(Oneshot) A push in the right direction
Title: A push in the right direction
Pair: Junma (Ohmiya :D)
Rating: Pg-13-ish, to be safe
Genre: Romance?
Summary: Some-’thing’ happened between Jun and Toma one night, and that ‘thing’ carries implications and consequences Toma would rather not face.
Note: For laura, umi and cam. Sorry it sucks…as always.
Life couldn’t get any more awkward for Ikuta Toma.
Some-‘thing’ that happened last week at fault for his discomfort, at a time in his life where he really could use less discomfort. Fortunately Toma had a few friends he could call when such ‘things’ risk turning a nice and orderly black and white world into a chaotic and messy smear of color.
So Toma sat. Nervously. At the nice bar, with a nice ambience to offset Toma’s not so nice anxiety that kept him on the edge of a posh chair in the corner.
Why Oguri Shun had chosen such a high class bar when they usually kept to casual restaurants on their outings was nagging Toma, in the corner of his mind. In fact it was the very same corner of his mind that had tendencies to worry about wearing brown shoes with a black belt, or white shoes with a black stage outfit. It was a corner Toma relied on as an early warning system when something was out of order, out of the acceptably defined norm, and therefore, suspicious.
But that ‘thing’ from last week had thrown Toma so horribly out of his sorts to where he hardly cared about the difference between a rowdy club and an elite cocktail lounge.
Slightly twitchy, Toma fiddled with the straw in his ice water, waiting for Shun without entirely noticing the setting, and reliving their last conversation.
At the time it felt good to spill what had happened, that ’thing,’ to Shun over the phone. He just wanted someone to share the burden with, at that time. It didn’t help that, at the time, Toma had been somewhere between drunk, hysterical and sleep deprived. Now Toma wished he’d just kept his mouth shut, because once Shun arrived, there were going to be some incredibly problematic, and embarrassing questions asked, that only close friends would ever ask and care to know the answers to.
Questions such as;
‘Seriously? You?’
‘Why? No really, Toma, why?’
And worst of all, in Toma’s opinion;
‘Exactly how far did you two get again?’
“……Toma?”
“We were clean!” Yelped Toma, almost knocking over his glass of water, startled out of his inner Oguri interview, as there was a man standing beside his table. “Ah, sorry, I was just…“ Dawning a strong, absolutely normal ‘nothing’s wrong at all,’ smile, Toma looked up to Shun.
And found that it was Matsumoto Jun.
And felt a strong desire to run away.
Toma was a good actor, but he knew the fear showed on his face.
Jun also was a good actor, but he didn’t bother hiding the resulting hurt.
“Really…” Clicking his tongue, Jun looked away.
Though they were both adults, Toma felt lower then humanly possible, as if he’d tied a firecracker to a kitten and lit the fuse. It didn’t make much sense because Jun reminded no one of a kitten, but Toma felt that evil all the same.
“Aaah…tss…I could smell a set up an ocean away…I‘ll have to pay Shun back with interest….” The Arashi member was saying, plucking nonexistent fuzz off his dark wash jean jacket so superciliously Toma wondered if he imagined the pain on Jun’s face a moment ago.
“…S-sorry….” Lowering his eyes, and nodding once, Toma folded his hands over the table, in hopes it made him look less nervous.
“You told Shun about it, didn’t you? I didn‘t know you were that kind of guy…” A bored, disinterested tone added a new level of nasal to Jun’s voice, as the man took an empty seat across from Toma.
“I’m not…well I did tell him about…….that……..what we…..that…uh….” Toma turned a brilliant shade of red, not unlike that of a sunburn, and couldn’t bring himself to even qualify what had happened between them last week with something so cumbersome as human speech.
An amused, lopsided smirk appeared on Jun’s face, and he leaned across the table to whisper, “Someone’s embarrassed, huh.”
“Shut up, okay!” Toma had to push his chair back to create distance between them. The very last thing he wanted right now was close proximity to Matsumoto Jun‘s face. “This isn’t easy for me!”
“Not like it’s easy for me either…” Smirk gone, Jun retreated, subconsciously pulling the large silver ring on and off his finger as he spoke slowly, as if each word were a weight in his mouth. “What was with last week anyway? Why would you do that to a person, and then ignore them? It’s fine if you want to pretend it didn’t happen. It’s fine if you didn’t mean it. I’ll be pissed, yeah, but you could have at least picked up your goddamn phone to tell me yourself. You‘ve even put Oguri to the trouble of playing matchmaker, just so he doesn‘t have to deal with your problems anymore.”
“You don’t have to chew me out like that. I know, ok? I know I‘ve been a bit…I just couldn‘t….“ Looking away, Toma rubbed his forehead, his eyes only able to hold Jun’s gaze for short periods of time before the dark intensity made his stomach turn. “And for the record, it’s not like I asked Shun to do anything for us-…me.”
Tensely, Toma looked up wondering if Jun had caught the slip of tongue.
Alike they were in detail orientation, and with a newly cocked eyebrow of inquisition, Jun obviously had heard. “’Us?’ Since when are we an ‘us,’ Toma?”
“We’re not! I meant to say-”
“So we’re not an ‘us’ nor do I think we should even be a ‘we.’ That’s all I needed to confirm with you.” Unconditionally professional to the point of bitter, Jun stood up again, adjusting his jacket sleeves that didn’t really need adjusting. “Since Shun obviously isn’t going to show up there isn‘t a point wasting time here.”
“Wait, Jun. Please.”
Amazingly, Jun waited. Despite his carefully hardened expression obviously designed more to keep his pain from showing then to cause it to Toma, Jun waited and his lip quivered once out of built up anxiety.
But the words, the apology, the most important phrase that Toma absolutely knew he needed Jun to hear escaped his mouth without a sound.
The moment passed, and the air between them became pressurized with the guilt of a mistake.
“Good night, Toma.” The overwhelming finality in Jun’s farewell suffocated any response Toma might have tried to voice and he was left with no choice but to watch the older idol stride away.
Ohno and Nino were walking down a narrow hallway when they encountered Toma.
“Yo, Ikemen!” Ohno hailed with a grin.
“Yo…fisherman……………and Nino.” Returned Toma with noticeably less enthusiasm.
“How long are you guys going to keep doing that? It wasn’t even funny to begin with, and now it’s just plain sad.” Nino glanced between Toma and Ohno.
“It..it is?” The news seemed to hit Ohno hard, and he clung to Nino’s elbow. “Is it really sad? I thought it was funny…”
“Is a stale joke something I‘d waste energy lying about?”
“C-couldn’t you have told me that it was sad before? All this time I thought…”
Not exactly in the mood to deal with a self-esteem stricken Ohno, or an extra malicious Nino, and wondering if they’d already forgotten his presence Toma said quietly. “Actually I’m in a hurry…so if you’ll excuse me….”
“Not so fast.” Nino caught Toma’s arm before an escape could be made. The smaller man looked over his shoulder, and down the hallway to make sure they were alone.
“Nino, this isn’t funny.” Laughing nervously, Toma tried to throw off Nino’s grip in good humor. But the grip was stronger then it seemed.
“Maybe not, but do you know what is funny? Getting a call from a friend who said that another friend was messing around with yet another friend. Do you realize how much of a headache that phone call caused me?”
Nervously, Toma stared at Nino hoping his expression came off as confused rather then alarmed.
Nino stared back, with an added omnipotent smirk.
“That’s not funny, it’s confusing.” Stated Ohno, bluntly, blinking more then once with little enlightenment.
“You could have taken aspirin.” Almost meekly Toma broke their locked stare.
“Aspirin is expensive these days.”
Ohno seemed to have lost interest in the conversation, and proceeded to dig around for something, or for nothing in his pockets.
“I….I wasn’t messing with him.” Toma said at last, angry at himself for letting Nino trap him into a direct confession. “It’s just…I don’t know if I can deal with the implications...…”
“Let me be honest with you…” Nino lowered his voice and slung an arm around Toma’s taller shoulder and walked them down the hall, with Ohno trailing behind.
“Nino…”
“Listen. As for who you’re making out with, sleeping with, and carousing with in general, it‘s your business and I couldn‘t care less. I don’t want to hear it. But I also don’t want to deal with a bandmate who’s locked himself in his apartment, is ignoring all calls and visitors, and may have suicidal tendencies during severe fits of depression. You’re causing entirely too many headaches, and you owe me a thousand yen for aspirin.”
The words sunk in gradually. They turned Toma chilly, then incredibly cold. With the cold came the unbearable weight of an egregious wrong needing righted, immediately. Above all, Toma hated loosing face, but it was slowly, slowly dawning on him that perhaps his pride wasn’t worth suffering for.
Fundamentally shaken, Toma ducked out from under Nino’s arm. “I need to go.”
“You still owe me a thousand yen!” Nino called, as Toma jogged down the hall and out of the building.
Among any number of things, Toma had been expecting a drunk Jun, a puffy-eyed and depressed Jun, or more realistically a pissed-off Jun followed by a well deserved ringed punch in the face.
When Jun opened the door, slowly as if time were a commodity beneath him, Toma was braced for the worst.
Instead, Jun leaned on the door frame, stifling a magnificent yawn with a surprisingly non-ringed fist. The older idol’s hair was messy in the refreshingly natural way that a person can only wake up with. There wasn’t even a waft to be had of Jun’s high class cologne. It was Matsumoto Jun in his rawest form, clean and unadorned.
For a very, very long moment, Toma found himself holding his breath.
After glancing Toma over once, Jun scratched his forehead, annoyed wrinkles lining his forehead.
“Y-yo…did I wake you up?” Toma said, as if the door had just now opened, adding a small friendly wave in hope it made up for his rudeness.
“Don’t ‘yo’ me.” Tired, cold and as indifferent as his posture against the door frame, Jun‘s voice had a heightened nasal quality that suggested the man had just woken up. “What are you doing here?”
“I-I…well…N-nino said…you’d locked yourself in your apartment…and were depressed to the point of suicidal…”
“Really…” Toma looked up, apprehensively, only to find Jun plucking a grain of sleep dust from his eye. Again he sounded as bored as he looked, “Is that the best you’ve got?”
Confused out of his nervousness, Toma blinked, uncertain. “What do you mean?”
With a mocking snort though his nose Jun gave a weary smile. “How many times are you going to let others set you up? Nino knows I called in for vacation time. You know as well as I do that he’s a liar and likes to mess with people.”
Though Jun didn’t say it, Toma could hear the mortifying yet unsaid ‘How stupid are you?’ hanging on the end of the sentence. “I know that he’s like that…but I was still worried.”
“If your only business was assuaging your guilt, as you can see I’m fine.” Indicating himself with a loose shrug, Jun landed his hand on the door knob and glanced at Toma again, allowing their eyes to meet again.
No veils disguised a lingering depth of pain, no mask hid the quiver of weakness that twitched Jun’s mouth as he brought the door an inch away from closed. “Go home already.”
“Wait, Jun, please.”
An annoyed sigh came from the other side of the door, but Jun let Toma push the door open again.
“What?” Jun’s eyebrows were arched in a dangerous V of exasperation.
Surprisingly, it wasn‘t as hard to bring up the topic as Toma had feared, considering he‘d sealed away his pride on the way over. “About the other week…what…I did….”
“I thought we were pretending it didn’t happen. Therefore it’s not worth discussing. Now go home.”
“But it did happen. After…” Again unable to specify their incident with words, Toma suggested the event with a hand gesture. “After….‘that’….I panicked….and…”
A weighty sigh punctuated Toma’s explanation, as Jun opened the door completely, “Come in, this isn’t something we should discuss in the hall.”
“Ah…sorry.”
Toma followed Jun the short distance to the living room. The splendid white couch appeared slept on, with a bunched up blanket at one end, a pillow at the other. A pair of cranberry glasses were folded on top of a book resting on the coffee table. Picking up his pillow before pulling it onto his lap, Jun settled onto the couch. Thankfully Jun nodded at the single armchair beside the couch for Toma, making the decision for the younger man who had just begun a mental debate as to where he should sit.
A strained silence stretched on between them, and Toma found it difficult to recover his train of thought from earlier. It was much, much easier to glance around Jun’s apartment, even though he was no stranger to the setting. But invariably his eyes worked their way back to Jun’s more personal affects, like the glasses perfectly folded on the book right in front of him. With a flash of inspiration, Toma realized he could use the book as an icebreaker for their currently impossible atmosphere.
“Ah so you’re reading………………Ningen Shikkaku……” Something inside Toma tried to inflate, but it met resistance like blowing up a balloon underwater.
“I watched the movie recently, and enjoyed it so I thought I might pick up the book.” Intentionally apathetic nearly to the point of sarcasm, Jun was resting on hand on his fist, his other arm draped across the pillow in his lap.
Elbows on his knees, with both hands Toma rubbed his face, before leaning forward, assuming a position of strength. “I’m sorry.”
“That the book is better then the movie? You should be.”
Toma longed to take the bait to argue, but didn’t. “About…the other week, I’m sorry. It’s easier to run away then face certain realities. I didn‘t realize the weight of what…we did……until….after we did it….”
“The way I see it…” It was obvious Jun was struggling to maintain his cold neutrality, even his posture tensed as more and more emotion built into his voice. “Is that you weren’t serious. It’s ok if you weren’t, because if you weren’t serious then I don’t have to take it seriously either. Usually people are drunk when they do something like that, or they make sure the other party is aware it‘s to be taken lightheartedly. But you were confusing, you made it seem like it was real, and that‘s why…I‘m upset. I mean, I was upset, but I‘m not anymore.”
So nervous his skin felt like it was dancing, Toma swallowed everything from his lingering pride to his growing insecurities and stared directly into Jun’s waiting, and slightly hurt eyes. “The thing is….I think I was serious.”
“Like I said,…what?” It was Jun’s turn to be confused, and his caterpillar eyebrows knitted together in the same way they always had since they had been little.
Feeling himself growing steadily pinker, Toma had to force himself to continue, squirming a little under Jun‘s constant and demanding gaze. “It…it just sort of hit me that night……I didn’t really realize…and I don’t know if it will last because you know how I tend to be a little fickle…but….I know that, at that time when I…when I…did…’that’…to you……I really, honestly I was serious.”
Taken aback, Jun’s eyes had grown wide, and he stared at Toma with undivided awe. Silence once again built up between them, but this time it was stifling and warm, like a humid day.
Jun leaned forward on his pillow, bringing their faces together in close proximity again, and Toma fought the urge to retreat. It helped that Jun had very pretty eyelashes that were most enjoyable from near distances. But it didn’t help that Jun was once again wearing his teasing half-smile of a smirk. “Since you said you were serious, would it be safe to assume that you like me then?”
“I…I don’t know about that…” For some reason, Toma felt the need to lower his voice to match Jun’s near-whispered level, and he found himself gazing around the room in general again.
“Even if I said that I liked you too?”
Toma’s head snapped up so fast it hurt. “D-do you?”
“Hmm, do I?” Tauntingly, Jun let his words drag out in a nasal drawl, his lopsided grin more mischievous then ever. “I don’t know….should try making advances on you to find out?”
“W-what?!”
Seductively, Jun pushed the pillow from his lap, and drew in closer to Toma, planting on hand on the armrest as he leaned closer, closer and finally so close, Toma squeezed his eyes shut and waited for either the end or the beginning of whatever was to come.
“Toma…” Came an incredibly hot breath near his ear, but the sultry voice broke into laugher almost immediately, and Jun pulled away.
Toma opened one eye, then the other, and found that he had crossed his arms protectively over his chest. It was embarrassing to say the least, and it only made Jun laugh harder.
“You sadist…” Grumbled Toma, picking himself up off the chair. “Anyway, I’ve said what I needed to say, so I’ll go now. Sorry to have interrupted your vacation…”
“Do you have to be somewhere?” Though his laugher subsided, a genuine smile remained, and Jun stood up too, resting his hands on his hips.
“Not really but….”
“So stay for a while.” It wasn’t a request, or even a demand. If anything, it felt like a challenge.
“I don’t know…”
“Stay. I’ll make soumen.” With that Jun leaned over, and with an impeccable nonchalant lightness, brushed his lips against Toma’s cheek.
Cupping his tingling cheek, Toma blushed and followed Jun to the kitchen.
Pair: Junma (Ohmiya :D)
Rating: Pg-13-ish, to be safe
Genre: Romance?
Summary: Some-’thing’ happened between Jun and Toma one night, and that ‘thing’ carries implications and consequences Toma would rather not face.
Note: For laura, umi and cam. Sorry it sucks…as always.
Life couldn’t get any more awkward for Ikuta Toma.
Some-‘thing’ that happened last week at fault for his discomfort, at a time in his life where he really could use less discomfort. Fortunately Toma had a few friends he could call when such ‘things’ risk turning a nice and orderly black and white world into a chaotic and messy smear of color.
So Toma sat. Nervously. At the nice bar, with a nice ambience to offset Toma’s not so nice anxiety that kept him on the edge of a posh chair in the corner.
Why Oguri Shun had chosen such a high class bar when they usually kept to casual restaurants on their outings was nagging Toma, in the corner of his mind. In fact it was the very same corner of his mind that had tendencies to worry about wearing brown shoes with a black belt, or white shoes with a black stage outfit. It was a corner Toma relied on as an early warning system when something was out of order, out of the acceptably defined norm, and therefore, suspicious.
But that ‘thing’ from last week had thrown Toma so horribly out of his sorts to where he hardly cared about the difference between a rowdy club and an elite cocktail lounge.
Slightly twitchy, Toma fiddled with the straw in his ice water, waiting for Shun without entirely noticing the setting, and reliving their last conversation.
At the time it felt good to spill what had happened, that ’thing,’ to Shun over the phone. He just wanted someone to share the burden with, at that time. It didn’t help that, at the time, Toma had been somewhere between drunk, hysterical and sleep deprived. Now Toma wished he’d just kept his mouth shut, because once Shun arrived, there were going to be some incredibly problematic, and embarrassing questions asked, that only close friends would ever ask and care to know the answers to.
Questions such as;
‘Seriously? You?’
‘Why? No really, Toma, why?’
And worst of all, in Toma’s opinion;
‘Exactly how far did you two get again?’
“……Toma?”
“We were clean!” Yelped Toma, almost knocking over his glass of water, startled out of his inner Oguri interview, as there was a man standing beside his table. “Ah, sorry, I was just…“ Dawning a strong, absolutely normal ‘nothing’s wrong at all,’ smile, Toma looked up to Shun.
And found that it was Matsumoto Jun.
And felt a strong desire to run away.
Toma was a good actor, but he knew the fear showed on his face.
Jun also was a good actor, but he didn’t bother hiding the resulting hurt.
“Really…” Clicking his tongue, Jun looked away.
Though they were both adults, Toma felt lower then humanly possible, as if he’d tied a firecracker to a kitten and lit the fuse. It didn’t make much sense because Jun reminded no one of a kitten, but Toma felt that evil all the same.
“Aaah…tss…I could smell a set up an ocean away…I‘ll have to pay Shun back with interest….” The Arashi member was saying, plucking nonexistent fuzz off his dark wash jean jacket so superciliously Toma wondered if he imagined the pain on Jun’s face a moment ago.
“…S-sorry….” Lowering his eyes, and nodding once, Toma folded his hands over the table, in hopes it made him look less nervous.
“You told Shun about it, didn’t you? I didn‘t know you were that kind of guy…” A bored, disinterested tone added a new level of nasal to Jun’s voice, as the man took an empty seat across from Toma.
“I’m not…well I did tell him about…….that……..what we…..that…uh….” Toma turned a brilliant shade of red, not unlike that of a sunburn, and couldn’t bring himself to even qualify what had happened between them last week with something so cumbersome as human speech.
An amused, lopsided smirk appeared on Jun’s face, and he leaned across the table to whisper, “Someone’s embarrassed, huh.”
“Shut up, okay!” Toma had to push his chair back to create distance between them. The very last thing he wanted right now was close proximity to Matsumoto Jun‘s face. “This isn’t easy for me!”
“Not like it’s easy for me either…” Smirk gone, Jun retreated, subconsciously pulling the large silver ring on and off his finger as he spoke slowly, as if each word were a weight in his mouth. “What was with last week anyway? Why would you do that to a person, and then ignore them? It’s fine if you want to pretend it didn’t happen. It’s fine if you didn’t mean it. I’ll be pissed, yeah, but you could have at least picked up your goddamn phone to tell me yourself. You‘ve even put Oguri to the trouble of playing matchmaker, just so he doesn‘t have to deal with your problems anymore.”
“You don’t have to chew me out like that. I know, ok? I know I‘ve been a bit…I just couldn‘t….“ Looking away, Toma rubbed his forehead, his eyes only able to hold Jun’s gaze for short periods of time before the dark intensity made his stomach turn. “And for the record, it’s not like I asked Shun to do anything for us-…me.”
Tensely, Toma looked up wondering if Jun had caught the slip of tongue.
Alike they were in detail orientation, and with a newly cocked eyebrow of inquisition, Jun obviously had heard. “’Us?’ Since when are we an ‘us,’ Toma?”
“We’re not! I meant to say-”
“So we’re not an ‘us’ nor do I think we should even be a ‘we.’ That’s all I needed to confirm with you.” Unconditionally professional to the point of bitter, Jun stood up again, adjusting his jacket sleeves that didn’t really need adjusting. “Since Shun obviously isn’t going to show up there isn‘t a point wasting time here.”
“Wait, Jun. Please.”
Amazingly, Jun waited. Despite his carefully hardened expression obviously designed more to keep his pain from showing then to cause it to Toma, Jun waited and his lip quivered once out of built up anxiety.
But the words, the apology, the most important phrase that Toma absolutely knew he needed Jun to hear escaped his mouth without a sound.
The moment passed, and the air between them became pressurized with the guilt of a mistake.
“Good night, Toma.” The overwhelming finality in Jun’s farewell suffocated any response Toma might have tried to voice and he was left with no choice but to watch the older idol stride away.
Ohno and Nino were walking down a narrow hallway when they encountered Toma.
“Yo, Ikemen!” Ohno hailed with a grin.
“Yo…fisherman……………and Nino.” Returned Toma with noticeably less enthusiasm.
“How long are you guys going to keep doing that? It wasn’t even funny to begin with, and now it’s just plain sad.” Nino glanced between Toma and Ohno.
“It..it is?” The news seemed to hit Ohno hard, and he clung to Nino’s elbow. “Is it really sad? I thought it was funny…”
“Is a stale joke something I‘d waste energy lying about?”
“C-couldn’t you have told me that it was sad before? All this time I thought…”
Not exactly in the mood to deal with a self-esteem stricken Ohno, or an extra malicious Nino, and wondering if they’d already forgotten his presence Toma said quietly. “Actually I’m in a hurry…so if you’ll excuse me….”
“Not so fast.” Nino caught Toma’s arm before an escape could be made. The smaller man looked over his shoulder, and down the hallway to make sure they were alone.
“Nino, this isn’t funny.” Laughing nervously, Toma tried to throw off Nino’s grip in good humor. But the grip was stronger then it seemed.
“Maybe not, but do you know what is funny? Getting a call from a friend who said that another friend was messing around with yet another friend. Do you realize how much of a headache that phone call caused me?”
Nervously, Toma stared at Nino hoping his expression came off as confused rather then alarmed.
Nino stared back, with an added omnipotent smirk.
“That’s not funny, it’s confusing.” Stated Ohno, bluntly, blinking more then once with little enlightenment.
“You could have taken aspirin.” Almost meekly Toma broke their locked stare.
“Aspirin is expensive these days.”
Ohno seemed to have lost interest in the conversation, and proceeded to dig around for something, or for nothing in his pockets.
“I….I wasn’t messing with him.” Toma said at last, angry at himself for letting Nino trap him into a direct confession. “It’s just…I don’t know if I can deal with the implications...…”
“Let me be honest with you…” Nino lowered his voice and slung an arm around Toma’s taller shoulder and walked them down the hall, with Ohno trailing behind.
“Nino…”
“Listen. As for who you’re making out with, sleeping with, and carousing with in general, it‘s your business and I couldn‘t care less. I don’t want to hear it. But I also don’t want to deal with a bandmate who’s locked himself in his apartment, is ignoring all calls and visitors, and may have suicidal tendencies during severe fits of depression. You’re causing entirely too many headaches, and you owe me a thousand yen for aspirin.”
The words sunk in gradually. They turned Toma chilly, then incredibly cold. With the cold came the unbearable weight of an egregious wrong needing righted, immediately. Above all, Toma hated loosing face, but it was slowly, slowly dawning on him that perhaps his pride wasn’t worth suffering for.
Fundamentally shaken, Toma ducked out from under Nino’s arm. “I need to go.”
“You still owe me a thousand yen!” Nino called, as Toma jogged down the hall and out of the building.
Among any number of things, Toma had been expecting a drunk Jun, a puffy-eyed and depressed Jun, or more realistically a pissed-off Jun followed by a well deserved ringed punch in the face.
When Jun opened the door, slowly as if time were a commodity beneath him, Toma was braced for the worst.
Instead, Jun leaned on the door frame, stifling a magnificent yawn with a surprisingly non-ringed fist. The older idol’s hair was messy in the refreshingly natural way that a person can only wake up with. There wasn’t even a waft to be had of Jun’s high class cologne. It was Matsumoto Jun in his rawest form, clean and unadorned.
For a very, very long moment, Toma found himself holding his breath.
After glancing Toma over once, Jun scratched his forehead, annoyed wrinkles lining his forehead.
“Y-yo…did I wake you up?” Toma said, as if the door had just now opened, adding a small friendly wave in hope it made up for his rudeness.
“Don’t ‘yo’ me.” Tired, cold and as indifferent as his posture against the door frame, Jun‘s voice had a heightened nasal quality that suggested the man had just woken up. “What are you doing here?”
“I-I…well…N-nino said…you’d locked yourself in your apartment…and were depressed to the point of suicidal…”
“Really…” Toma looked up, apprehensively, only to find Jun plucking a grain of sleep dust from his eye. Again he sounded as bored as he looked, “Is that the best you’ve got?”
Confused out of his nervousness, Toma blinked, uncertain. “What do you mean?”
With a mocking snort though his nose Jun gave a weary smile. “How many times are you going to let others set you up? Nino knows I called in for vacation time. You know as well as I do that he’s a liar and likes to mess with people.”
Though Jun didn’t say it, Toma could hear the mortifying yet unsaid ‘How stupid are you?’ hanging on the end of the sentence. “I know that he’s like that…but I was still worried.”
“If your only business was assuaging your guilt, as you can see I’m fine.” Indicating himself with a loose shrug, Jun landed his hand on the door knob and glanced at Toma again, allowing their eyes to meet again.
No veils disguised a lingering depth of pain, no mask hid the quiver of weakness that twitched Jun’s mouth as he brought the door an inch away from closed. “Go home already.”
“Wait, Jun, please.”
An annoyed sigh came from the other side of the door, but Jun let Toma push the door open again.
“What?” Jun’s eyebrows were arched in a dangerous V of exasperation.
Surprisingly, it wasn‘t as hard to bring up the topic as Toma had feared, considering he‘d sealed away his pride on the way over. “About the other week…what…I did….”
“I thought we were pretending it didn’t happen. Therefore it’s not worth discussing. Now go home.”
“But it did happen. After…” Again unable to specify their incident with words, Toma suggested the event with a hand gesture. “After….‘that’….I panicked….and…”
A weighty sigh punctuated Toma’s explanation, as Jun opened the door completely, “Come in, this isn’t something we should discuss in the hall.”
“Ah…sorry.”
Toma followed Jun the short distance to the living room. The splendid white couch appeared slept on, with a bunched up blanket at one end, a pillow at the other. A pair of cranberry glasses were folded on top of a book resting on the coffee table. Picking up his pillow before pulling it onto his lap, Jun settled onto the couch. Thankfully Jun nodded at the single armchair beside the couch for Toma, making the decision for the younger man who had just begun a mental debate as to where he should sit.
A strained silence stretched on between them, and Toma found it difficult to recover his train of thought from earlier. It was much, much easier to glance around Jun’s apartment, even though he was no stranger to the setting. But invariably his eyes worked their way back to Jun’s more personal affects, like the glasses perfectly folded on the book right in front of him. With a flash of inspiration, Toma realized he could use the book as an icebreaker for their currently impossible atmosphere.
“Ah so you’re reading………………Ningen Shikkaku……” Something inside Toma tried to inflate, but it met resistance like blowing up a balloon underwater.
“I watched the movie recently, and enjoyed it so I thought I might pick up the book.” Intentionally apathetic nearly to the point of sarcasm, Jun was resting on hand on his fist, his other arm draped across the pillow in his lap.
Elbows on his knees, with both hands Toma rubbed his face, before leaning forward, assuming a position of strength. “I’m sorry.”
“That the book is better then the movie? You should be.”
Toma longed to take the bait to argue, but didn’t. “About…the other week, I’m sorry. It’s easier to run away then face certain realities. I didn‘t realize the weight of what…we did……until….after we did it….”
“The way I see it…” It was obvious Jun was struggling to maintain his cold neutrality, even his posture tensed as more and more emotion built into his voice. “Is that you weren’t serious. It’s ok if you weren’t, because if you weren’t serious then I don’t have to take it seriously either. Usually people are drunk when they do something like that, or they make sure the other party is aware it‘s to be taken lightheartedly. But you were confusing, you made it seem like it was real, and that‘s why…I‘m upset. I mean, I was upset, but I‘m not anymore.”
So nervous his skin felt like it was dancing, Toma swallowed everything from his lingering pride to his growing insecurities and stared directly into Jun’s waiting, and slightly hurt eyes. “The thing is….I think I was serious.”
“Like I said,…what?” It was Jun’s turn to be confused, and his caterpillar eyebrows knitted together in the same way they always had since they had been little.
Feeling himself growing steadily pinker, Toma had to force himself to continue, squirming a little under Jun‘s constant and demanding gaze. “It…it just sort of hit me that night……I didn’t really realize…and I don’t know if it will last because you know how I tend to be a little fickle…but….I know that, at that time when I…when I…did…’that’…to you……I really, honestly I was serious.”
Taken aback, Jun’s eyes had grown wide, and he stared at Toma with undivided awe. Silence once again built up between them, but this time it was stifling and warm, like a humid day.
Jun leaned forward on his pillow, bringing their faces together in close proximity again, and Toma fought the urge to retreat. It helped that Jun had very pretty eyelashes that were most enjoyable from near distances. But it didn’t help that Jun was once again wearing his teasing half-smile of a smirk. “Since you said you were serious, would it be safe to assume that you like me then?”
“I…I don’t know about that…” For some reason, Toma felt the need to lower his voice to match Jun’s near-whispered level, and he found himself gazing around the room in general again.
“Even if I said that I liked you too?”
Toma’s head snapped up so fast it hurt. “D-do you?”
“Hmm, do I?” Tauntingly, Jun let his words drag out in a nasal drawl, his lopsided grin more mischievous then ever. “I don’t know….should try making advances on you to find out?”
“W-what?!”
Seductively, Jun pushed the pillow from his lap, and drew in closer to Toma, planting on hand on the armrest as he leaned closer, closer and finally so close, Toma squeezed his eyes shut and waited for either the end or the beginning of whatever was to come.
“Toma…” Came an incredibly hot breath near his ear, but the sultry voice broke into laugher almost immediately, and Jun pulled away.
Toma opened one eye, then the other, and found that he had crossed his arms protectively over his chest. It was embarrassing to say the least, and it only made Jun laugh harder.
“You sadist…” Grumbled Toma, picking himself up off the chair. “Anyway, I’ve said what I needed to say, so I’ll go now. Sorry to have interrupted your vacation…”
“Do you have to be somewhere?” Though his laugher subsided, a genuine smile remained, and Jun stood up too, resting his hands on his hips.
“Not really but….”
“So stay for a while.” It wasn’t a request, or even a demand. If anything, it felt like a challenge.
“I don’t know…”
“Stay. I’ll make soumen.” With that Jun leaned over, and with an impeccable nonchalant lightness, brushed his lips against Toma’s cheek.
Cupping his tingling cheek, Toma blushed and followed Jun to the kitchen.