One-shot - Reinventing the World (Part One)
Title: Reinventing the World (Part One)
Pairing: Masuda/Tegoshi
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~13,000
A/N: This is not m-preg.
Summary: When Tegoshi had gone to bed last night, he hadn’t had a son, and by the time Massu had turned up at his door today at noon, he did.
When Tegoshi didn’t answer his door, even after the second, third, fourth time that Massu knocked, he was pretty sure he was well within his rights to get grumpy. They had a meeting at 1 o’clock which was only an hour away, and while Tegoshi didn’t mind breezing into those sorts of things a couple of minutes late, the thought made Massu antsy.
After rapping on the door a couple more times proved fruitless, he started fiddling about in his pocket for his phone so he could send Tegoshi a pouty mail asking if he’d forgotten that he was meant to be driving Massu to the studio today. He was in the middle of asking him if he’d gone out, and if he could get back quick please, because they were going to be late, when Tegoshi finally pushed the door open and poked his head out.
His face was pale, drawn, and his forehead was creased. Massu was pretty sure he’d never seen him look this harrowed before, not even back when he’d been filming for three shows a week and running on two hours of sleep. Being late to their meeting was suddenly the last thing on his mind.
“Massu.”
Tegoshi’s voice sounded the same way he looked; like a rubber band pulled too tight and ready to snap. There was something desperate about it, almost like a note of panic, which made Massu worry because that meant there had to be something terribly wrong and he’d was never the one Tegoshi went to when he had problems; they were friends in the sense that they got along, worked together well and understood each other, but Massu wasn’t who Tegoshi turned to when he needed advice or help - not with anything beyond his opinion on music anyway, and Massu highly doubted the worry lines carved into his forehead were because of misbehaving B flats or C chords.
“I, uh.” He waved his hand, gesturing out into the hall. “Are you ready to go?”
It was a stupid question, and he knew it. Tegoshi was dressed in wrinkled pyjama pants with a baggy t-shirt over the top, and his hair had yet to be brushed. He didn’t look remotely presentable. There was no way he was even considering going out like that.
Tegoshi stared at him with something frighteningly close to despair in his eyes. He took a deep breath, then let it out slow, but it didn’t look like it relieved any of his tension.
“I’m not ready. I’m just. I’m not ready.”
The way he said it left Massu less worried about whether he'd be able to help Tegoshi with his problem and more worried about what his problem was, because it didn’t sound like they were talking about the same thing anymore.
Massu was no good at handling serious situations, but his concern swelled, overcoming his awkward nature, and he gently placed a hand on Tegoshi’s shoulder.
“What’s wrong?”
He got his answer a moment later, but it wasn’t from Tegoshi’s mouth.
A scream came from inside the apartment, a wailing, grating cry, and Tegoshi’s face grew paler still. He ushered Massu inside, telling him to shut the door behind him, and Massu followed, standing bewildered in the entrance as Tegoshi disappeared into the depths of his apartment.
He couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing until Tegoshi reappeared, holding a tiny, screaming person in his arms and looking on the verge of tears himself.
“Baby?” Massu’s voice came out high-pitched and perplexed. “But... why? How?”
Tegoshi didn’t answer; probably didn’t even hear the question. He was trying in vain to calm the child, bouncing it gently, rocking it back and forth, but to no avail. Massu had never seen him look this lost, this overwhelmed before. Even when he’d been utterly miserable in NEWS when it first began; even when their hiatus had been announced and their numbers had gone down from eight to six, Tegoshi hadn’t looked quite this much like the world was ending.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what he wants, Massu.” Tegoshi was trying to remain calm, he could tell, but it was clear that his nerves were fraying and he was cracking around the edges. “He’s not hungry, he doesn’t need changing, he’s not… he wants his mother. He wants his mother, Massu, I can’t. Massu, I can’t.”
“Why is he here?”
Massu wished he was someone else, someone who would say the right thing and not ask stupid stuff that didn’t need to be asked. Shige was smart, he’d know how to fix everything. Or Koyama; his sister had had two, so he knew what to do with babies. Even Ryo or Yamapi, they were both calmer than him, and Ryo was pretty good with children. They’d all be able to do something more for Tegoshi than stand here, asking useless questions.
“Gone,” Tegoshi said in a small voice. “She’s gone.”
Massu swallowed, didn’t know what to say. He watched Tegoshi put the baby over his shoulder and slowly rock from side to side, which seemed to calm him, even if it did nothing for the child.
“His head,” Massu said suddenly, and Tegoshi looked at him, confused and tired. “Babies... their heads are heavy. You need to support them.”
“Oh.” Tegoshi didn’t look like he really understood, but he did as Massu suggested, and held the baby’s head steady as he kept rocking.
It took a long time, but the child began to go limp in Tegoshi’s arms and his eyelids drooped, cries slowly dwindling to nothing. Tegoshi looked relieved, but also like he was a breath away from fainting.
“Maybe you can put him down to sleep?” Massu suggested, but Tegoshi shook his head.
“Don’t want to risk it.” He kept rocking, and Massu suddenly had an vision of Tegoshi collapsing like an unstable block tower. He looked like nothing but sheer will was holding him up.
“Let’s sit down then?” He tried.
Tegoshi seemed hesitant, but eventually agreed. He sat on the couch with Massu, still cradling the baby against his shoulder.
“Why is he here? How long?” Massu asked once they were settled. He kept his voice quiet, terrified of waking the infant after all the work it had taken to put him to sleep.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Tegoshi said, squeezing his eyes shut as though trying to block everything out. “She... his mother. Came by this morning and now she’s left and he misses her. He just cries, Massu. Sleeps or cries.”
Massu felt like he was bombarding Tegoshi with too many questions, but he wasn’t getting the answers he wanted and so he couldn’t help but keep asking.
“Whose is he?” He asked softly, examining the plump arms and legs, so still and tiny against Tegoshi’s chest.
Tegoshi looked at the floor, something akin to shame in his eyes.
“He’s mine.”
Massu felt like he’d been hit in the stomach with a baseball bat and had all the wind knocked out of him. It was like the mental equivalent of being hit by a truck. He couldn’t believe it.
“Yours?”
Tegoshi nodded, and Massu swallowed. Despite the gravity of the situation, he felt a bit of hurt mixed in with the shock. “You never told us. Told me.”
Tegoshi leant his head back against the couch, stared up at the ceiling with glazed eyes and held the baby - his son - a little closer.
“I didn’t know either,” he whispered, and Massu suddenly understood a whole lot better, what had happened and how Tegoshi must be feeling.
It was one thing for your lover to tell you she was pregnant, to watch her belly swell over the weeks, to go shopping together for toys and cribs, to think of baby names. It was quite another to have a girl turn up at your door after months of no contact and shove a small person made up of half your DNA into your arms.
“Who was she?” He asked, resting a hand on Tegoshi’s infant-free shoulder, hoping it would at least provide him some comfort.
It seemed to work, because Tegoshi leant into the touch like it was a lifeline, slumped and sighed.
“I don’t know. A girl. Some girl. Yuri-chan.” He sounded confused, a little dazed. “It was a one-night stand. We were drunk, I wasn’t careful...” He trailed off.
Massu didn’t say anything. He’d never had a one-night stand before, didn’t really know that Tegoshi had either. They didn’t talk about things like that; he’d met a few of Tegoshi’s girlfriends before, heard about a couple of his boyfriends once Tegoshi had confessed to having ‘some of those tendencies’, but they’d never gone deeper than that. They didn’t talk about sex. Massu had never wanted to.
“That was a year ago. Almost a year ago.” Tegoshi continued. “He’s nearly three months old, Massu. I’ve been a … he’s been alive for three months and I didn’t even know.”
Three whole months. Massu was trying, but he still couldn’t think of Tegoshi as a father. But then again, Tegoshi probably couldn’t yet either. When he’d gone to bed last night, he hadn’t had a son, and by the time Massu had turned up at his door today at noon, he did. It didn’t seem real; didn’t seem like it could be real.
He almost asked Tegoshi what he was going to do, but decided at the last second that that wouldn’t be a good idea. Tegoshi didn’t look like he knew, and asking him could just make him panic.
“Do you have baby things?” He asked instead, and Tegoshi bobbed his head once in a sort of half-nod.
“She left me some stuff. Diapers and baby formula. Clothes. A couple of toys.”
Massu licked his lips and nodded, more forcefully than Tegoshi had, as though to add conviction to his sentence.
“Then he’ll be okay,” he assured him, but there was something in Tegoshi’s usually confident eyes that said he didn’t believe it.
He wasn’t going to give the baby up. Tegoshi made this utterly clear to Massu the moment the conversation showed the barest hints of turning towards work and paparazzi and maybe adoption.
It confused Massu, because Tegoshi was obviously terrified; terrified and unprepared, and at odds with the world. The jimusho definitely wouldn’t support it - one idol with a pinch of baby, the perfect recipe for a scandal - and his family probably wouldn’t be thrilled by the news either. His job would make it near impossible.
But Tegoshi had always been the type to think with his heart rather than his head, and it was something Massu couldn’t quite help but like about him. Tegoshi felt things strongly.
“She says she tried.”
He told Massu about the mother - “Yuri-chan” - once they’d gotten a bit of food and water into him (Massu had had to give him quite a bit of help with it so he could keep holding his son) and he’d calmed down considerably.
“She tried for the last three months, but it got too much for her. And now she’s given him to me. She didn’t want a baby.”
“Well. I guess that makes sense,” Massu said uncertainly, but Tegoshi’s face folded into a dark scowl.
“I think it’s disgusting. Abandoning your child like that.” He lifted his head and set his jaw, and it was the most confident he’d looked all day. “I would have supported her. I would have married her if she’d asked.”
He felt a bit selfish for being glad that Tegoshi wasn’t going to be marrying anyone, but Massu just wasn’t ready for that yet. No matter what they said in interviews, he’d had an idea in his head that no one in NEWS was going to marry or have children for the next five, maybe even ten years. Tegoshi especially, he’d thought, wouldn’t be ready for that; he was still too much of a child himself. And now he was sitting across from Massu, holding one.
“I’m not going to be like her, Massu,” Tegoshi said, stroking the wispy hair atop the baby’s head. “One parent already left him, and I’m not going to too. This is my responsibility.”
Massu imagined all the times Tegoshi has wiggled out of paying for lunch, all the times he’d managed to shift his duties onto someone else. But then he realised that this was a very different kind of responsibility, tied up with morals, with a sense of right and wrong and Tegoshi’s constant drive to be the best person he could. And suddenly, the idea of him being responsible didn’t seem so strange anymore.
“If you need help, you can count on me,” Massu found himself saying before he could stop to think about it.
He wasn’t sure he could really offer any help, but when Tegoshi smiled at him, wide, genuine and maybe even a little grateful, Massu was glad he’d said it. He was glad Tegoshi knew he wasn’t alone.
Massu’s cellphone went off while they were sitting on the couch, and he propelled himself away and into the kitchen for fear of the loud ringtone waking the baby. He answered in a hushed voice to find TegoMass’ manager on the other end of the line, and he didn’t sound too happy. After the first few angry sentences, Massu finally realised that it was almost 2 o’clock and they were supposed to have been at the studio an hour ago. He made up a story, saying that neither of them could make it in today because Tegoshi had a bad fever and that Massu had been with him in his apartment all morning, taking care of him. He wasn’t that good at lying, especially not on his feet, but somehow saved himself when he managed to mix the words ‘doctor’ and ‘hospital’ together, stuttering and tripping over the sentence. Their manager bought it, assuming he was just being the usual awkward, tongue-tied Masuda, and told him to take good care of Tegoshi and that they’d reschedule later.
Massu was pleased to find the baby still asleep upon his return, and Tegoshi seemed to have gathered the courage to shift him slightly, holding him so he could study his face and the rise and fall of his tiny chest. Massu watched the two of them, looking for similarities, and thought that maybe he could see the little button nose developing into the same smooth slope and thin bridge as Tegoshi’s. He wondered whose eyes the baby had. Absentmindedly hoped it was his father’s, and then suddenly realised that he didn’t know the child’s name.
“What did she call him?” He asked, leaning in a little closer but still making sure not to touch.
“Sora.”
Massu nodded. Sora, like the sky. It was one of the most popular boys’ names last year, and that alone told him some more about what kind of person this Yuri-chan was. He liked it though, thought she could have chosen a worse name for Tegoshi’s son. It made him think of endless sheets of sprawling blue, of soaring birds, of freedom, and if the boy grew up to be anything like his father, Massu knew his name would suit him.
“It’s nice,” he said, and Tegoshi smiled vaguely, carefully hefted Sora into a more comfortable position in his arms.
“Yeah. It is.”
Tegoshi realised half an hour later that he had no crib for the baby and was all geared up to go out and get one, but Massu gently suggested otherwise.
“You can’t take him with you. He has no car seat.”
Tegoshi stopped in his tracks and looked at Massu thoughtfully. For a horrible second, he thought that Tegoshi was going to ask him to stay here with the baby while he went out.
“Could you go and buy it for me?” He asked instead, and Massu caught a hint of the normal, childless Tegoshi he’d known for the past nine years in his sweet, wheedling tone.
He felt relieved to hear it for reasons he couldn’t explain, and it was almost enough to make him say yes.
Almost, but not quite.
“I don’t want to end up in the tabloids, Tegoshi. That would be troublesome.”
Tegoshi looked a bit exasperated, which Massu didn’t think was fair - the point was valid, after all - but he overlooked it because Tegoshi was under a lot of stress.
“You could probably get away with it, though. You’re practically a scandal virgin.”
Massu was a little offended and felt his bottom lip beginning to jut into a pout. “Just use the internet. It’s way more anonymous.”
Tegoshi looked at him blankly for a second, then laughed softly, shaking his head.
“I should’ve thought of that. My laptop’s in my room. You’ll have to get it for me.”
Massu considered reprimanding him for not saying please, but he knew Tegoshi too well to take offense and ignored his lack of manners in favour of going to get the computer.
They spent the next half hour clicking through baby furniture sites - or rather, Massu did all the clicking and searching while Tegoshi sat back holding Sora and directed him - trying to find the perfect black baby crib and set of black and white skull print bedding. It took another thirty minutes to find it all from somewhere that promised on-the-day delivery, but sometime just before four o’clock, Massu was finally typing in Tegoshi’s credit card details and address into the delivery form. He felt mentally exhausted, but Tegoshi seemed a little happier and Massu figured that was what mattered.
Sora woke up again after it had all been ordered, once Tegoshi and Massu were both sitting down again. He blinked sleepily, looking dozy for a few moments before taking a deep breath and starting to scream. Massu felt himself tense up, expecting the weary, despairing expression to make its way back onto Tegoshi’s face, but when he looked, there was nothing but determination. He watched in fascination as Tegoshi went about changing and feeding Sora, relieved when he quietened down once he had the teat of his bottle in his mouth. Tegoshi looked up to catch Massu’s eyes, grinning in triumph, and Massu smiled back, thinking that maybe Tegoshi would get through this after all. Little steps, he told himself. Little steps.
It took about a week, but Sora finally stopped fussing so much in the absence of his mother, latching onto Tegoshi as his new parent figure instead. Tegoshi had started to look gaunt, with dark bags under his eyes that would’ve taken a metric ton of makeup to cover if he had actually been going to work. The story was that he was firmly ensconced in bed with a really high fever and no, it hadn’t let up yet, sorry. Only Massu knew the truth. They’d have to admit it to management soon, and they both knew it, because in Johnny’s you weren’t sick for more than a day at a time, let alone a week. Two was out of the question.
As a result of being the only one of Tegoshi’s friends privy to his secret, Massu found himself spending a lot of time at his apartment, keeping him company and keeping his spirits up.
He was doing a lot for Tegoshi, and quite willingly, but drew the line at holding Sora himself. Admittedly, it wasn’t because he didn’t want to, it was just… scary. He wasn’t sure about the finer points of how to hold a baby, and it hadn’t gone too well when he’d tried it on the first day.
The delivery guy had turned up at Tegoshi’s apartment with the crib and Tegoshi had handed his grizzling son over to Massu for a moment so he could help the man get the crib where he wanted it. By the time Tegoshi was ready to take his baby back, Sora was screaming at the top of his lungs and Massu was pale faced and terrified that he’d managed to somehow irreversibly damage Tegoshi’s child.
Since then, he’d lost any confidence he might have had, and refused to touch the baby again. Fortunately, Tegoshi didn’t push him to do it, though whether this was because he understood or just a coincidence, Massu didn’t know. Whatever the reason, he wouldn’t hold Sora for fear that all he’d do was cry until Massu put him down, and Tegoshi didn’t make him try.
Watching him was a whole different story. Tegoshi would sometimes put Sora on his back on a rug while he took care of Skull, and Massu would keep an eye him. It was so interesting to sit there and watch as the baby discovered his own hands, staring intently at his own tiny fist as he caught sight of it sailing past his face. He seemed to find his hands far more interesting than anything Massu nudged in his direction to see if he’d play with it; hands and other people’s faces, it appeared, were much more enticing than toys.
Tegoshi did a bit of looking up about babies and developmental stages on the internet, and was proud to tell Massu that Sora was completely normal as far as growing up went. He’d been worried about Sora’s habit of waking up at 2:30 every night wanting to feed, he said, but after Yahoo.co.jp assured him this was perfectly normal, he felt much happier. Massu thought that Tegoshi still looked exhausted, but supposed that was normal too. Besides, if things were going well, he could only be happy about it.
A couple of days into the second week, however, it was time for Tegoshi to go back to work. At first he’d tried to talk Massu into coordinating their schedules so he could take care of Sora while Tegoshi was at work, but Massu had quickly shot that down.
“He needs you,” he’d told him flatly, leaving out the part about how he was too scared to take care of a child on his own. “And you can’t keep it secret forever. You’ve got to talk to management.”
It was rare that Tegoshi listened to what Massu said when he was dead set against an idea, but in the end, it was obvious that Massu was right and no amount of wishing was going to change that. On the day he arranged his meeting with the executives, Massu spent his time unable to focus on the job and without much of an appetite when he went home for dinner.
His heart seized up every time his phone went, and when Tegoshi finally called, it was all he could do to force himself not to faint and to press the accept call key instead.
“I’m keeping him,” Tegoshi’s voice came from over the line, and Massu sagged with relief, sinking onto his bed. “They don’t like it at all but I think they know it’s either let me keep him, or fire me, and NEWS can’t really stand to lose another member.”
TegoMass couldn’t either, Massu thought to himself, or he’d be on his own as just ‘Masu’, and he didn’t like the idea of that.
“They’re not that enthusiastic about the option of disbanding NEWS either, so I get to keep my son and my job,” Tegoshi continued. “But we’re arranging it so I can keep him super secret. I can’t be seen with him anywhere public, so I can’t take the train or park my car on the street. I’m going to be like a Hikikomori with a job.”
Massu laughed under his breath, trying to quell the jolt he always felt whenever Tegoshi said ‘my son’. Even after a week and a half, it still sounded so weird, so unreal.
“Also,” Tegoshi’s tone became light and teasing, “the parka of yours you were looking for is over here. Amongst other things. If you’re not careful, you’re going to end up with a whole wardrobe at my apartment.”
Massu sighed. “That’s because I’ve been spending more time there helping you than I have at my house. My parents already think I’m having an affair with someone.”
Tegoshi’s boisterous laugh rang out from the receiver. “A TegoMass affair. How scandalous. We already have a baby, even.”
Massu laughed along with him and was glad they were talking over the phone so Tegoshi couldn’t see the way his cheeks had heated up.
By the start of Tegoshi’s third week with Sora, the baby had well and truly begun to think of Tegoshi as his main caregiver. It felt like it had been the longest fifteen days of Massu’s life, watching Tegoshi get through something so significant when barely anyone knew what had been going on.
“The fewer, the better,” Tegoshi told Massu when he mentioned that no one from NEWS knew, but most of the cast and crew of ItteQ did. “They’ll find out the next time we work together.”
Massu thought it was a bit silly, but he couldn’t help feeling special that he was the only one of them who’d found out so far. His large role in Sora and Tegoshi’s lives made him feel even more so, and although Tegoshi was starting to need him around less and less for moral support, Massu didn’t cut down the time he spent there. If anything, he was over more often, which didn’t help with his parents’ suspicions that he had someone special in his life, but Massu figured it wasn’t really a big deal.
It was just, Sora seemed to be doing new things every week that he couldn’t do before, like batting the toys on his mobile, or rolling from his back to his stomach. It was so cool, and Massu hated the idea of missing out on it. He liked seeing the way Tegoshi beamed with pride whenever Sora got his hand-eye coordination right, or how he absolutely glowed with joy whenever his baby smiled at him, as though each time proved that he was daddy now, and no longer a stranger. Tegoshi didn’t seem to mind the company either, telling Massu seriously, “It’s so hard being a single papa, but I think I’m pretty good at it.”
He should’ve known from the way that Tegoshi treated his dogs that he’d be a doting father, but when it was directed at an actual baby, instead of rolling his eyes Massu found it rather heart-warming. He enjoyed being around during the evenings, listening to Tegoshi’s loud, dramatic readings from books, or his stupid fairytales about King Yuya and Prince Sora and the five kind-hearted dwarves who all happened to share names with Tegoshi's bandmates. He liked being there when Tegoshi sung nursery rhymes or blew raspberries on Sora’s stomach, making him squeal with glee.
Tegoshi seemed quite happy for him to be over as well. He didn’t like the idea of leaving Sora on his lonesome, even for the short time it took to take the garbage out, but having Massu over meant he could make the five minute trip to the convenience store and replenish necessities.
It was one such time, just after Tegoshi had put Sora down for a nap, that he told Massu he was just going to dash out to get some food.
“Okay.” Massu wasn’t worried, since they’d done it a couple of times before, and Sora had only just dozed off moments ago. He usually slept for a good half hour during his daytime naps, and woke up again long after Tegoshi came back.
Unfortunately for Massu, it didn’t go that way this time. No more than six minutes after Tegoshi had left the building, the sound of crying penetrated through the door of Tegoshi’s room into the living room where Massu was. His first response was to panic and freeze to the spot. The baby was crying, and Tegoshi wasn’t coming back for a while and Massu didn’t know what to do. It took him a full two minutes to get up the courage to approach the room, almost as though there was a ferocious beast waiting there instead of a wailing three-month-old baby.
Sora’s little face was very pink and streaked with tears, and he didn’t pay Massu the blindest bit of attention as he bent over the crib, looking down at him with a puckered brow and worried eyes.
Maybe if he touched him he’d calm down a bit, Massu thought, placing a hand on Sora’s little chest and giving him a pat. Sora didn’t seem to notice, his cries not dwindling in the slightest. Massu hoped he didn’t need feeding. Or changing. He cared about Tegoshi a lot, but there were some things he just wasn’t willing to do for him.
When Sora kept crying, Massu figured that he may as well just pick him up. After all, no one was here to see if he failed, and he’d feel guilty if he just left Tegoshi’s kid crying in his crib. Besides, if he was going to cry whether Massu was holding him or not, it’d be better if he tried at least.
He slid his hands underneath Sora’s little body and lifted him from his bed, holding him so his head was supported in the crook of his arm.
“Hello!” Massu said brightly, in a high-pitched voice that sounded stupid even to him. “You can stop crying now… please.”
He tried smiling, and Sora stared up into his face, took a deep breath and blinked. Then he smiled back. Massu was so surprised that he almost dropped him. Luckily for him, he didn’t, and a feeling of wonder washed over him.
“Do you like me now?” He asked, and the fake smile he'd plastered to his face curved into something genuine. “I’ve gotcha, so don’t worry. Daddy will be home soon!”
Sora kept smiling and gurgled, and Massu felt a giggle bubble up inside him. He was still cooing and talking to the baby in a ridiculous voice when he heard the door creak behind him, turning to look at Tegoshi with a deer caught in the headlights expression.
“He, uh. Was crying,” Massu said, as though he needed to explain why he was holding Tegoshi’s child. When Tegoshi didn’t say anything, Massu took a step closer and awkwardly held Sora out to him. “Um… here?”
The soft look on Tegoshi’s face as he took Sora from him gave Massu knots in his stomach that didn’t untie until he left later that evening.
It was sort of like an epiphany for Massu. Now that he realised he could hold Sora without him crying, that Sora actually liked Massu enough to share a smile with him, he wanted to do it all the time. He actively joined in when Tegoshi played games with his son instead of watching from a distance, or he’d let Tegoshi hand Sora to him when he needed free hands instead of putting him down on the rug. He never thought he’d get so involved with a friend’s baby, but figured this was a special case. It was Tegoshi, after all.
The rest of NEWS’ introduction to the baby was a little dramatic, if only because Tegoshi was his usual thoughtless self and didn’t think to warn any of them about Sora before he turned up at a group photoshoot holding him.
At first, the other four guys thought that he was a staff member’s child, or that they were doing a shoot with a baby today. It wasn’t until a few minutes in that Shige, who had been talking quietly with Tegoshi until that moment, shrieked, “He’s yours?!” at the top of his lungs that the truth got out.
Yamapi and Ryo were quiet about it, but it was clear from the looks on their faces that they were shocked. Shige called Tegoshi by about every variation of the word ‘stupid’ that he could come up with before a frown from Ryo and a well-timed comment from Yamapi about how Tegoshi was probably already aware of the gravity of the situation shut him up.
Koyama just stared for the longest time, hands over his mouth.
It took them a long time to finish the shoot between everyone’s distraction, and Tegoshi’s frequent trips over to Sora to get him to quieten down. Yamapi and Ryo had to leave pretty quickly for other appointments after, but Massu saw the two of them talk to Tegoshi separately before they left, and from the smile on his face, it seemed like what they said must have been pretty encouraging.
The other four of them stuck around. Shige hung back, chatting with the staff, but Koyama finally got to approach Sora for the first time, looking at the baby with awe in his face.
“Tego…” He choked out, tears springing up in his eyes, and Massu felt a little uncomfortable watching. It was strange to see Koyama so emotional over the whole thing when he hadn’t been involved with it until now.
“Are you crying, Kei-chan?” Tegoshi laughed, letting Koyama press his fingers to the baby’s chubby cheeks.
“You’re a daddy. You didn’t tell me.” Koyama was obviously trying not to sound accusatory, but the slight sadness in his tone was probably worse, and Tegoshi immediately sobered up.
“I haven’t been telling anyone,” he assured him. “It’s meant to be a secret, so I haven’t been going out of my way…”
His words seemed to placate Koyama, but they just made Massu feel funny. Up until now, it’d made him feel special that he was the only member of NEWS who had a clue about Sora’s existence. But now, he wondered, if it hadn’t been for the circumstances in which he found out, would Tegoshi have told him sooner? The idea that he probably wouldn’t have been the first person on Tegoshi’s list to go to had he not literally turned up at Tegoshi’s door the first day Sora arrived, made him feel jealous and a little bit sick. He’d been there for so many firsts - the first time he’d rolled over, the first time he’d pushed himself up on his arms - and the thought that that could’ve gone to someone else, that he could’ve missed them, made him want to fall into a dark sulk.
For once, though, his bad mood didn’t last for long. All it took was the news from Tegoshi that Sora had stopped feeding at night and was actually sleeping through for five to six hours at a time, and he was as cheerful and proud as if it was his own son.
“It’s so good to actually have a full night’s sleep,” Tegoshi told him over dinner. Massu had brought him something so he’d stop subsisting solely on cup noodles, and from the way Tegoshi was chowing it down, it looked like he’d needed it. “It was okay when I could nap during the day, but I can’t really do that anymore, so… I think this is a good step.”
He beamed at Massu, and Massu’s eyes crinkled as he smiled back.
Indeed, Tegoshi started looking happier and healthier over the next week, no doubt the result of getting a substantial amount of shuteye for the first time in over a month. Sora’s feeding pattern started to regularise as well, and it felt like there was nowhere to go from here but up.
Of course, the moment Massu thought that, something just had to go wrong.
It was hard to know how they managed to do it. Tegoshi had been so careful since the very beginning, but someone eventually managed to get a shot of him with Sora, and soon it was all over the gossip magazines. Massu flew into a blind panic the second he found out, almost sure that Tegoshi was going to return to the same anxious mess he’d been when Yuri had up and left Sora with him a month and a half before. The thought that this could mean the end of NEWS and TegoMass if the executives so decided it barely crossed his mind; it was Tegoshi’s wellbeing that he had in the forefront of his mind, and Massu was pretty sure he broke every traffic rule in Japan that it was possible to break on the drive over to Tegoshi’s apartment.
Tegoshi had long since given Massu a key to his place, telling him that since he spent almost half his time and left half his stuff there anyway, he may as well have one.
Massu let himself in expecting the worst, but all he found was Tegoshi sitting placidly on the sofa, feeding Sora from his bottle.
“Hey, Massu,” he greeted him with a cheery smile, nothing out of the ordinary. “I thought you were having dinner at home tonight.”
He must not know yet. That was the only explanation Massu could think of as to why Tegoshi would be so calm. He half wanted to pretend he didn’t know anything, but Tegoshi would definitely find out later, and there was no point prolonging the inevitable.
“Your… your picture,” Massu began, voice shaky. “It was…”
“In the tabloids? Yeah, I know. It sucks.” Tegoshi’s reply was heartfelt, but still strangely flippant. “Julie-san called me up herself, but there’s nothing we can do about it. We can’t make something up, since that’d make it worse when the truth got out. And I’m not willing to lie about Sora either.”
Massu stared, unable to think of anything to say. Eventually he just sat down, and Sora let out a loud noise soon after, leaning in Massu’s direction.
Tegoshi grinned. “He wants you,” he told him, handing the baby over.
Massu’s heart fluttered as he took Sora in his arms, and even though he knew things were going to be difficult for quite some time from here on out, with the three of them in Tegoshi’s apartment, squashed up on the couch together, he felt strangely at peace.
Part Two
Pairing: Masuda/Tegoshi
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~13,000
A/N: This is not m-preg.
Summary: When Tegoshi had gone to bed last night, he hadn’t had a son, and by the time Massu had turned up at his door today at noon, he did.
When Tegoshi didn’t answer his door, even after the second, third, fourth time that Massu knocked, he was pretty sure he was well within his rights to get grumpy. They had a meeting at 1 o’clock which was only an hour away, and while Tegoshi didn’t mind breezing into those sorts of things a couple of minutes late, the thought made Massu antsy.
After rapping on the door a couple more times proved fruitless, he started fiddling about in his pocket for his phone so he could send Tegoshi a pouty mail asking if he’d forgotten that he was meant to be driving Massu to the studio today. He was in the middle of asking him if he’d gone out, and if he could get back quick please, because they were going to be late, when Tegoshi finally pushed the door open and poked his head out.
His face was pale, drawn, and his forehead was creased. Massu was pretty sure he’d never seen him look this harrowed before, not even back when he’d been filming for three shows a week and running on two hours of sleep. Being late to their meeting was suddenly the last thing on his mind.
“Massu.”
Tegoshi’s voice sounded the same way he looked; like a rubber band pulled too tight and ready to snap. There was something desperate about it, almost like a note of panic, which made Massu worry because that meant there had to be something terribly wrong and he’d was never the one Tegoshi went to when he had problems; they were friends in the sense that they got along, worked together well and understood each other, but Massu wasn’t who Tegoshi turned to when he needed advice or help - not with anything beyond his opinion on music anyway, and Massu highly doubted the worry lines carved into his forehead were because of misbehaving B flats or C chords.
“I, uh.” He waved his hand, gesturing out into the hall. “Are you ready to go?”
It was a stupid question, and he knew it. Tegoshi was dressed in wrinkled pyjama pants with a baggy t-shirt over the top, and his hair had yet to be brushed. He didn’t look remotely presentable. There was no way he was even considering going out like that.
Tegoshi stared at him with something frighteningly close to despair in his eyes. He took a deep breath, then let it out slow, but it didn’t look like it relieved any of his tension.
“I’m not ready. I’m just. I’m not ready.”
The way he said it left Massu less worried about whether he'd be able to help Tegoshi with his problem and more worried about what his problem was, because it didn’t sound like they were talking about the same thing anymore.
Massu was no good at handling serious situations, but his concern swelled, overcoming his awkward nature, and he gently placed a hand on Tegoshi’s shoulder.
“What’s wrong?”
He got his answer a moment later, but it wasn’t from Tegoshi’s mouth.
A scream came from inside the apartment, a wailing, grating cry, and Tegoshi’s face grew paler still. He ushered Massu inside, telling him to shut the door behind him, and Massu followed, standing bewildered in the entrance as Tegoshi disappeared into the depths of his apartment.
He couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing until Tegoshi reappeared, holding a tiny, screaming person in his arms and looking on the verge of tears himself.
“Baby?” Massu’s voice came out high-pitched and perplexed. “But... why? How?”
Tegoshi didn’t answer; probably didn’t even hear the question. He was trying in vain to calm the child, bouncing it gently, rocking it back and forth, but to no avail. Massu had never seen him look this lost, this overwhelmed before. Even when he’d been utterly miserable in NEWS when it first began; even when their hiatus had been announced and their numbers had gone down from eight to six, Tegoshi hadn’t looked quite this much like the world was ending.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what he wants, Massu.” Tegoshi was trying to remain calm, he could tell, but it was clear that his nerves were fraying and he was cracking around the edges. “He’s not hungry, he doesn’t need changing, he’s not… he wants his mother. He wants his mother, Massu, I can’t. Massu, I can’t.”
“Why is he here?”
Massu wished he was someone else, someone who would say the right thing and not ask stupid stuff that didn’t need to be asked. Shige was smart, he’d know how to fix everything. Or Koyama; his sister had had two, so he knew what to do with babies. Even Ryo or Yamapi, they were both calmer than him, and Ryo was pretty good with children. They’d all be able to do something more for Tegoshi than stand here, asking useless questions.
“Gone,” Tegoshi said in a small voice. “She’s gone.”
Massu swallowed, didn’t know what to say. He watched Tegoshi put the baby over his shoulder and slowly rock from side to side, which seemed to calm him, even if it did nothing for the child.
“His head,” Massu said suddenly, and Tegoshi looked at him, confused and tired. “Babies... their heads are heavy. You need to support them.”
“Oh.” Tegoshi didn’t look like he really understood, but he did as Massu suggested, and held the baby’s head steady as he kept rocking.
It took a long time, but the child began to go limp in Tegoshi’s arms and his eyelids drooped, cries slowly dwindling to nothing. Tegoshi looked relieved, but also like he was a breath away from fainting.
“Maybe you can put him down to sleep?” Massu suggested, but Tegoshi shook his head.
“Don’t want to risk it.” He kept rocking, and Massu suddenly had an vision of Tegoshi collapsing like an unstable block tower. He looked like nothing but sheer will was holding him up.
“Let’s sit down then?” He tried.
Tegoshi seemed hesitant, but eventually agreed. He sat on the couch with Massu, still cradling the baby against his shoulder.
“Why is he here? How long?” Massu asked once they were settled. He kept his voice quiet, terrified of waking the infant after all the work it had taken to put him to sleep.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Tegoshi said, squeezing his eyes shut as though trying to block everything out. “She... his mother. Came by this morning and now she’s left and he misses her. He just cries, Massu. Sleeps or cries.”
Massu felt like he was bombarding Tegoshi with too many questions, but he wasn’t getting the answers he wanted and so he couldn’t help but keep asking.
“Whose is he?” He asked softly, examining the plump arms and legs, so still and tiny against Tegoshi’s chest.
Tegoshi looked at the floor, something akin to shame in his eyes.
“He’s mine.”
Massu felt like he’d been hit in the stomach with a baseball bat and had all the wind knocked out of him. It was like the mental equivalent of being hit by a truck. He couldn’t believe it.
“Yours?”
Tegoshi nodded, and Massu swallowed. Despite the gravity of the situation, he felt a bit of hurt mixed in with the shock. “You never told us. Told me.”
Tegoshi leant his head back against the couch, stared up at the ceiling with glazed eyes and held the baby - his son - a little closer.
“I didn’t know either,” he whispered, and Massu suddenly understood a whole lot better, what had happened and how Tegoshi must be feeling.
It was one thing for your lover to tell you she was pregnant, to watch her belly swell over the weeks, to go shopping together for toys and cribs, to think of baby names. It was quite another to have a girl turn up at your door after months of no contact and shove a small person made up of half your DNA into your arms.
“Who was she?” He asked, resting a hand on Tegoshi’s infant-free shoulder, hoping it would at least provide him some comfort.
It seemed to work, because Tegoshi leant into the touch like it was a lifeline, slumped and sighed.
“I don’t know. A girl. Some girl. Yuri-chan.” He sounded confused, a little dazed. “It was a one-night stand. We were drunk, I wasn’t careful...” He trailed off.
Massu didn’t say anything. He’d never had a one-night stand before, didn’t really know that Tegoshi had either. They didn’t talk about things like that; he’d met a few of Tegoshi’s girlfriends before, heard about a couple of his boyfriends once Tegoshi had confessed to having ‘some of those tendencies’, but they’d never gone deeper than that. They didn’t talk about sex. Massu had never wanted to.
“That was a year ago. Almost a year ago.” Tegoshi continued. “He’s nearly three months old, Massu. I’ve been a … he’s been alive for three months and I didn’t even know.”
Three whole months. Massu was trying, but he still couldn’t think of Tegoshi as a father. But then again, Tegoshi probably couldn’t yet either. When he’d gone to bed last night, he hadn’t had a son, and by the time Massu had turned up at his door today at noon, he did. It didn’t seem real; didn’t seem like it could be real.
He almost asked Tegoshi what he was going to do, but decided at the last second that that wouldn’t be a good idea. Tegoshi didn’t look like he knew, and asking him could just make him panic.
“Do you have baby things?” He asked instead, and Tegoshi bobbed his head once in a sort of half-nod.
“She left me some stuff. Diapers and baby formula. Clothes. A couple of toys.”
Massu licked his lips and nodded, more forcefully than Tegoshi had, as though to add conviction to his sentence.
“Then he’ll be okay,” he assured him, but there was something in Tegoshi’s usually confident eyes that said he didn’t believe it.
He wasn’t going to give the baby up. Tegoshi made this utterly clear to Massu the moment the conversation showed the barest hints of turning towards work and paparazzi and maybe adoption.
It confused Massu, because Tegoshi was obviously terrified; terrified and unprepared, and at odds with the world. The jimusho definitely wouldn’t support it - one idol with a pinch of baby, the perfect recipe for a scandal - and his family probably wouldn’t be thrilled by the news either. His job would make it near impossible.
But Tegoshi had always been the type to think with his heart rather than his head, and it was something Massu couldn’t quite help but like about him. Tegoshi felt things strongly.
“She says she tried.”
He told Massu about the mother - “Yuri-chan” - once they’d gotten a bit of food and water into him (Massu had had to give him quite a bit of help with it so he could keep holding his son) and he’d calmed down considerably.
“She tried for the last three months, but it got too much for her. And now she’s given him to me. She didn’t want a baby.”
“Well. I guess that makes sense,” Massu said uncertainly, but Tegoshi’s face folded into a dark scowl.
“I think it’s disgusting. Abandoning your child like that.” He lifted his head and set his jaw, and it was the most confident he’d looked all day. “I would have supported her. I would have married her if she’d asked.”
He felt a bit selfish for being glad that Tegoshi wasn’t going to be marrying anyone, but Massu just wasn’t ready for that yet. No matter what they said in interviews, he’d had an idea in his head that no one in NEWS was going to marry or have children for the next five, maybe even ten years. Tegoshi especially, he’d thought, wouldn’t be ready for that; he was still too much of a child himself. And now he was sitting across from Massu, holding one.
“I’m not going to be like her, Massu,” Tegoshi said, stroking the wispy hair atop the baby’s head. “One parent already left him, and I’m not going to too. This is my responsibility.”
Massu imagined all the times Tegoshi has wiggled out of paying for lunch, all the times he’d managed to shift his duties onto someone else. But then he realised that this was a very different kind of responsibility, tied up with morals, with a sense of right and wrong and Tegoshi’s constant drive to be the best person he could. And suddenly, the idea of him being responsible didn’t seem so strange anymore.
“If you need help, you can count on me,” Massu found himself saying before he could stop to think about it.
He wasn’t sure he could really offer any help, but when Tegoshi smiled at him, wide, genuine and maybe even a little grateful, Massu was glad he’d said it. He was glad Tegoshi knew he wasn’t alone.
Massu’s cellphone went off while they were sitting on the couch, and he propelled himself away and into the kitchen for fear of the loud ringtone waking the baby. He answered in a hushed voice to find TegoMass’ manager on the other end of the line, and he didn’t sound too happy. After the first few angry sentences, Massu finally realised that it was almost 2 o’clock and they were supposed to have been at the studio an hour ago. He made up a story, saying that neither of them could make it in today because Tegoshi had a bad fever and that Massu had been with him in his apartment all morning, taking care of him. He wasn’t that good at lying, especially not on his feet, but somehow saved himself when he managed to mix the words ‘doctor’ and ‘hospital’ together, stuttering and tripping over the sentence. Their manager bought it, assuming he was just being the usual awkward, tongue-tied Masuda, and told him to take good care of Tegoshi and that they’d reschedule later.
Massu was pleased to find the baby still asleep upon his return, and Tegoshi seemed to have gathered the courage to shift him slightly, holding him so he could study his face and the rise and fall of his tiny chest. Massu watched the two of them, looking for similarities, and thought that maybe he could see the little button nose developing into the same smooth slope and thin bridge as Tegoshi’s. He wondered whose eyes the baby had. Absentmindedly hoped it was his father’s, and then suddenly realised that he didn’t know the child’s name.
“What did she call him?” He asked, leaning in a little closer but still making sure not to touch.
“Sora.”
Massu nodded. Sora, like the sky. It was one of the most popular boys’ names last year, and that alone told him some more about what kind of person this Yuri-chan was. He liked it though, thought she could have chosen a worse name for Tegoshi’s son. It made him think of endless sheets of sprawling blue, of soaring birds, of freedom, and if the boy grew up to be anything like his father, Massu knew his name would suit him.
“It’s nice,” he said, and Tegoshi smiled vaguely, carefully hefted Sora into a more comfortable position in his arms.
“Yeah. It is.”
Tegoshi realised half an hour later that he had no crib for the baby and was all geared up to go out and get one, but Massu gently suggested otherwise.
“You can’t take him with you. He has no car seat.”
Tegoshi stopped in his tracks and looked at Massu thoughtfully. For a horrible second, he thought that Tegoshi was going to ask him to stay here with the baby while he went out.
“Could you go and buy it for me?” He asked instead, and Massu caught a hint of the normal, childless Tegoshi he’d known for the past nine years in his sweet, wheedling tone.
He felt relieved to hear it for reasons he couldn’t explain, and it was almost enough to make him say yes.
Almost, but not quite.
“I don’t want to end up in the tabloids, Tegoshi. That would be troublesome.”
Tegoshi looked a bit exasperated, which Massu didn’t think was fair - the point was valid, after all - but he overlooked it because Tegoshi was under a lot of stress.
“You could probably get away with it, though. You’re practically a scandal virgin.”
Massu was a little offended and felt his bottom lip beginning to jut into a pout. “Just use the internet. It’s way more anonymous.”
Tegoshi looked at him blankly for a second, then laughed softly, shaking his head.
“I should’ve thought of that. My laptop’s in my room. You’ll have to get it for me.”
Massu considered reprimanding him for not saying please, but he knew Tegoshi too well to take offense and ignored his lack of manners in favour of going to get the computer.
They spent the next half hour clicking through baby furniture sites - or rather, Massu did all the clicking and searching while Tegoshi sat back holding Sora and directed him - trying to find the perfect black baby crib and set of black and white skull print bedding. It took another thirty minutes to find it all from somewhere that promised on-the-day delivery, but sometime just before four o’clock, Massu was finally typing in Tegoshi’s credit card details and address into the delivery form. He felt mentally exhausted, but Tegoshi seemed a little happier and Massu figured that was what mattered.
Sora woke up again after it had all been ordered, once Tegoshi and Massu were both sitting down again. He blinked sleepily, looking dozy for a few moments before taking a deep breath and starting to scream. Massu felt himself tense up, expecting the weary, despairing expression to make its way back onto Tegoshi’s face, but when he looked, there was nothing but determination. He watched in fascination as Tegoshi went about changing and feeding Sora, relieved when he quietened down once he had the teat of his bottle in his mouth. Tegoshi looked up to catch Massu’s eyes, grinning in triumph, and Massu smiled back, thinking that maybe Tegoshi would get through this after all. Little steps, he told himself. Little steps.
It took about a week, but Sora finally stopped fussing so much in the absence of his mother, latching onto Tegoshi as his new parent figure instead. Tegoshi had started to look gaunt, with dark bags under his eyes that would’ve taken a metric ton of makeup to cover if he had actually been going to work. The story was that he was firmly ensconced in bed with a really high fever and no, it hadn’t let up yet, sorry. Only Massu knew the truth. They’d have to admit it to management soon, and they both knew it, because in Johnny’s you weren’t sick for more than a day at a time, let alone a week. Two was out of the question.
As a result of being the only one of Tegoshi’s friends privy to his secret, Massu found himself spending a lot of time at his apartment, keeping him company and keeping his spirits up.
He was doing a lot for Tegoshi, and quite willingly, but drew the line at holding Sora himself. Admittedly, it wasn’t because he didn’t want to, it was just… scary. He wasn’t sure about the finer points of how to hold a baby, and it hadn’t gone too well when he’d tried it on the first day.
The delivery guy had turned up at Tegoshi’s apartment with the crib and Tegoshi had handed his grizzling son over to Massu for a moment so he could help the man get the crib where he wanted it. By the time Tegoshi was ready to take his baby back, Sora was screaming at the top of his lungs and Massu was pale faced and terrified that he’d managed to somehow irreversibly damage Tegoshi’s child.
Since then, he’d lost any confidence he might have had, and refused to touch the baby again. Fortunately, Tegoshi didn’t push him to do it, though whether this was because he understood or just a coincidence, Massu didn’t know. Whatever the reason, he wouldn’t hold Sora for fear that all he’d do was cry until Massu put him down, and Tegoshi didn’t make him try.
Watching him was a whole different story. Tegoshi would sometimes put Sora on his back on a rug while he took care of Skull, and Massu would keep an eye him. It was so interesting to sit there and watch as the baby discovered his own hands, staring intently at his own tiny fist as he caught sight of it sailing past his face. He seemed to find his hands far more interesting than anything Massu nudged in his direction to see if he’d play with it; hands and other people’s faces, it appeared, were much more enticing than toys.
Tegoshi did a bit of looking up about babies and developmental stages on the internet, and was proud to tell Massu that Sora was completely normal as far as growing up went. He’d been worried about Sora’s habit of waking up at 2:30 every night wanting to feed, he said, but after Yahoo.co.jp assured him this was perfectly normal, he felt much happier. Massu thought that Tegoshi still looked exhausted, but supposed that was normal too. Besides, if things were going well, he could only be happy about it.
A couple of days into the second week, however, it was time for Tegoshi to go back to work. At first he’d tried to talk Massu into coordinating their schedules so he could take care of Sora while Tegoshi was at work, but Massu had quickly shot that down.
“He needs you,” he’d told him flatly, leaving out the part about how he was too scared to take care of a child on his own. “And you can’t keep it secret forever. You’ve got to talk to management.”
It was rare that Tegoshi listened to what Massu said when he was dead set against an idea, but in the end, it was obvious that Massu was right and no amount of wishing was going to change that. On the day he arranged his meeting with the executives, Massu spent his time unable to focus on the job and without much of an appetite when he went home for dinner.
His heart seized up every time his phone went, and when Tegoshi finally called, it was all he could do to force himself not to faint and to press the accept call key instead.
“I’m keeping him,” Tegoshi’s voice came from over the line, and Massu sagged with relief, sinking onto his bed. “They don’t like it at all but I think they know it’s either let me keep him, or fire me, and NEWS can’t really stand to lose another member.”
TegoMass couldn’t either, Massu thought to himself, or he’d be on his own as just ‘Masu’, and he didn’t like the idea of that.
“They’re not that enthusiastic about the option of disbanding NEWS either, so I get to keep my son and my job,” Tegoshi continued. “But we’re arranging it so I can keep him super secret. I can’t be seen with him anywhere public, so I can’t take the train or park my car on the street. I’m going to be like a Hikikomori with a job.”
Massu laughed under his breath, trying to quell the jolt he always felt whenever Tegoshi said ‘my son’. Even after a week and a half, it still sounded so weird, so unreal.
“Also,” Tegoshi’s tone became light and teasing, “the parka of yours you were looking for is over here. Amongst other things. If you’re not careful, you’re going to end up with a whole wardrobe at my apartment.”
Massu sighed. “That’s because I’ve been spending more time there helping you than I have at my house. My parents already think I’m having an affair with someone.”
Tegoshi’s boisterous laugh rang out from the receiver. “A TegoMass affair. How scandalous. We already have a baby, even.”
Massu laughed along with him and was glad they were talking over the phone so Tegoshi couldn’t see the way his cheeks had heated up.
By the start of Tegoshi’s third week with Sora, the baby had well and truly begun to think of Tegoshi as his main caregiver. It felt like it had been the longest fifteen days of Massu’s life, watching Tegoshi get through something so significant when barely anyone knew what had been going on.
“The fewer, the better,” Tegoshi told Massu when he mentioned that no one from NEWS knew, but most of the cast and crew of ItteQ did. “They’ll find out the next time we work together.”
Massu thought it was a bit silly, but he couldn’t help feeling special that he was the only one of them who’d found out so far. His large role in Sora and Tegoshi’s lives made him feel even more so, and although Tegoshi was starting to need him around less and less for moral support, Massu didn’t cut down the time he spent there. If anything, he was over more often, which didn’t help with his parents’ suspicions that he had someone special in his life, but Massu figured it wasn’t really a big deal.
It was just, Sora seemed to be doing new things every week that he couldn’t do before, like batting the toys on his mobile, or rolling from his back to his stomach. It was so cool, and Massu hated the idea of missing out on it. He liked seeing the way Tegoshi beamed with pride whenever Sora got his hand-eye coordination right, or how he absolutely glowed with joy whenever his baby smiled at him, as though each time proved that he was daddy now, and no longer a stranger. Tegoshi didn’t seem to mind the company either, telling Massu seriously, “It’s so hard being a single papa, but I think I’m pretty good at it.”
He should’ve known from the way that Tegoshi treated his dogs that he’d be a doting father, but when it was directed at an actual baby, instead of rolling his eyes Massu found it rather heart-warming. He enjoyed being around during the evenings, listening to Tegoshi’s loud, dramatic readings from books, or his stupid fairytales about King Yuya and Prince Sora and the five kind-hearted dwarves who all happened to share names with Tegoshi's bandmates. He liked being there when Tegoshi sung nursery rhymes or blew raspberries on Sora’s stomach, making him squeal with glee.
Tegoshi seemed quite happy for him to be over as well. He didn’t like the idea of leaving Sora on his lonesome, even for the short time it took to take the garbage out, but having Massu over meant he could make the five minute trip to the convenience store and replenish necessities.
It was one such time, just after Tegoshi had put Sora down for a nap, that he told Massu he was just going to dash out to get some food.
“Okay.” Massu wasn’t worried, since they’d done it a couple of times before, and Sora had only just dozed off moments ago. He usually slept for a good half hour during his daytime naps, and woke up again long after Tegoshi came back.
Unfortunately for Massu, it didn’t go that way this time. No more than six minutes after Tegoshi had left the building, the sound of crying penetrated through the door of Tegoshi’s room into the living room where Massu was. His first response was to panic and freeze to the spot. The baby was crying, and Tegoshi wasn’t coming back for a while and Massu didn’t know what to do. It took him a full two minutes to get up the courage to approach the room, almost as though there was a ferocious beast waiting there instead of a wailing three-month-old baby.
Sora’s little face was very pink and streaked with tears, and he didn’t pay Massu the blindest bit of attention as he bent over the crib, looking down at him with a puckered brow and worried eyes.
Maybe if he touched him he’d calm down a bit, Massu thought, placing a hand on Sora’s little chest and giving him a pat. Sora didn’t seem to notice, his cries not dwindling in the slightest. Massu hoped he didn’t need feeding. Or changing. He cared about Tegoshi a lot, but there were some things he just wasn’t willing to do for him.
When Sora kept crying, Massu figured that he may as well just pick him up. After all, no one was here to see if he failed, and he’d feel guilty if he just left Tegoshi’s kid crying in his crib. Besides, if he was going to cry whether Massu was holding him or not, it’d be better if he tried at least.
He slid his hands underneath Sora’s little body and lifted him from his bed, holding him so his head was supported in the crook of his arm.
“Hello!” Massu said brightly, in a high-pitched voice that sounded stupid even to him. “You can stop crying now… please.”
He tried smiling, and Sora stared up into his face, took a deep breath and blinked. Then he smiled back. Massu was so surprised that he almost dropped him. Luckily for him, he didn’t, and a feeling of wonder washed over him.
“Do you like me now?” He asked, and the fake smile he'd plastered to his face curved into something genuine. “I’ve gotcha, so don’t worry. Daddy will be home soon!”
Sora kept smiling and gurgled, and Massu felt a giggle bubble up inside him. He was still cooing and talking to the baby in a ridiculous voice when he heard the door creak behind him, turning to look at Tegoshi with a deer caught in the headlights expression.
“He, uh. Was crying,” Massu said, as though he needed to explain why he was holding Tegoshi’s child. When Tegoshi didn’t say anything, Massu took a step closer and awkwardly held Sora out to him. “Um… here?”
The soft look on Tegoshi’s face as he took Sora from him gave Massu knots in his stomach that didn’t untie until he left later that evening.
It was sort of like an epiphany for Massu. Now that he realised he could hold Sora without him crying, that Sora actually liked Massu enough to share a smile with him, he wanted to do it all the time. He actively joined in when Tegoshi played games with his son instead of watching from a distance, or he’d let Tegoshi hand Sora to him when he needed free hands instead of putting him down on the rug. He never thought he’d get so involved with a friend’s baby, but figured this was a special case. It was Tegoshi, after all.
The rest of NEWS’ introduction to the baby was a little dramatic, if only because Tegoshi was his usual thoughtless self and didn’t think to warn any of them about Sora before he turned up at a group photoshoot holding him.
At first, the other four guys thought that he was a staff member’s child, or that they were doing a shoot with a baby today. It wasn’t until a few minutes in that Shige, who had been talking quietly with Tegoshi until that moment, shrieked, “He’s yours?!” at the top of his lungs that the truth got out.
Yamapi and Ryo were quiet about it, but it was clear from the looks on their faces that they were shocked. Shige called Tegoshi by about every variation of the word ‘stupid’ that he could come up with before a frown from Ryo and a well-timed comment from Yamapi about how Tegoshi was probably already aware of the gravity of the situation shut him up.
Koyama just stared for the longest time, hands over his mouth.
It took them a long time to finish the shoot between everyone’s distraction, and Tegoshi’s frequent trips over to Sora to get him to quieten down. Yamapi and Ryo had to leave pretty quickly for other appointments after, but Massu saw the two of them talk to Tegoshi separately before they left, and from the smile on his face, it seemed like what they said must have been pretty encouraging.
The other four of them stuck around. Shige hung back, chatting with the staff, but Koyama finally got to approach Sora for the first time, looking at the baby with awe in his face.
“Tego…” He choked out, tears springing up in his eyes, and Massu felt a little uncomfortable watching. It was strange to see Koyama so emotional over the whole thing when he hadn’t been involved with it until now.
“Are you crying, Kei-chan?” Tegoshi laughed, letting Koyama press his fingers to the baby’s chubby cheeks.
“You’re a daddy. You didn’t tell me.” Koyama was obviously trying not to sound accusatory, but the slight sadness in his tone was probably worse, and Tegoshi immediately sobered up.
“I haven’t been telling anyone,” he assured him. “It’s meant to be a secret, so I haven’t been going out of my way…”
His words seemed to placate Koyama, but they just made Massu feel funny. Up until now, it’d made him feel special that he was the only member of NEWS who had a clue about Sora’s existence. But now, he wondered, if it hadn’t been for the circumstances in which he found out, would Tegoshi have told him sooner? The idea that he probably wouldn’t have been the first person on Tegoshi’s list to go to had he not literally turned up at Tegoshi’s door the first day Sora arrived, made him feel jealous and a little bit sick. He’d been there for so many firsts - the first time he’d rolled over, the first time he’d pushed himself up on his arms - and the thought that that could’ve gone to someone else, that he could’ve missed them, made him want to fall into a dark sulk.
For once, though, his bad mood didn’t last for long. All it took was the news from Tegoshi that Sora had stopped feeding at night and was actually sleeping through for five to six hours at a time, and he was as cheerful and proud as if it was his own son.
“It’s so good to actually have a full night’s sleep,” Tegoshi told him over dinner. Massu had brought him something so he’d stop subsisting solely on cup noodles, and from the way Tegoshi was chowing it down, it looked like he’d needed it. “It was okay when I could nap during the day, but I can’t really do that anymore, so… I think this is a good step.”
He beamed at Massu, and Massu’s eyes crinkled as he smiled back.
Indeed, Tegoshi started looking happier and healthier over the next week, no doubt the result of getting a substantial amount of shuteye for the first time in over a month. Sora’s feeding pattern started to regularise as well, and it felt like there was nowhere to go from here but up.
Of course, the moment Massu thought that, something just had to go wrong.
It was hard to know how they managed to do it. Tegoshi had been so careful since the very beginning, but someone eventually managed to get a shot of him with Sora, and soon it was all over the gossip magazines. Massu flew into a blind panic the second he found out, almost sure that Tegoshi was going to return to the same anxious mess he’d been when Yuri had up and left Sora with him a month and a half before. The thought that this could mean the end of NEWS and TegoMass if the executives so decided it barely crossed his mind; it was Tegoshi’s wellbeing that he had in the forefront of his mind, and Massu was pretty sure he broke every traffic rule in Japan that it was possible to break on the drive over to Tegoshi’s apartment.
Tegoshi had long since given Massu a key to his place, telling him that since he spent almost half his time and left half his stuff there anyway, he may as well have one.
Massu let himself in expecting the worst, but all he found was Tegoshi sitting placidly on the sofa, feeding Sora from his bottle.
“Hey, Massu,” he greeted him with a cheery smile, nothing out of the ordinary. “I thought you were having dinner at home tonight.”
He must not know yet. That was the only explanation Massu could think of as to why Tegoshi would be so calm. He half wanted to pretend he didn’t know anything, but Tegoshi would definitely find out later, and there was no point prolonging the inevitable.
“Your… your picture,” Massu began, voice shaky. “It was…”
“In the tabloids? Yeah, I know. It sucks.” Tegoshi’s reply was heartfelt, but still strangely flippant. “Julie-san called me up herself, but there’s nothing we can do about it. We can’t make something up, since that’d make it worse when the truth got out. And I’m not willing to lie about Sora either.”
Massu stared, unable to think of anything to say. Eventually he just sat down, and Sora let out a loud noise soon after, leaning in Massu’s direction.
Tegoshi grinned. “He wants you,” he told him, handing the baby over.
Massu’s heart fluttered as he took Sora in his arms, and even though he knew things were going to be difficult for quite some time from here on out, with the three of them in Tegoshi’s apartment, squashed up on the couch together, he felt strangely at peace.
Part Two