[Sakumoto Fic] Thunderstorms and Tempest: Cloud 1: Electric Sparks In The Clouds
Rating: G
Genre: Romance, angst, some humour
Disclaimer: Purely a figment of my imagination; the fic, that is. Not them, of course. :)
Summary: DoS is gonna turn himself into DoM soon if he keeps fretting about "What if...". Seems like the sudden rain thunderstorms aren't the only ones he'll have to contend with.
A/N: Masters in finally over! And while I have to get back to the grind of work, I really, REALLY wanted to finish up this part for posting. If anyone's interested, Part 2 is already underway! Comments are love.
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[Part 0: The Calm Before The Storm]
“Sorry. Is... is it a bad time?” Sho mumbled, even as he sounded like he was stifling a yawn.
“Should I even be asking about why you’re calling? Or is this your idea of ‘payback’s never too late’ for the time you complained about me on Utaban?” Jun drawled lazily as he settled more comfortably against the headboard, hoping that the loud drumming of his heartbeat was suitably muffled.
“Ehh?! You’re still upset about that?" Jun could hear Sho sniffle as he made several weak and semi-coherent protests. Even as Sho’s tension rose of its own accord with his excited babbling, Jun’s earlier discomfort was rapidly dissipating. The rapper was getting himself increasingly panicked, and Jun had to bite his lower lip as he tried to hold in his desire to laugh out loud.
“Just pulling your leg Sho-kun. No need to get your panties in a bunch,” Jun couldn’t help but hide a grin in his wrist, even though he knew the older man couldn’t see him. It amused him no end that even after all these years, it was SO easy to rile him up with just an off-the-cuff comment.
“Hey, I resent that," Sho’s voice took on a notably whiney accent, and Jun could almost imagine his face contorted into an adorable pout. “I love jeans-print track pants... not girly panties!" Jun almost burst out laughing when he could practically hear Sho thumb his nose loudly with a decidedly obnoxious “humph”.
“So am I going have to guess the reason for this delightful call, or are you gonna enlighten me?” Jun sobered a little, even though he’d love to get a further rise out of Sho. As far as he was aware, Sho was still tying up on the final filming sessions for Tokujou. So as much as he loved to tease him, it saddened him a little to see Sho come into the green room lately with as much energy as a sloth. Even Ohno’s exuberant promises of bringing the Keio grad out to sea with him the next time he went fishing elicited a muted response; a distracted yawn or a half-hearted "Hai" as the young newscaster thumbed through his notes or newspapers. Surprising, considering the excitement he had previously exhibited in bugging Riida to bring him out on a second trip to the high seas.
Jun's attention was pulled back to reality as the voice in his ear turned a little more playful, "Ne... Maaa-chan... I wanna ask you something."
Jun briefly felt a stab of nostalgia at the nickname that he heard only rarely.
"How did you do it?" Sho practically whispered on his end, as though he didn't want anyone to overhear what he was saying.
"Do what?"
"You know... Making sure everything had its own place? Nothing spilling into something else? That you didn't mix Hanadan scripts with those smiling ones?"
Smiling ones?
"Huh?" Jun frowned a little in confusion as he tried to figure what Sho meant.
A deep sigh reverberated through the line. "I just... want to stop time," Sho's voice sounded so wistful that Jun wished he could reach across the line to give Arashi's mother hen a hug. Though the latter had not said anything in front of the other members, Jun wondered if Sho was having a hard time juggling his recent activities, between dramas, movie, newscasting, the Vancouver Winter Olympics... Not that Jun consciously kept track of the other's activities… much. He was aware that there really had not been much of a breather for Sho since 2009 started. Wondering if Arashi's caretaker figure needed taking care of for a change, Jun considered if there was anything he could say to distract the usually stalwart pillar of strength from his seemingly melancholic musings.
"You do realise you ARE, afterall, talking to ore-sama, Matsujun the Mar-vellous," Jun made his voice deliberately light.
"Wish you could pull the rug out from under me the way you did the tablecloth..." mumbled the other.
Jun could almost swear he heard his heart skip a beat. What was Sho saying?
He continued, "... just forget all these responsibilities and expectations and... whatever... and just do what your heart tells you to."
"Sho, what's wrong? This doesn't sound like the usual you," Jun tried to soothe the other man, even as he tried not to let his own unease trickle into his voice.
"It's just..." a slight sniffle interrupting the words, "didn't you ever feel like you were trapped and your next move could just destroy your very fabric of existence, and of those around you if it was the wrong one? Like... what if everyone was counting on you to do the 'right' thing, and so you do, and... you just keep doing it... and doing it, and there comes a time when you wonder if... if... if..."
As the diatribe hit a wall of silence, Jun realised that he had been holding his breath as Sho's words poured forth. The older man was giving voice to the very sentiments that had been taking up residence in his own head lately. The earlier booms of distant thunder that had provided Jun with pleasant distraction had fallen silent at some point, leaving a void in the atmosphere the same way he now felt with a hollow feeling that had lodged itself in his chest.
The calm before the storm.
A beat.
"If?" Jun ventured tentatively. "If what, Sho?" Was the man talking about his seemingly daunting schedule... or was it something else... like the same 'something' that had only just moments before been swirling around in his own head?
Outside the window, the gentle tap of the first raindrops juxtaposed against the nervous pitter-pattering skips of his heartbeat.
"It's just-" the usually level-headed one hesitated, as if he was trying to choose his words carefully, "-lately I feel like there something I finally understood about you and me Jun... how alike we are... And how you felt then."
Jun's breath deserted him in a deep sigh as the words registered. Back 'then'? Back when? His mind scrambled as he tried to recall when he felt the sense of not wanting to bring down the house of cards, and all he could think of was the time after their first concert when he'd disappointed himself with the mistakes he'd made; when he felt like he'd disappointed them all: Arashi, the Juniors and everyone who believed in them. The fans might not have noticed, but the perfectionist in him knew, and that was enough to amplify the guilt he'd felt.
Wait a minute. THAT concert? What he, the then awkward and gangly bundle of limbs, had FELT? The normally cool Matsujun felt his face flush as he recalled the words from backstage after THAT concert. Of how he was Sho's number one fan. Was this what it was all about? He'd always thought the then wavy-haired seventeen-year-old had just taken it as fan service for the DVD, a joke... even though he himself had known he'd meant every word.
The light storm that had started begun to drum a little louder, mirroring the thudding within his ribcage. A soft laugh echoed through the line, the meaning behind which was lost on Jun, caught up as he was in the muddle of his thoughts.
"Now I find myself in the same situation, and I get it Jun," he sighed with what sounded almost like regret, or tiredness. Jun wasn't sure what to think of it.
"And now," Jun could hear a deep breath released through gritted teeth, "I think... I think I feel the exact same way. Ganbarimas, right?! There's nothing these sloping shoulders can't support!" The older man sounded unexpectedly psyched up even as he seemed to have come to some internal consensus.
Jun would have had a laugh at the perennially running in-joke had his heart not been in his throat. He was almost hesitant to ask what conclusion Sho had arrived at.
"Really?" Jun shakily asked.
"Yeah, I do. There's nothing I can't do so long as my heart's in the right place!" A raucous whoop of joy rang out loudly, and Jun was sure he would have tried to shush the man had he physically been by his side.
"I can't believe it took me this long to realise what I've always known deep down inside," Sho sounded almost relieved and Jun could feel his own hope bubble up inside him, like a butterfly pushing insistently at its chrysalis, ready to burst forth into the world that awaited it with open arms.
And as cheesy as it sounded, Jun could not hold back a smile at the thought: a world where Sho awaited with welcoming arms. Jun's voice was overcome with emotion, but if Sho was willing to take the plunge when he himself had been waiting for so long, there was no reason to refuse what his heart was telling him to do anyway right?
"You have no idea how long I've waited to hear those words," Jun's relief was palpable to his own ears.
"Really?" Sho's surprise hardly fazed Jun.
"I didn’t think you'd get it... How it felt back then with all eyes watching us,” Jun could feel his heart hammering.
“I guess… I know what you mean now,” the other murmured, seemingly almost shy.
Inhaling deeply, Jun felt a tremor in his hands as he tightened his grip on the phone.
“So where do we go from here Sho? You know how I’ve always felt, and now that you feel the same…”, Jun let his voice trail off for a beat before continuing. “What comes next? I’m thrilled and all that I can finally say it aloud that it’s you I care about the most, but how far exactly are we taking this?”
And then there was silence. The storm outside let up a little, slowing down to an almost invisible drizzle. The sudden downpour had been too brief to cool the surroundings much, leaving the air still thick with humidity, and a thin sheen of perspiration made itself felt at the nape of Jun’s neck.
“Sho-kun?” Jun was puzzled at the quietness on the other end. The newscaster couldn’t have possibly fallen asleep talking to him right? A sudden clearing of the throat over the line assured him otherwise, but there still was no response for a couple of seconds.
“Jun.” The younger man startled a little to finally hear the man’s voice. “What exactly are we talking about?”
Jun didn’t slow down to think too much, otherwise he knew that his nerves would just fail him. “Our feelings, Sho.” A deep breath. “How I feel about you.”
“How you feel… about…” Frowning slightly, Jun couldn’t help but feel that Sho sounded suddenly-
“I… That wasn’t… exactly what I was talking about.” Sho cut into his thoughts with a somewhat nervous-sounding cough.
Suddenly, the layer of moisture on Jun’s nape existed for an entirely different reason. The hammering in his heart double-timed as the repercussions of his mistimed confession began to sprout in his mind in a whole multitude of directions. Cringing, Jun felt like hitting his head against the headboard as he realised what he had just done.
His voice seemed a little too high as the next words left his lips. “Heh. How I feel about you… as… as a brother-in-arms of course. I mean… how could it mean anything that what it means, right?” The shaking in his hand seemed to be worsening as he felt the phone slipping, and had to use both hands to hold the piece to his ear. The light laughter that echoed down to the other end rang too loud, too false to his own ears, but all that he could think about was how he could possibly have misunderstood the other man’s words.
Mentally smacking himself, the words of the recently all-too-busy man took on a whole different dimension as he considered the parallels of Sho’s current situation with his own when Hana Yori Dango had introduced him to a wider audience. Jun felt like hanging up the phone right there and then, but knew that he had to salvage the situation, or it would be impossible for the two of them to face each other properly in the eye the next time they met for variety show taping.
As the silence persisted on the other line, Jun swallowed past the nervous lump in his throat. “I mean, afterall… if there were ever feelings between us… It’s impossible, you know. We’re both-”
And Jun was interrupted for the second time that night.
“Why?” came Sho’s reply.
Jun’s mind was utterly wrecked. Why what? Why I feel the way I do? Why I admitted it tonight of all times? His confusion roiled into a bigger mess, no longer able to follow the track of the surreal conversation he was having with Sho.
“Why?” repeated Sho, seeming neither angry nor surprised.
“I mean, we don’t… the group… it’s… Look, I know it’s… not… possible,” Jun’s voice grew softer by the moment, the words cutting into his heart, the way his nails were digging into his palms. He tried concentrating on that, instead of how badly he had let things get out of hand with his overly-hyper imagination.
The light outside his room was beginning to show faint signs of the start to a new day, a day Jun had thought he could spend relaxing from the crazy schedule the group normally faced, but it looked to be growing hopeless from the way things were going.
Which was why the next words out of Sho took the wind out of him.
“Why not?”
Was Sho asking why he thought a relationship between the two of them was impossible? Jun never thought that he’d love any two words more so than these.
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[ Cloud 2: Puddles and Ripples]