JE/NEWS+SPN- "The Bro Code"
Title: The Bro Code
Universe: NEWS+SPN ( JE+SPN AU)
Theme/Topic: Angel!Pi fic
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NEWS (cameo by Jin)
Warnings/Spoilers: Weirdness?
Word Count: 3,830
Summary: Ryo tries to teach P the Bro Code.
Dedication: mousapelli’s request fic for donating to my cause!
A/N: A companion piece to “All’s Chaos on the Eastern Front” and “Live” that is also supposed to be funny and will hopefully turn out better in that respect than “Live” did.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended. I make zero money from any of this. Articles of The Bro Code taken with great respect from “The Bro Code” by Barney Stinson with Matt Kuhn.
1. Article I: Bros Before Ho’s
He learns that her name is Ginny and that she is an ALT for something he doesn’t know anything about called JET. Her breasts are enormous and unwieldy and P is confused as to how they seem to keep appearing in his space and brushing up against him, even when he does his best to give her enough room to maneuver around him.
She smiles, says something in-between giggles that even he-who knows all the languages of man-has trouble interpreting amidst the pounding bass of the club and the high-pitched timbre of her laughter. Her breasts do that thing against his arm again, and she asks him-in broken, ungrammatical Japanese- what he thinks about foreign girls.
He furrows his brow and takes a step backwards before answering that he thinks about them no differently than he thinks about local girls. She seems buoyed by that for whatever reason; her chest mysteriously insinuates itself in the space along his left arm for a third time as she orders another drink from the bartender, who keeps smirking at P though P isn’t sure why.
A little further down the bar, Ryo nurses vodka mixed with something fruity and tries to look interested in Ginny’s over-enthusiastic friend’s dissertation on the benefits of full foreign language emersion. Ryo catches P looking at him and scowls, making a waving motion at P that either means “What are you doing?” or “Something smells.”
Ryo is very confusing tonight. He had also said something about being P’s wingman earlier as well, but P is still trying to determine what this has to do with his wings at all, if anything. It is true that his Grace is no longer at its full glory, but it is not so diminished that he needs help with maintaining his wings.
Ginny says, “Let’s do body shots,” into his ear next, and when he hears that, P tears his eyes away from Ryo’s scowl and turns back to look at her, bewildered.
“You want me to hit you?” he asks in English, and she just bursts out laughing inexplicably, snorting into his face for a moment before leaning in close to him, as if preparing to share a great and terrible secret.
“Yeah,” she whispers, eyebrows doing something esoteric P can’t quite translate, “I’d like you to hit me tonight. If you know what I mean.”
P has no desire to punch her at all. He isn’t sure how to tell her this.
Luckily, it is at about that moment that Jin returns from the dance floor, grabs P’s untouched drink, and downs the entirety of it in one go. “Awesome!” he breathes, sweaty and exuberant, cheeks flushed with alcohol and excitement. “These ALTs are enormous sluts!”
He does a few swively, suggestive things with his hips to emphasize, while making eyes at Ginny.
Then he promptly passes out cold right onto the floor.
“Your friend is fun!” Ginny giggles, looking Jin up and down as he makes happy noises on the ground beside P’s barstool. “He can join us, if you’re into that.” She does that thing with her eyebrows again, and follows through with something involving her tongue. This is clearly not a language P is versed in at all.
“I’m sorry, but I have to take him home,” P intones politely, after a beat.
Ginny blinks. “What? But… we’re having so much fun. There’s so much fun to be had still.”
P looks at her solemnly, and invokes one of the most important lessons about social interaction (according to Ryo) that Ryo has ever seen fit to teach him. “I have been told to always honor Bros before Ho’s,” he tells a disappointed Ginny, tone very serious. “And as you are what Ryo called a ho earlier, and Jin has declared himself my Bro on more than one occasion, I believe this means that I need to tend to him immediately.” He imagines that as a universally accepted code of conduct, she will have to understand (and capitulate) when he says it like that.
So he is justifiably confused when her response is not very understanding at all; she just kind of gapes at him for a moment before proceeding to grab her glass and throw the rest of her drink in his face. Then she marches down the bar, grabs her friend from the middle of her conversation with Ryo, and leaves in a very obvious huff.
Ryo looks more than a little bit relieved to be spared, and P furrows his brow in confusion at that as well-Ryo is very, very confusing tonight- before bending to pick Jin off the ground.
Later, when P is dripping Long Island Iced Tea all over the pavement and carrying a near-comatose Jin out of the club over his shoulder like he weighs nothing, he asks Ryo if he remembered the code wrong.
Ryo’s answer is to burst out laughing and say, “Article IV, man,” even though he knows full well they’ve only covered the first two articles so far in their lessons. He might be a little bit drunk.
Then Jin throws up on P’s shoes and Ryo just laughs harder.
P doesn’t think he will ever understand humans, not in a billion years.
~~~~~
2. Article II: A Bro is Always Entitled to Do Something Stupid, as Long as the Rest of His Bros are All Doing it
The stylist says, “What about a perm? Those are in, now, aren’t they?” one day to P, after Johnny had recommended he go to the salon for a seasonal image change.
P does not know what a perm is, but he does know that it is the stylist’s job to know what is supposedly quote-un-quote “in,” at any one given time. So he blinks and nods and says, “Sure.”
It is not one of his better decisions.
A few weeks later, he feels somewhat buoyed when he walks into the dressing room and sees his groupmates all valiantly sporting their own versions of Pi’s poofy and crimped hairstyle (except for Massu, whose hair just doesn’t do that, apparently, according to Shige and his thwarted curling iron).
“Thank you,” is all he says, and feels oddly touched.
Ryo scowls and answers, “Article II, asshole.”
~~~~~
3. Article IV: A Bro Never Divulges the Existence of the Bro Code to a Woman
“Is something wrong, leader?” Koyama asks one day, when he finds P sitting on the couch flipping through a magazine on dog breeds.
P frowns. “Rina has said that I should have a pet. The Bro Code discourages cats and states that a dog must come up to at least one’s knee height once fully grown. But these magazines say that smaller animals are better suited for apartment living because they’re less likely to destroy things. This is confusing.”
Koyama stares at him. “Bro Code?” he asks after a beat. He looks very, very lost. “What’s The Bro Code?”
~~~~~
4. Article V: Whether He Cares About Sports or Not, a Bro Cares About Sports
“Did your team just score a touchdown?” P asks politely, when the people on the TV screen start celebrating and hugging each other enthusiastically on the field.
Tegoshi pauses in his mid-soccer game excitement to blink at Pi in confusion. “Touchdown?”
The game replays the last score by the men wearing the green uniforms and once the ball goes into the net, P puts up both arms like posts on either side of his head, as Jin had taught him to. “Touchdown.”
“Uh…” Tegoshi answers, like he isn’t sure what to say.
P wonders if he, like Koyama, hasn’t been informed about the particulars of the Bro Code. If so, he is too kind to rebuke the youngest member either way. “Go team,” P says perfunctorily, before turning around and walking away.
To his credit, Tegoshi doesn’t burst out laughing until P is well out of sight.
~~~~~
5. Article XXVIII: A Bro Will, in a Timely Manner, Alert his Bro to the Existence of a Girl Fight
Shige screams when P suddenly materializes beside him in the middle of all the chaos that is currently his afternoon. “Naargh!” Shige manages, as the demon he’s wrestling with shoves his back into a tree. “Little help here?”
P obliges him by reaching out and very calmly burning the offending demon out of its host. Shige slumps to the ground in relief.
“Wow, lucky,” the younger idol breathes after a minute, groaning as he stands and rubbing at his sore (and undoubtedly bruised) backside. He eyes P in confusion. “Not that I’m complaining or anything, but I thought you were busy filming today?”
P looks very solemn. “There are currently three housewives at the Mitsuwa fighting over discount cod. It is very heated,” he reports.
Shige stares at him. “Um, okay.”
That said, P nods once, stiffly, before turning around and disappearing in a rush of feathers.
“Okay, what?” Shige mutters, and thinks that he is having a very weird day. Weirder than normal.
He gets a text message five minutes later from Koyama that just confirms it. It reads:
“Shige, leader just popped in on me in the shower and told me that there are some obaasans fighting over discount cod at the Mitsuwa. Do you think this means he wants to eat cod?”
Shige decides to ignore the message.
~~~~~
6. Article XLIX: When Asked, "Do you need some help?" A Bro Shall Automatically Respond, "I Got It," Whether or Not He's Actually Got It
“Leader, do you need help with anything?”
P doesn’t appear to hear Koyama’s question at first, the angel staring straight ahead with his brow furrowed severely, as if everything currently laid out in front of his eyes has somehow, viscerally offended him just by being there.
But then, P eventually turns to the older idol and declares, politely, “I got it,” before going back to his epic staring match of doom without another word.
Koyama carefully sidles back to the others by the counter and looks helpless. “He says he’s got it,” the oldest reports with a shrug. Ryo groans and Shige slaps a hand to his forehead.
“This is your fault,” the two of them accuse each other, at exactly the same time.
“What?” Shige barks. “How is this my fault?”
Ryo glares. “You told him he could only have one.”
Shige flails his arms. “He’ll get fat otherwise!” Pause. “And you’re the one teaching him that stupid code!”
Ryo looks indignant. “Yeah, so he won’t end up like you!”
The two of them glare at each other some more.
“How long has it been?” Tegoshi whispers after a beat, as the five of them skulk around the automatic doors like creepers as they wait for the angel.
“Fifteen minutes,” Shige reports, tiredly.
NEWS sighs.
In the meantime, Yamapi stands in front of the enormous candy display at Lawson’s-there are so, so many varieties- and very seriously debates the merits of peanuts versus nougat.
~~~~~
7. Article LXIII: A Bro Will Make Any and All Efforts to Provide his Bro With Protection
As his Grace fades with each passing day, all of humanity’s weaknesses and tiny frailties seem to want to jumble and collide into P’s diminishing form all at the same time, in a rush of new and strange and oftentimes disagreeable experiences. He learns that beyond just the physical pains and aches and needs his body requires there are the emotional things as well, the parts of being mortal that involve dealing with his own feelings as they threaten to overwhelm him from the inside out. Koyama’s advice had been to talk about how he feels, to try and explain it so that the others could teach him about them.
But he- a creature used to communicating fully and at all levels with nothing more than a thought- has no idea how to convey the words of these newfound emotions properly. Most of the time, he honestly has no idea where to begin.
So as he sits beside Massu’s hospital bed after everything is said and done, after the knife wounds are stitched up and the bleeding has stopped, he wonders how he can possibly let Massu know the depth of his guilt and the strength of his gratitude for what he has done today, on the angel’s behalf at great risk to himself.
He doesn’t know what to say.
“Don’t say anything,” Ryo shrugs, when P asks him what he should do. Ryo deftly shoves a cup of hot coffee into the angel’s hands. “Sometimes there aren’t words.”
P frowns-humans are so confusing, so contradictory-and sips his coffee obediently. Ryo squeezes his shoulder and says he’ll be with the rest of the guys in the lobby if he needs anything. P nods and hears him close the door behind him on the way out. Left with just himself and Massu, the angel studies the coffee cup he is holding, thinks about the feeling of Ryo’s hand on his shoulder, and puzzles over the words that won’t come.
Massu’s eyes flutter open some hours later, and P promptly forgets his current bout of drowsiness (as well as his general perturbed state at his new need for sleep in general).
Instead, the angel’s face becomes relieved when he sees Massu blinking back at him, bleary but awake. Alive.
“You okay?” Massu asks him after a moment, voice raspy and startlingly loud in the hospital room.
P nods, and again, doesn’t know what to say in the face of something like that.
But then he notices the empty coffee cup sitting next to the table lamp and remembers Ryo, remembers that sometimes there aren’t the right words and there never will be. Sometimes there are only little, wordless gestures that mean the world but will-more often than not- get lost on the sidelines.
Looking resolute, P slowly makes a fist with his right hand and raises it, letting it hover in the air between him and Massu. “Hit this,” he instructs like he's seen on TV, and hopes it is enough to say all the words he doesn’t know how to properly communicate.
Massu chuckles and obediently reaches out to bump his first against P’s.
P knows it isn’t exactly “I’m sorry, I’ll be more careful, thank you, please be okay, I’d do the same for you,” but from the way Massu smiles at him, he supposes that his groupmate knows what he means anyway.
~~~~~
8. Article XCIX: A Bro Never Asks for Directions When Lost
Shige screams as a speeding hover-car screeches around the corner above him, brushing over the top of his head and nearly taking it off. “I don’t think this is right!” he shouts at P and the others, as they stand on the roof of some high-rise building apparently made entirely of glass.
P frowns. “I might have jumped too far.”
“You think?!” Ryo shouts, while Koyama and Massu cling to him on either side and do their resolute best to not look down.
P looks around a little bit, and wipes absently at the blood trickling from his nose with the back of his hand. He tries to keep his legs under him, to tell himself that he can do this, just one more jump as his energy wanes. “This only looks about a hundred years into the future, by my estimation,” he reports. “I will fix this.”
“This isn’t something you estimate, leader!” Koyama chokes out, eyes still closed tightly as he white-knuckles Ryo’s hand in both of his.
P frowns. “You don’t have to be afraid. I’ll get us back to the correct time.”
“He means we’re lost, so you can’t just guess!” Shige squawks. “What if you jump too far in the other direction this time?!”
Tegoshi blinks and squints into the distance. “Maybe we should ask somebody what year it is just to make sure.”
P glares. “It’s not necessary. I will get us back.”
Tegoshi shrugs. “If leader says so.”
“Don’t encourage him!” Shige shrieks, and has to dodge another beeping, angry hover-car driver.
P frowns and shakes himself off before striding forward and grabbing the rest of his groupmates.
They disappear in a flash of light.
Only to wake up knee-deep in primordial ooze.
Yamapi blinks and collapses into a heap on the jungle floor. “Perhaps,” he begins, before his eyes start to roll back into his head and blood starts dribbling out of his nose in earnest now, “we are a little bit lost.”
He passes out just in time to hear Massu’s terrified cry of, “DINOSAUR!”
~~~~~
9. Article CVII: A Bro Never Leaves Another Bro Hanging
Shige stares at P.
P stares back, amiably.
Shige fidgets. “Um. You should probably go get help,” he poses after a minute, in what he hopes is his calm, logical voice.
P blinks back at him, full of a solemn, incredibly grave determination. “I won’t leave you, Shige,” he vows, and the words are weighty and solid in the prophet’s ears.
Shige thinks for a moment. Sighs. “That’s a really nice sentiment, Yamashita-kun,” he allows, because it is. He takes a couple of deep breaths and counts backwards from ten, slowly.
P nods, oblivious to his groupmate’s waning patience. “You would do the same for me.”
“Except I would go to get you help,” Shige points out. “I would really, really go to get you help. Like, right away.”
P looks up at the dangling prophet and frowns. “But I’m not to leave you hanging.”
Shige, tied from toes to chin in rope and strung upside-down precariously from the ceiling manages-very admirably-not to scream at P when he hears the former angel’s very logical answer. All of the blood is rushing to his head and making it difficult to form words that aren’t four-lettered in nature.
“Phone?” Shige manages, after a beat, trying to go about this in a sensible manner. “Can you please call one of the others and maybe see if Tegoshi can blink me down from here?”
P tilts his head left, before reaching into his pocket and procuring the mangled, slightly smoking remains of what Shige assumes is the other idol’s cell phone, post-demon fight.
“Great,” Shige groans, and has no idea why P won’t just go.
They continue to just kind of look at each other for a while. Shige starts counting backwards from 1,000 this time, in prime numbers.
After a minute, “If I could still fly, I would pull you down myself without hesitation,” P offers into the silent warehouse, helpfully.
Shige makes some strangled noises in the back of his throat and hopes the others find them soon.
~~~~~
10. Article CXLVII: If a Bro Sees Another Bro Get into a Fight, He Immediately has His Bro's Back
Ryo chuckles when Yamapi hisses and pulls his hand back from under the burn of antiseptic. “Stop being such a wuss,” Ryo reprimands him, thought not unkindly.
“I think that’s causing more harm than help,” P murmurs back, knuckles raw and scraped from tonight’s hunt.
Around him, the other members make sympathetic noises, Massu particularly when he has to bite on a stray piece of wood as Tegoshi stitches the four-inch gash on the inside of his knee shut.
P reluctantly gives his hand back to Ryo and moves to examine the three long cuts along his forearm, shallow but still glistening blood from claws that before, would never have been able to touch him and live through the burn of his holy light.
“Sucks, don’t it?” Ryo asks, when he catches P staring his own mortality in the face. He sounds guilty and awkward; P thinks this is another lesson in human words, in words spoken when there aren’t adequate ways of conveying the feelings behind them. “Gotta play by the same rules us regular people do now.”
“I wouldn’t call us regular people,” P answers, softly. He winces again, when Ryo’s antiseptic-covered cotton ball makes another round along his battered arm.
Ryo snorts. “Yeah, well. Either way, you’re in the same club as us humans now, right? That’s gotta be bad, considering.”
P furrows his brow. “No. Not bad.” He frowns, looking for how to put this so that it will make sense, so that it will convey what he feels. “I think it’s amazing,” he offers, after a beat, “that you would go through this over and over again so willingly, even knowing how much it will pain you all later.”
The other members pause at that, to look sheepish and embarrassed by P’s honesty.
P reaches out and runs his free hand over the angry, purple bruise on Ryo’s shoulder, the swollen, tender flesh along his back and sides from where he’d impacted the walls of the caves they’d hunted their quarry to tonight. “You went through this for me, tonight,” he murmurs, voice low. “It will cost you weeks of suffering- you knew it would- but you did it anyway. If this is the company I have with me, then I’m glad to be in this club with you now.” Pause. “You are all my…Bros.”
He looks around at the others with wide brown eyes, their humanity- the humanity he has chosen over everything, that he is learning to live by these days- feeling like it is all a great and wonderful mystery that he is only just beginning to unlock.
Ryo coughs after a moment, forcing himself to look away from his friend. “Yeah, well, of course I did it, stupid. The cost of not doing it is worse for everyone in the long run, right?”
P feels himself smile. “What makes you say that?”
Ryo chuckles and flicks the first-aid kit closed. “Because of Article 147, dude,” he grunts hastily, and P doesn’t know much about humans yet, but he knows enough about Ryo to know that he is lying.
The former angel’s eyes crinkle in the corners. “Me too,” he says, after he wades through all the bravado and false words and embarrassed fidgeting to find the meaning underneath. “I feel the same.”
Ryo makes a mortified expression at the confession, the others laugh out loud at them both, and P decides that he would endure a thousand cotton balls covered in antiseptic, a thousand pulled hamstrings, a thousand cracked ribs and bruised knuckles and bleeding gashes for this, for the comfort of knowing that should he choose at any one moment to look over his shoulder, there will be five other people standing there to watch his back.
“Get that smarmy look off your face,” Ryo mutters after a moment, and flicks a used cotton ball at P, hitting him right between the eyes.
P laughs then, and even if it hurts to do it right now, it somehow feels wonderful and perfect all at the same time.
He thinks his Bros are the best.
END
Whew! This SHOULD be the end of the spam for a while. Theoretically. I still owe one more donation thank-you fic. XD
Universe: NEWS+SPN ( JE+SPN AU)
Theme/Topic: Angel!Pi fic
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NEWS (cameo by Jin)
Warnings/Spoilers: Weirdness?
Word Count: 3,830
Summary: Ryo tries to teach P the Bro Code.
Dedication: mousapelli’s request fic for donating to my cause!
A/N: A companion piece to “All’s Chaos on the Eastern Front” and “Live” that is also supposed to be funny and will hopefully turn out better in that respect than “Live” did.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended. I make zero money from any of this. Articles of The Bro Code taken with great respect from “The Bro Code” by Barney Stinson with Matt Kuhn.
1. Article I: Bros Before Ho’s
He learns that her name is Ginny and that she is an ALT for something he doesn’t know anything about called JET. Her breasts are enormous and unwieldy and P is confused as to how they seem to keep appearing in his space and brushing up against him, even when he does his best to give her enough room to maneuver around him.
She smiles, says something in-between giggles that even he-who knows all the languages of man-has trouble interpreting amidst the pounding bass of the club and the high-pitched timbre of her laughter. Her breasts do that thing against his arm again, and she asks him-in broken, ungrammatical Japanese- what he thinks about foreign girls.
He furrows his brow and takes a step backwards before answering that he thinks about them no differently than he thinks about local girls. She seems buoyed by that for whatever reason; her chest mysteriously insinuates itself in the space along his left arm for a third time as she orders another drink from the bartender, who keeps smirking at P though P isn’t sure why.
A little further down the bar, Ryo nurses vodka mixed with something fruity and tries to look interested in Ginny’s over-enthusiastic friend’s dissertation on the benefits of full foreign language emersion. Ryo catches P looking at him and scowls, making a waving motion at P that either means “What are you doing?” or “Something smells.”
Ryo is very confusing tonight. He had also said something about being P’s wingman earlier as well, but P is still trying to determine what this has to do with his wings at all, if anything. It is true that his Grace is no longer at its full glory, but it is not so diminished that he needs help with maintaining his wings.
Ginny says, “Let’s do body shots,” into his ear next, and when he hears that, P tears his eyes away from Ryo’s scowl and turns back to look at her, bewildered.
“You want me to hit you?” he asks in English, and she just bursts out laughing inexplicably, snorting into his face for a moment before leaning in close to him, as if preparing to share a great and terrible secret.
“Yeah,” she whispers, eyebrows doing something esoteric P can’t quite translate, “I’d like you to hit me tonight. If you know what I mean.”
P has no desire to punch her at all. He isn’t sure how to tell her this.
Luckily, it is at about that moment that Jin returns from the dance floor, grabs P’s untouched drink, and downs the entirety of it in one go. “Awesome!” he breathes, sweaty and exuberant, cheeks flushed with alcohol and excitement. “These ALTs are enormous sluts!”
He does a few swively, suggestive things with his hips to emphasize, while making eyes at Ginny.
Then he promptly passes out cold right onto the floor.
“Your friend is fun!” Ginny giggles, looking Jin up and down as he makes happy noises on the ground beside P’s barstool. “He can join us, if you’re into that.” She does that thing with her eyebrows again, and follows through with something involving her tongue. This is clearly not a language P is versed in at all.
“I’m sorry, but I have to take him home,” P intones politely, after a beat.
Ginny blinks. “What? But… we’re having so much fun. There’s so much fun to be had still.”
P looks at her solemnly, and invokes one of the most important lessons about social interaction (according to Ryo) that Ryo has ever seen fit to teach him. “I have been told to always honor Bros before Ho’s,” he tells a disappointed Ginny, tone very serious. “And as you are what Ryo called a ho earlier, and Jin has declared himself my Bro on more than one occasion, I believe this means that I need to tend to him immediately.” He imagines that as a universally accepted code of conduct, she will have to understand (and capitulate) when he says it like that.
So he is justifiably confused when her response is not very understanding at all; she just kind of gapes at him for a moment before proceeding to grab her glass and throw the rest of her drink in his face. Then she marches down the bar, grabs her friend from the middle of her conversation with Ryo, and leaves in a very obvious huff.
Ryo looks more than a little bit relieved to be spared, and P furrows his brow in confusion at that as well-Ryo is very, very confusing tonight- before bending to pick Jin off the ground.
Later, when P is dripping Long Island Iced Tea all over the pavement and carrying a near-comatose Jin out of the club over his shoulder like he weighs nothing, he asks Ryo if he remembered the code wrong.
Ryo’s answer is to burst out laughing and say, “Article IV, man,” even though he knows full well they’ve only covered the first two articles so far in their lessons. He might be a little bit drunk.
Then Jin throws up on P’s shoes and Ryo just laughs harder.
P doesn’t think he will ever understand humans, not in a billion years.
~~~~~
2. Article II: A Bro is Always Entitled to Do Something Stupid, as Long as the Rest of His Bros are All Doing it
The stylist says, “What about a perm? Those are in, now, aren’t they?” one day to P, after Johnny had recommended he go to the salon for a seasonal image change.
P does not know what a perm is, but he does know that it is the stylist’s job to know what is supposedly quote-un-quote “in,” at any one given time. So he blinks and nods and says, “Sure.”
It is not one of his better decisions.
A few weeks later, he feels somewhat buoyed when he walks into the dressing room and sees his groupmates all valiantly sporting their own versions of Pi’s poofy and crimped hairstyle (except for Massu, whose hair just doesn’t do that, apparently, according to Shige and his thwarted curling iron).
“Thank you,” is all he says, and feels oddly touched.
Ryo scowls and answers, “Article II, asshole.”
~~~~~
3. Article IV: A Bro Never Divulges the Existence of the Bro Code to a Woman
“Is something wrong, leader?” Koyama asks one day, when he finds P sitting on the couch flipping through a magazine on dog breeds.
P frowns. “Rina has said that I should have a pet. The Bro Code discourages cats and states that a dog must come up to at least one’s knee height once fully grown. But these magazines say that smaller animals are better suited for apartment living because they’re less likely to destroy things. This is confusing.”
Koyama stares at him. “Bro Code?” he asks after a beat. He looks very, very lost. “What’s The Bro Code?”
~~~~~
4. Article V: Whether He Cares About Sports or Not, a Bro Cares About Sports
“Did your team just score a touchdown?” P asks politely, when the people on the TV screen start celebrating and hugging each other enthusiastically on the field.
Tegoshi pauses in his mid-soccer game excitement to blink at Pi in confusion. “Touchdown?”
The game replays the last score by the men wearing the green uniforms and once the ball goes into the net, P puts up both arms like posts on either side of his head, as Jin had taught him to. “Touchdown.”
“Uh…” Tegoshi answers, like he isn’t sure what to say.
P wonders if he, like Koyama, hasn’t been informed about the particulars of the Bro Code. If so, he is too kind to rebuke the youngest member either way. “Go team,” P says perfunctorily, before turning around and walking away.
To his credit, Tegoshi doesn’t burst out laughing until P is well out of sight.
~~~~~
5. Article XXVIII: A Bro Will, in a Timely Manner, Alert his Bro to the Existence of a Girl Fight
Shige screams when P suddenly materializes beside him in the middle of all the chaos that is currently his afternoon. “Naargh!” Shige manages, as the demon he’s wrestling with shoves his back into a tree. “Little help here?”
P obliges him by reaching out and very calmly burning the offending demon out of its host. Shige slumps to the ground in relief.
“Wow, lucky,” the younger idol breathes after a minute, groaning as he stands and rubbing at his sore (and undoubtedly bruised) backside. He eyes P in confusion. “Not that I’m complaining or anything, but I thought you were busy filming today?”
P looks very solemn. “There are currently three housewives at the Mitsuwa fighting over discount cod. It is very heated,” he reports.
Shige stares at him. “Um, okay.”
That said, P nods once, stiffly, before turning around and disappearing in a rush of feathers.
“Okay, what?” Shige mutters, and thinks that he is having a very weird day. Weirder than normal.
He gets a text message five minutes later from Koyama that just confirms it. It reads:
“Shige, leader just popped in on me in the shower and told me that there are some obaasans fighting over discount cod at the Mitsuwa. Do you think this means he wants to eat cod?”
Shige decides to ignore the message.
~~~~~
6. Article XLIX: When Asked, "Do you need some help?" A Bro Shall Automatically Respond, "I Got It," Whether or Not He's Actually Got It
“Leader, do you need help with anything?”
P doesn’t appear to hear Koyama’s question at first, the angel staring straight ahead with his brow furrowed severely, as if everything currently laid out in front of his eyes has somehow, viscerally offended him just by being there.
But then, P eventually turns to the older idol and declares, politely, “I got it,” before going back to his epic staring match of doom without another word.
Koyama carefully sidles back to the others by the counter and looks helpless. “He says he’s got it,” the oldest reports with a shrug. Ryo groans and Shige slaps a hand to his forehead.
“This is your fault,” the two of them accuse each other, at exactly the same time.
“What?” Shige barks. “How is this my fault?”
Ryo glares. “You told him he could only have one.”
Shige flails his arms. “He’ll get fat otherwise!” Pause. “And you’re the one teaching him that stupid code!”
Ryo looks indignant. “Yeah, so he won’t end up like you!”
The two of them glare at each other some more.
“How long has it been?” Tegoshi whispers after a beat, as the five of them skulk around the automatic doors like creepers as they wait for the angel.
“Fifteen minutes,” Shige reports, tiredly.
NEWS sighs.
In the meantime, Yamapi stands in front of the enormous candy display at Lawson’s-there are so, so many varieties- and very seriously debates the merits of peanuts versus nougat.
~~~~~
7. Article LXIII: A Bro Will Make Any and All Efforts to Provide his Bro With Protection
As his Grace fades with each passing day, all of humanity’s weaknesses and tiny frailties seem to want to jumble and collide into P’s diminishing form all at the same time, in a rush of new and strange and oftentimes disagreeable experiences. He learns that beyond just the physical pains and aches and needs his body requires there are the emotional things as well, the parts of being mortal that involve dealing with his own feelings as they threaten to overwhelm him from the inside out. Koyama’s advice had been to talk about how he feels, to try and explain it so that the others could teach him about them.
But he- a creature used to communicating fully and at all levels with nothing more than a thought- has no idea how to convey the words of these newfound emotions properly. Most of the time, he honestly has no idea where to begin.
So as he sits beside Massu’s hospital bed after everything is said and done, after the knife wounds are stitched up and the bleeding has stopped, he wonders how he can possibly let Massu know the depth of his guilt and the strength of his gratitude for what he has done today, on the angel’s behalf at great risk to himself.
He doesn’t know what to say.
“Don’t say anything,” Ryo shrugs, when P asks him what he should do. Ryo deftly shoves a cup of hot coffee into the angel’s hands. “Sometimes there aren’t words.”
P frowns-humans are so confusing, so contradictory-and sips his coffee obediently. Ryo squeezes his shoulder and says he’ll be with the rest of the guys in the lobby if he needs anything. P nods and hears him close the door behind him on the way out. Left with just himself and Massu, the angel studies the coffee cup he is holding, thinks about the feeling of Ryo’s hand on his shoulder, and puzzles over the words that won’t come.
Massu’s eyes flutter open some hours later, and P promptly forgets his current bout of drowsiness (as well as his general perturbed state at his new need for sleep in general).
Instead, the angel’s face becomes relieved when he sees Massu blinking back at him, bleary but awake. Alive.
“You okay?” Massu asks him after a moment, voice raspy and startlingly loud in the hospital room.
P nods, and again, doesn’t know what to say in the face of something like that.
But then he notices the empty coffee cup sitting next to the table lamp and remembers Ryo, remembers that sometimes there aren’t the right words and there never will be. Sometimes there are only little, wordless gestures that mean the world but will-more often than not- get lost on the sidelines.
Looking resolute, P slowly makes a fist with his right hand and raises it, letting it hover in the air between him and Massu. “Hit this,” he instructs like he's seen on TV, and hopes it is enough to say all the words he doesn’t know how to properly communicate.
Massu chuckles and obediently reaches out to bump his first against P’s.
P knows it isn’t exactly “I’m sorry, I’ll be more careful, thank you, please be okay, I’d do the same for you,” but from the way Massu smiles at him, he supposes that his groupmate knows what he means anyway.
~~~~~
8. Article XCIX: A Bro Never Asks for Directions When Lost
Shige screams as a speeding hover-car screeches around the corner above him, brushing over the top of his head and nearly taking it off. “I don’t think this is right!” he shouts at P and the others, as they stand on the roof of some high-rise building apparently made entirely of glass.
P frowns. “I might have jumped too far.”
“You think?!” Ryo shouts, while Koyama and Massu cling to him on either side and do their resolute best to not look down.
P looks around a little bit, and wipes absently at the blood trickling from his nose with the back of his hand. He tries to keep his legs under him, to tell himself that he can do this, just one more jump as his energy wanes. “This only looks about a hundred years into the future, by my estimation,” he reports. “I will fix this.”
“This isn’t something you estimate, leader!” Koyama chokes out, eyes still closed tightly as he white-knuckles Ryo’s hand in both of his.
P frowns. “You don’t have to be afraid. I’ll get us back to the correct time.”
“He means we’re lost, so you can’t just guess!” Shige squawks. “What if you jump too far in the other direction this time?!”
Tegoshi blinks and squints into the distance. “Maybe we should ask somebody what year it is just to make sure.”
P glares. “It’s not necessary. I will get us back.”
Tegoshi shrugs. “If leader says so.”
“Don’t encourage him!” Shige shrieks, and has to dodge another beeping, angry hover-car driver.
P frowns and shakes himself off before striding forward and grabbing the rest of his groupmates.
They disappear in a flash of light.
Only to wake up knee-deep in primordial ooze.
Yamapi blinks and collapses into a heap on the jungle floor. “Perhaps,” he begins, before his eyes start to roll back into his head and blood starts dribbling out of his nose in earnest now, “we are a little bit lost.”
He passes out just in time to hear Massu’s terrified cry of, “DINOSAUR!”
~~~~~
9. Article CVII: A Bro Never Leaves Another Bro Hanging
Shige stares at P.
P stares back, amiably.
Shige fidgets. “Um. You should probably go get help,” he poses after a minute, in what he hopes is his calm, logical voice.
P blinks back at him, full of a solemn, incredibly grave determination. “I won’t leave you, Shige,” he vows, and the words are weighty and solid in the prophet’s ears.
Shige thinks for a moment. Sighs. “That’s a really nice sentiment, Yamashita-kun,” he allows, because it is. He takes a couple of deep breaths and counts backwards from ten, slowly.
P nods, oblivious to his groupmate’s waning patience. “You would do the same for me.”
“Except I would go to get you help,” Shige points out. “I would really, really go to get you help. Like, right away.”
P looks up at the dangling prophet and frowns. “But I’m not to leave you hanging.”
Shige, tied from toes to chin in rope and strung upside-down precariously from the ceiling manages-very admirably-not to scream at P when he hears the former angel’s very logical answer. All of the blood is rushing to his head and making it difficult to form words that aren’t four-lettered in nature.
“Phone?” Shige manages, after a beat, trying to go about this in a sensible manner. “Can you please call one of the others and maybe see if Tegoshi can blink me down from here?”
P tilts his head left, before reaching into his pocket and procuring the mangled, slightly smoking remains of what Shige assumes is the other idol’s cell phone, post-demon fight.
“Great,” Shige groans, and has no idea why P won’t just go.
They continue to just kind of look at each other for a while. Shige starts counting backwards from 1,000 this time, in prime numbers.
After a minute, “If I could still fly, I would pull you down myself without hesitation,” P offers into the silent warehouse, helpfully.
Shige makes some strangled noises in the back of his throat and hopes the others find them soon.
~~~~~
10. Article CXLVII: If a Bro Sees Another Bro Get into a Fight, He Immediately has His Bro's Back
Ryo chuckles when Yamapi hisses and pulls his hand back from under the burn of antiseptic. “Stop being such a wuss,” Ryo reprimands him, thought not unkindly.
“I think that’s causing more harm than help,” P murmurs back, knuckles raw and scraped from tonight’s hunt.
Around him, the other members make sympathetic noises, Massu particularly when he has to bite on a stray piece of wood as Tegoshi stitches the four-inch gash on the inside of his knee shut.
P reluctantly gives his hand back to Ryo and moves to examine the three long cuts along his forearm, shallow but still glistening blood from claws that before, would never have been able to touch him and live through the burn of his holy light.
“Sucks, don’t it?” Ryo asks, when he catches P staring his own mortality in the face. He sounds guilty and awkward; P thinks this is another lesson in human words, in words spoken when there aren’t adequate ways of conveying the feelings behind them. “Gotta play by the same rules us regular people do now.”
“I wouldn’t call us regular people,” P answers, softly. He winces again, when Ryo’s antiseptic-covered cotton ball makes another round along his battered arm.
Ryo snorts. “Yeah, well. Either way, you’re in the same club as us humans now, right? That’s gotta be bad, considering.”
P furrows his brow. “No. Not bad.” He frowns, looking for how to put this so that it will make sense, so that it will convey what he feels. “I think it’s amazing,” he offers, after a beat, “that you would go through this over and over again so willingly, even knowing how much it will pain you all later.”
The other members pause at that, to look sheepish and embarrassed by P’s honesty.
P reaches out and runs his free hand over the angry, purple bruise on Ryo’s shoulder, the swollen, tender flesh along his back and sides from where he’d impacted the walls of the caves they’d hunted their quarry to tonight. “You went through this for me, tonight,” he murmurs, voice low. “It will cost you weeks of suffering- you knew it would- but you did it anyway. If this is the company I have with me, then I’m glad to be in this club with you now.” Pause. “You are all my…Bros.”
He looks around at the others with wide brown eyes, their humanity- the humanity he has chosen over everything, that he is learning to live by these days- feeling like it is all a great and wonderful mystery that he is only just beginning to unlock.
Ryo coughs after a moment, forcing himself to look away from his friend. “Yeah, well, of course I did it, stupid. The cost of not doing it is worse for everyone in the long run, right?”
P feels himself smile. “What makes you say that?”
Ryo chuckles and flicks the first-aid kit closed. “Because of Article 147, dude,” he grunts hastily, and P doesn’t know much about humans yet, but he knows enough about Ryo to know that he is lying.
The former angel’s eyes crinkle in the corners. “Me too,” he says, after he wades through all the bravado and false words and embarrassed fidgeting to find the meaning underneath. “I feel the same.”
Ryo makes a mortified expression at the confession, the others laugh out loud at them both, and P decides that he would endure a thousand cotton balls covered in antiseptic, a thousand pulled hamstrings, a thousand cracked ribs and bruised knuckles and bleeding gashes for this, for the comfort of knowing that should he choose at any one moment to look over his shoulder, there will be five other people standing there to watch his back.
“Get that smarmy look off your face,” Ryo mutters after a moment, and flicks a used cotton ball at P, hitting him right between the eyes.
P laughs then, and even if it hurts to do it right now, it somehow feels wonderful and perfect all at the same time.
He thinks his Bros are the best.
END
Whew! This SHOULD be the end of the spam for a while. Theoretically. I still owe one more donation thank-you fic. XD