a dog when it hears a whistle outside of the human hearing spectrum; when he sees Tegoshi sad-facing in front of Koki he makes a high-pitched whine in the back of his throat and magically produces a lollipop from the inside of his jacket pocket while breathing heavily in an entirely creepy way.
Tegoshi cheers up then, and the two of them go to run lines together instead, while Koki only feels a little bit guilty about it afterwards.
He tells himself it’s for mutilating puppies in his head and nothing more sinister than that at all.
~~~~~
Tegoshi tries again a couple of days later, “Ne, let’s all go eat together after filming!” he suggests, with a hint of that nervous wonder around his eyes that never seems to leave. His fingers fidget with the edge of Sakuranantoka’s uniform sleeve.
Koki stares pointedly at the wall in front of him because the prim tan blazer only makes it worse, makes it downright moe. “Already have plans,” he lies.
Nagase’s nostrils flare again, and for some reason, he pulls Tegoshi down on the couch with him and wraps all of his limbs around the smaller idol, like a giant squid trying to feed on some hapless sardine. “I’ll take you to yakiniku!” he declares hotly, and seems to be fighting the temptation to try and chew on his kouhai’s head right now.
Tegoshi disappears under the giant pile of Nagase arms a few minutes later, but not before Koki hears his hopelessly hopeful, “Maybe next time, Tanaka-kun?” muffled from somewhere against Nagase’s chest.
“Maybe,” Koki blurts, before he knows he’s doing it.
~~~~~
He manages to fend off the rest of the invitations and the giant puppy dog eyes of DOOM for a few more days of filming after that, but once the three of them get put in a photo studio together for the November Myojo shoot one afternoon, all of Koki’s carefully cultivated thug appeal suddenly finds itself in grave danger.
“I am dressed all in white,” Koki feels the need to point out, as the staffers are getting him dressed and ready.
“There’s also some pink, Tanaka-kun!” Tegoshi chirrups helpfully, as his hair is getting done. He sparkles in his button-up, all soft and glowy and well-lit. "I think it suits you!"
Nagase breathes heavily nearby.
“I am still wearing white,” Koki points out again later, to the head photographer, as he’s sitting in front of the backdrop trying to look cool. "And pink."
“Just smile,” the photographer tells him, and when Koki does, but in a sexy way, the photographer sighs and instructs Tegoshi-kun to please climb all over him so they can get on with this.
Tegoshi happily does, and it tickles, and when Koki laughs inadvertently and the camera goes off, everything gangsta about him is suddenly shot to hell because they have that on film. Permanently.
All he can think is that Tegoshi is soft and sweet and warm in his arms.
“Is this okay?” he asks, as the shutter goes off a hundred times in the background.
“Uh,” Koki says, and trails off helplessly.
Nagase hugs them both close against his chest for the splash page shoot after that, and Koki-for reasons unbeknownst to even himself- doesn’t complain too much when the photographer instructs Tegoshi to play around with Koki’s face.
~~~~~
Afterwards, when the shoot wraps up very successfully, Tegoshi, pink-cheeked and exuberant from all the climbing and playing, turns to Koki and declares, “That was the most fun I’ve ever had taking pictures!”
He really seems to mean it too.
Koki groans when he feels a goofy thing start to creep onto his face as he simultaneously melts around the edges; he sighs and gives in to the inexplicable urge a moment later by grabbing Tegoshi’s arm and blurting, “I’m buying you dinner and a movie,” without thinking.
Something about the way Tegoshi smiles back at him makes it hard for him to breathe properly through his nose for the next few minutes, and belatedly, Koki realizes that the power of his Lovely Item is probably more terrifying than his tough guy image ever was, perhaps a hundred times over.
~~~~~
He’s right.
Several months later, Koki comes in third in the KAT-TUN popularity poll; apparently the obaasans and tweens watching My Boss My Hero find Koki’s tough guy act endearing now, and would no longer walk faster or blow rape whistles if they ever met him alone in a dark and abandoned anything.
They are not the only ones who are seeing things a little differently these days.
“This photoshoot is so…cute…” Nakamaru points out one afternoon, wide-eyed, as he flips through the November issue of Myojo. “Ridiculously cute.”
Koki groans. “Shut up, they made me do it!”
Nakamaru grins. “Well, whatever it is, it’s working.”
Koki feels himself start to blush as he hastily grabs the magazine out of his friend’s hands. “Would you put that away?”
Nakamaru just laughs and surrenders it without much protest. “So,” he asks after a beat, conversationally, “did you ever get around to ordering your grill?”
Koki rolls up the magazine and smacks him with it.
But he doesn’t do it very hard, and now everyone knows it’s simply because this is how Koki really is, despite how he looks or talks or mugs for the camera, despite the lyrics he writes or the clothes he wears or the diamond studded grills he hasn’t quite ordered yet but will someday very soon dammit.
Because they know that anyone with a Lovely Item that lovely can’t be a bad guy after all.
~~~~~
Years later, Tegoshi has lost some of the nervous wonder and shy sweetness from before; it’s why he can go and send VTRs to Shounen Club Premium now, ones where he boldly, unabashedly declares, “Koki-kun is, image wise, scary and seems to always be grumpy. But then he sends me text messages that say, “Let’s go eat,” and always pays for me. He’s an incredibly kind senpai and a person who treasures his friends and family more than anyone, even if his outside appearance makes you think different. There’s a huge gap in how he looks and how he is, ne.”
Koki squirms in mortification in his chair across from Taichi when he hears Tegoshi happily say all of this in the video, the words sharply contradicting Koki’s bleach blond spikes and his skull jewelry and the shiny gold jumper he’s wearing today; it’s exactly the sort of image contrast the guys over in the J&A marketing section like to see, and exactly the kind of exposure Koki’s already deeply tarnished gangsta reputation does not need.
Afterwards, on the drive back from the studio, Koki vows he’ll get Tegoshi back for that VTR one way or another, even though he knows all that really means is he’ll call the brat so he can pick him up for dinner and karaoke, pay for it all, and then head home with the lyrics to Miso Soup invariably stuck in his head for weeks afterwards (which just gets him laughed at by his groupmates every time he gets caught unconsciously singing it out loud within hearing range of any of the five of them).
He sighs and can’t believe this is his life now, all courtesy of one little Lovely Item.
Five minutes later, he starts to dial Tegoshi’s number anyway.
END
EDITS?
Universe: JE/ NewS/KAT-TUN
Theme/Topic: Tegoki? I don’t know what their pairing name is.
Rating: PG
Character/Pairing/s: Tegoshi+Koki, mentions of KAT-TUN members, and random background stampedes of wild Nagase-saurus
Warnings/Spoilers: Stupidity as per usual. Probably some huge timeline screw ups.
Word Count: 2,280
Summary: In 2006, Koki’s image needs some softening and Johnny knows exactly how to get it done.
Dedication: imifumei’s request on my request meme! Sort of.
A/N: Yeah I blatantly stole lines from Ouran. WHAT. At least I’m done. One to go. SOB.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
To a lot of people who just look at him without knowing any better, the Tanaka Koki-kun of 2006 is kind of scary. Well okay maybe not outright scary, but overall, sort of unappealing to the primary target audience of most J-pop factory groups image wise. Maybe it has something to do with the shaved head, or the ability to very dramatically drop kick Taguchi at will from across the room, or the totally gangsta walk and the shiny bling and the fact that in the next few weeks, he’s going to order a custom made diamond studded grill that will feature the letters “JOKER” going across his front teeth in half karat studs just as soon as the money starts rolling in from the current round of commercials he’s doing with Jin for OXY. Whatever it is, it seems that a lot of the market research J&A is doing on the subject suggests that to women over the age of fifty and girls under the age of thirteen, Tanaka Koki is the number one Johnny that they would not like to be left alone with on a late night subway train or in a dark alleyway.
“That’s just how I look!” Koki says when they tell him as such, and informs those assholes in market research that they don’t know anything; old ladies love him (though maybe not as much as they love Kame, but there’s not a lot he can do about that), and if he ever saw a girl under thirteen alone in a dark alleyway he’d totally offer to walk her home if he didn’t have anywhere else to be.
The assholes in market research don’t care; they tell him very flatly that they need to expand his appeal to twelve year old girls too, because presumably, the test panels all suggest that in this day and age, they’re the only ones still crazy enough to actually buy all seven versions of any group’s debut single outside of ARASHI.
“But I like my image,” Koki tries to tell them. “It's like I’m not your typical Johnny’s idol."
“Haha that’s great but we like money,” they say in response, and that’s that.
The fact that they not only like money but in all actuality, love money is pressed upon him again not long afterwards, when Johnny-san points a finger at Koki and says, “YOU,” just before the announcement for Koki’s role alongside Nagase-kun in My Boss My Hero is scheduled to go out, “YOU need a Lovely Item.”
Koki blinks. “What the shit is a Lovely Item?” he asks eventually, because that is not one of the many English words he has ever used in any of his rap lyrics (though it could be one day, because he thinks he could get “item” to rhyme with “system” and he’s had it in his head for a while now to write a stanza that is all about sticking it to the man, whoever the man may be).
But Johnny-san doesn’t answer him; he just smiles and offers Koki some candy from his pocket before telling him to go to back to work; everything will be made clear to him in the morning.
~~~~~
Except in the morning Koki discovers he is no longer a drama starring Nagase Tomoya and Tanaka Koki; instead he sees on the morning news shows that he is now in a drama starring Nagase Tomoya, Tanaka Koki, and Tegoshi Yuya.
By the end of the day’s media blitz, it gets even worse than that; it goes from the drama starring Nagase Tomoya, Tanaka Koki, and Tegoshi Yuya to the drama starring Nagase Tomoya, Tegoshi Yuya, and Tanaka Koki.
Koki does not want a Lovely Item if a Lovely Item means getting third billing in a drama with a senpai he respects and a kouhai who he still kind of resents given the whole random debut fiasco three years ago.
Truth be told, if this is the only other option, he’d rather stay that guy that old women and under aged girls think will grope them on a train.
When he goes to complain about it, Johnny-san just smiles mysteriously from his chair and silently offers Koki more candy.
Koki decides that the next few months are going to suck.
~~~~~
“I was really surprised when I heard I’d be playing this role!” Tegoshi chirps on the first day of rehearsals some weeks later, all smiles and chubby cheeks and nervous wonder as he fidgets in front of his two senpai cutely. “But I’m glad I’ll be allowed to do it with two people who I really respect, ne,” he adds, hopeful and sweet. Koki blinks and tells himself not to look at it directly in the eye while Nagase does; a few seconds later Nagase also does a goofy thing with his face and melts around the edges and grabs Tegoshi by the shoulders as he randomly blurts, “I want to buy you cake and happiness.”
Tegoshi laughs, Koki rolls his eyes, and Nagase breathes through his mouth a little bit for the rest of the day.
~~~~~
When Koki finishes reading through all of the scripts sometime later he is a little bit miffed when he realizes that he has about half as many lines as Tegoshi’s character does and that he’s not scheduled to go on all of the interview appearances for the drama like Tegoshi is.
It might have some effect on how he responds when Tegoshi approaches him one day and asks him if they can rehearse one of their common scenes together because he’s having trouble figuring out what to do with his intonation; Koki looks him over for a moment and then tells him he’s working on something else right now, maybe later.
The kid’s face gets visibly disappointed then, and there’s a bit of a pouty lip, and Koki tears his eyes away and chants not cute, not cute, not cute, over and over again in his head while thinking of mutilated puppies until the urge to apologize and buy presents goes away. He’s hanging on to his gangsta image no matter what anyone says, or how pouty a lip can get.
In the meantime, Nagase has come out of nowhere, wild-eyed and nostrils flaring like a dog when it hears a whistle outside of the human hearing spectrum; when he sees Tegoshi sad-facing in front of Koki he makes a high-pitched whine in the back of his throat and magically produces a lollipop from the inside of his jacket pocket while breathing heavily in an entirely creepy way.
Tegoshi cheers up then, and the two of them go to run lines together instead, while Koki only feels a little bit guilty about it afterwards.
He tells himself it’s for mutilating puppies in his head and nothing more sinister than that at all.
~~~~~
Tegoshi tries again a couple of days later, “Ne, let’s all go eat together after filming!” he suggests, with a hint of that nervous wonder around his eyes that never seems to leave. His fingers fidget with the edge of Sakuranantoka’s uniform sleeve.
Koki stares pointedly at the wall in front of him because the prim tan blazer only makes it worse, makes it downright moe. “Already have plans,” he lies.
Nagase’s nostrils flare again, and for some reason, he pulls Tegoshi down on the couch with him and wraps all of his limbs around the smaller idol, like a giant squid trying to feed on some hapless sardine. “I’ll take you to yakiniku!” he declares hotly, and seems to be fighting the temptation to try and chew on his kouhai’s head right now.
Tegoshi disappears under the giant pile of Nagase arms a few minutes later, but not before Koki hears his hopelessly hopeful, “Maybe next time, Tanaka-kun?” muffled from somewhere against Nagase’s chest.
“Maybe,” Koki blurts, before he knows he’s doing it.
~~~~~
He manages to fend off the rest of the invitations and the giant puppy dog eyes of DOOM for a few more days of filming after that, but once the three of them get put in a photo studio together for the November Myojo shoot one afternoon, all of Koki’s carefully cultivated thug appeal suddenly finds itself in grave danger.
“I am dressed all in white,” Koki feels the need to point out, as the staffers are getting him dressed and ready.
“There’s also some pink, Tanaka-kun!” Tegoshi chirrups helpfully, as his hair is getting done. He sparkles in his button-up, all soft and glowy and well-lit. "I think it suits you!"
Nagase breathes heavily nearby.
“I am still wearing white,” Koki points out again later, to the head photographer, as he’s sitting in front of the backdrop trying to look cool. "And pink."
“Just smile,” the photographer tells him, and when Koki does, but in a sexy way, the photographer sighs and instructs Tegoshi-kun to please climb all over him so they can get on with this.
Tegoshi happily does, and it tickles, and when Koki laughs inadvertently and the camera goes off, everything gangsta about him is suddenly shot to hell because they have that on film. Permanently.
All he can think is that Tegoshi is soft and sweet and warm in his arms.
“Is this okay?” he asks, as the shutter goes off a hundred times in the background.
“Uh,” Koki says, and trails off helplessly.
Nagase hugs them both close against his chest for the splash page shoot after that, and Koki-for reasons unbeknownst to even himself- doesn’t complain too much when the photographer instructs Tegoshi to play around with Koki’s face.
~~~~~
Afterwards, when the shoot wraps up very successfully, Tegoshi, pink-cheeked and exuberant from all the climbing and playing, turns to Koki and declares, “That was the most fun I’ve ever had taking pictures!”
He really seems to mean it too.
Koki groans when he feels a goofy thing start to creep onto his face as he simultaneously melts around the edges; he sighs and gives in to the inexplicable urge a moment later by grabbing Tegoshi’s arm and blurting, “I’m buying you dinner and a movie,” without thinking.
Something about the way Tegoshi smiles back at him makes it hard for him to breathe properly through his nose for the next few minutes, and belatedly, Koki realizes that the power of his Lovely Item is probably more terrifying than his tough guy image ever was, perhaps a hundred times over.
~~~~~
He’s right.
Several months later, Koki comes in third in the KAT-TUN popularity poll; apparently the obaasans and tweens watching My Boss My Hero find Koki’s tough guy act endearing now, and would no longer walk faster or blow rape whistles if they ever met him alone in a dark and abandoned anything.
They are not the only ones who are seeing things a little differently these days.
“This photoshoot is so…cute…” Nakamaru points out one afternoon, wide-eyed, as he flips through the November issue of Myojo. “Ridiculously cute.”
Koki groans. “Shut up, they made me do it!”
Nakamaru grins. “Well, whatever it is, it’s working.”
Koki feels himself start to blush as he hastily grabs the magazine out of his friend’s hands. “Would you put that away?”
Nakamaru just laughs and surrenders it without much protest. “So,” he asks after a beat, conversationally, “did you ever get around to ordering your grill?”
Koki rolls up the magazine and smacks him with it.
But he doesn’t do it very hard, and now everyone knows it’s simply because this is how Koki really is, despite how he looks or talks or mugs for the camera, despite the lyrics he writes or the clothes he wears or the diamond studded grills he hasn’t quite ordered yet but will someday very soon dammit.
Because they know that anyone with a Lovely Item that lovely can’t be a bad guy after all.
~~~~~
Years later, Tegoshi has lost some of the nervous wonder and shy sweetness from before; it’s why he can go and send VTRs to Shounen Club Premium now, ones where he boldly, unabashedly declares, “Koki-kun is, image wise, scary and seems to always be grumpy. But then he sends me text messages that say, “Let’s go eat,” and always pays for me. He’s an incredibly kind senpai and a person who treasures his friends and family more than anyone, even if his outside appearance makes you think different. There’s a huge gap in how he looks and how he is, ne.”
Koki squirms in mortification in his chair across from Taichi when he hears Tegoshi happily say all of this in the video, the words sharply contradicting Koki’s bleach blond spikes and his skull jewelry and the shiny gold jumper he’s wearing today; it’s exactly the sort of image contrast the guys over in the J&A marketing section like to see, and exactly the kind of exposure Koki’s already deeply tarnished gangsta reputation does not need.
Afterwards, on the drive back from the studio, Koki vows he’ll get Tegoshi back for that VTR one way or another, even though he knows all that really means is he’ll call the brat so he can pick him up for dinner and karaoke, pay for it all, and then head home with the lyrics to Miso Soup invariably stuck in his head for weeks afterwards (which just gets him laughed at by his groupmates every time he gets caught unconsciously singing it out loud within hearing range of any of the five of them).
He sighs and can’t believe this is his life now, all courtesy of one little Lovely Item.
Five minutes later, he starts to dial Tegoshi’s number anyway.
END
EDITS?