Coming Out (7/11)
Title: Coming Out
Author: thanku4urlove
Pairing: Inoo/Takaki, with a brief rendezvous of Inoo/OMC (Original Male Character)
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Slight cursing, discussions about sexuality, bullying, kissing
Genre: Slice of life? Slow burn, romance
Summary: It's the end of 2007. Inoo Kei is seventeen, and just debuted with nine other boys in Johnny's Entertainment's new group "Hey! Say! JUMP". He's a bit nervous, and a bit overwhelmed, and thinks he might be developing a bit of a crush on his bandmate, Takaki Yuya. It's embarrassing when Takaki finds out, but Inoo is sure that the crush isn't going to go anywhere. They aren't really that close, and Takaki says he's straight, and it's just a little bit of affection. It'll go away. Right?
About phone calls, first experiences, and falling in love.
A/N: Happy New Year!!! Sorry for forgetting to post. And that not much happens in this chapter. Shit will hit the fan soon though!
Previous Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
This chapter can also be read on AO3 here! (x)
Inoo turned away from Takumi, running from the study room before he could fully begin to cry, completely leaving the library from fear of pursuit, making it to the bathroom in a nearby lecture hall before heaving out a couple of sobs. He wasn’t upset about the breakup, not really; he was mad about the betrayal of trust, and mad at himself for even offering up that trust at all. He was terrified of whatever it was that Takumi truly planned to do to him.
It took a good amount of deep breathing to keep himself from fully hyperventilating, though he did get lightheaded a couple of times. When he felt he’d calmed down enough, he hid around the side of the lecture hall building and called Daiki.
“I don’t-” Inoo was choking out words as soon as Daiki picked up the phone. “I don’t know what to do, you have to help me-”
“Inoo! Inoo, slow down. Are you hurt?” Daiki’s voice was loud in concern, but hearing him at all did help. Inoo explained the situation the best he could, keeping his voice low, and after it was all said Daiki’s voice was grim.
“He didn’t hurt you, though?” Daiki asked again, and Inoo shook his head before remembering that Daiki couldn’t see that.
“No.”
“Okay. I have an idea, but it’s going to involve you telling some people. You can do that, right?”
“Yes.” Inoo answered without question. If it would protect the members, he would tell all of them. He didn’t want to, the thought of it churning a new kind of panic in his lungs, but he would.
“Alright. You need to call the manager and ask him to pick you up. Explain what happened to him. I’ll meet you at work, and we’ll see if we can talk to Johnny.”
“Johnny?” Inoo asked in shock. “Why? Won’t he…” Inoo wanted to ask Won’t he be mad at me?, but that felt incredibly childish in his mouth.
“That guy was right about our company being huge. Johnny might know what to do, right? So the more he knows about it, the better.” Daiki said, and Inoo had to admit that what he was saying made sense.
All of it was awful. Inoo was incredibly grateful to have Daiki next to him through it all, but that didn’t diminish how mortifying it felt to stand in his boss’s office and talk about how they all needed to be on high alert now, because the boy he’d been secretly making out with was planning on selling indecent pictures of him.
Johnny didn’t seem to judge him too harshly for the actual relationship, yelling at him instead for his carelessness before asking Inoo questions. The guy’s full name, age, and progress on his degree, his friend’s name, when the pictures had been taken, what quality the pictures were, where he was planning on sending them to, and other things like that. Inoo only knew the answers to some of them, partially wishing he could be more helpful, mostly wishing he could run away and hide forever.
“We will contact Meiji, and see if we can keep him out of all of your classes. Do not speak to him again.”
Inoo nodded. That wouldn’t be a problem.
“We will keep a lookout in the press. We will make sure nothing slips through.”
Inoo wasn’t sure that they could do that, but he hoped so.
“And YOU,” Johnny pointed to Inoo, making him jump, “will smile in interviews, speak only when spoken to, and keep your damn head down.”
“Yes sir.” Inoo answered, bowing quickly, Daiki bowing with him, both of them staying bent until they were dismissed. Their manager dropped both of them off at Daiki’s house, per Daiki’s request, and Inoo spent the next hour and a half crying on Daiki’s shoulder.
At Daiki’s insistence, it was decided that Inoo would be staying the night. Inoo changed into a pair of Daiki’s pajamas, the pants too small and the shirt too big, and they hung out together. Daiki tried the entire evening to make Inoo feel better, and while it did kind of work, it only worked when Daiki was being animated or talking or laughing, and any settling silences brought Inoo back to his situation, and he felt his face fall despite himself.
As a result, poor Daiki had exhausted himself by the time midnight came around. They were on Daiki’s bed together, Daiki’s socked feet propped up on his pillow next to Inoo’s head, his own head pressed into Inoo’s knee, his face slack and relaxed in sleep. Looking down at him, Inoo wanted to cry all over again but from gratitude this time, his face only staying dry because he’d already cried too much in one day to cry much more.
In the silence, his thoughts already began to spiral. Daiki wouldn’t be so exhausted if he hadn’t had to help Inoo all day. If Inoo hadn’t been so stupid, so unbelievably stupid to--
He couldn’t. He couldn’t do this right now. He was exhausted too, and while he did feel the need to wallow in it, for the potential disaster he may have caused for his closest friends, he also felt that if he actually just let himself lie here, he might lose his mind.
He got from the bed as gently as he could--though he knew that no jostling he was capable of would be enough to wake Daiki up--and crept through the house to the outside landing where Daiki’s family hung their laundry. Then he pulled his phone out and tapped on Takaki’s new number.
The phone rang for long enough for Inoo to get worried that he might not answer.
“Hello?”
“Oh, thank you.” Inoo slumped a bit in relief, sitting down and leaning his head back against the wood of the house. Takaki’s voice sounded rough and slightly disoriented, prompting him to ask, “Did I wake you up?”
“Not… Not exactly. I mean, I was in bed and my eyes were closed, but I wasn’t really asleep yet.” Takaki made a slight, sleepy, sighing sound. “Are you okay? You sound weird.”
“I… No.” Inoo finally said. He didn’t have the energy to change his tone of voice into something more uplifted, so he figured he may as well admit to it. “Not really.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Takaki asked, and Inoo wasn’t sure of the answer. In his silence, Takaki continued. “You had school today, right? Did you fail a test or something?”
“What? No.”
“Of course not. You’re a super genius.”
In spite of himself, Inoo laughed a bit, and Takaki laughed too.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He finally said. As with the last big thing with Takumi, it felt too exhausting to tell their story to Takaki from the start. As far as Takaki knew, Takumi was still this kind-of friend guy that touched his arm a lot. Inoo desperately wished he could go back to that first day, and make himself just sit in his chair a little bit longer, so Takumi wouldn’t have bumped into him, and all of this would have been avoided.
Unless he did it on purpose. Inoo realized with a jolt. He ran into me on purpose.
“I just don’t want to talk about it.” He repeated, maybe a little more forcefully than he needed to. “I just wanted to talk to you. I want to talk about whatever you want to talk about.”
“Okay.” Takaki said easily. There was a quiet moment, then Takaki let out a breath into the receiver, the noise slightly exasperated and obviously played up for dramatics. Inoo appreciated the effort he was putting into the performance. “It’s getting too cold to go to the beach!”
They talked for nearly an hour about Takaki’s obsession with the beach, what he loved about it, the sand structures he’d made and the coolest shells and creatures he’d found. It was relaxing, just to hear Takaki talk, and talk about something he loved, telling funny stories and letting Inoo interject if he wanted. It made Inoo want to go to the beach with Takaki sometime, despite how he didn’t much like the water. Maybe he could get a boat, and stay up on the boat while he sent Takaki down into the waves to get him pretty shells. It was a silly fantasy, but it was a much nicer thing to think about when he finally went to bed that night, wondering just how difficult it would be to get a boating license as he drifted off to sleep.
As he promised to Johnny, Inoo kept his head down for the remainder of the year. It was hard to go to class the day after, Inoo desperately afraid of running into Takumi, but it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen until nearly a week later, Inoo feeling someone grab onto his bag and whirling around with a start.
“Don’t touch me.” He said with as much force as he could muster when he saw Takumi standing there. “I said--”
“I know what you said. But you need to know.”
Inoo should have just left, and he knew it, but something about Takumi’s face made him pause.
“What?”
“I didn’t do anything with the photos. Really, I didn’t. But the two my friend had… She sent them out.”
A rock of nausea dropped into Inoo’s stomach, so fast and so massive that for a moment Inoo thought he might actually vomit. It must have shown on his face, because Takumi reached out to touch him; Inoo stepped back before his fingers could make contact, and he dropped his arm instead.
“Only one of them has your face.” Takumi told him. “And it’s a really shitty photo, so--”
“Never, ever talk to me again.” Inoo said. Then he turned around and walked away.
Thankfully, nothing seemed to come of it. Inoo called his manager once he was outside, and he said he would notify Johnny. But Johnny never spoke to him about it personally, and no tabloids had his sexuality plastered all over the front pages, so as a result, Inoo never told the group about any of it.
The only change that happened was Johnny personally telling them all that they wouldn’t be releasing any new music until Inoo graduated from Meiji. It wasn’t something Inoo asked him to do, nor was it something Johnny told Inoo about, so while no one could really say that it was Inoo’s fault, it sort of felt like it was. But Inoo decided to take full advantage of it, throwing himself completely into his schoolwork.
He was finally on his last year, finally able to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and he wasn’t going to let anything stop him from graduating on time. A few of the faces in the Architecture program were familiar from years previous, a few of them becoming casual class friends again, and despite initial wariness Inoo found himself incredibly grateful for them as the year wore on. Not many of them were his age, a majority of them older, but that was nice in comparison to his work environment.
At work, most of his coworkers were literal children, and all of the adults he interacted with were adults assigned to keep them safe and get them to locations on time. As a result, he was often treated like a child too. In some respects, that made things easier; when he was still half-asleep from needing to be at work at four in the morning, it was nice to just have someone tell him where to sit or usher him to where he needed to go. That didn’t stop it from feeling a bit belittling, though.
At school, his peers, while older than him, were a more on his level. They were all working on or collaborating on the same assignments. They were all in the last year of the same program, and all burnt out and just ready to finish. As the year wore on, Inoo found himself spending more and more of his free time with them, and began to think of them as his friends.
“You should hurry up.” Takaki told him, eating ice cream right in his ear as he spoke. Inoo, who already had the phone on speaker, shoved it a little further away from him across his desk at the noise.
“Hurry up?”
“Yeah. Finish school already.”
Inoo snorted. “Yeah. Right. I’ll just speed up this architecture degree. No big deal.”
“Good, do that.” Takaki said, and Inoo burst out laughing at his complete disregard for Inoo’s flat sarcasm.
“I can’t.” Inoo said with a sigh. He stared down at the paper he was writing, a little twist in his gut whenever he looked at it.
“Well, I think you should anyway.”
“Yeah, I got that.” Inoo picked his phone back up, staring at it. Anything to get his eyes off his paper. “Why?”
“You could sleep more. I think it would be good for you.”
“I… Oh. Well, that’s very sweet of you.” Inoo said, genuinely surprised by Takaki’s answer. Takaki didn’t give much indication that he had any concerns about Inoo’s physical health when they were in front of each other, aside from eye contact and a slight eyebrow raise that Inoo had taken to mean Are you okay?
“That’s me. I’m a super sweet guy.” Takaki responded, his tone a little cheesy, his statement punctuated by an absolutely obscene slurping sound that made Inoo shout at him until he burst out laughing.
“Stop it, stop. I’m trying to focus here.” Inoo told him, and by all the mercy of the universe, Takaki actually stopped.
“Oh? What are you working on?”
“Paper for school. I, actually…” He hadn’t told anyone this aside from his academic friends, wanting to wait until it was confirmed, but he was actually really excited. “I’m going to try and get it published.”
“Wait, seriously?” Takaki asked, his shock genuine, his voice going a little simplistic, a little loud, and a little Kansai, the way it always did when he was really and truly surprised. “Like, in a fancy magazine or something?”
“Something, yeah.” Inoo answered, unable not to smile.
“That’s amazing!” Takaki told him, and Inoo’s cheeks began to hurt by how much he was smiling. “You really have been working so hard, Inoo. You’re doing a great job.”
“I… Thank you.” Inoo had heard the praise before, sure. He heard it often from his family, but it was a completely different feeling to hear it from someone that, by blood, wasn’t legally and morally obligated to love him. “That really means a lot.”
Takaki may have absolutely ruined the moment by sucking very loudly on his spoon, but Inoo was still able to use the words to give him the final push he needed to finish and submit his academic paper.
Finally, finally, at the end of what were the longest four years of Inoo’s life, he did it. He finished school; he got a degree. He knew that he would probably never use something like an Architecture degree while being a pop idol, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. He was proud of himself anyways. He made it through Meiji University. He had a degree. He had done it.
He planned fully on spending the three days after his final class in nothing but his pajamas, and doing nothing but lying around at home. He deserved it, and he would fight anyone in his life that said otherwise. And he almost did it too, interrupted in the middle of day three by a phone call from Daiki.
“Hey!” Daiki’s voice was very loud in his ear, but the excitement in his tone was infectious, and Inoo found himself smiling. “What’re you up to?”
“Nothing.” Inoo said with a blissful sigh, spreading his entire body out along the length of his couch and stretching like a cat. “Absolutely nothing.”
That made Daiki laugh. “Well, do you want to do something?”
“...like what?” Inoo asked warily.
“I was thinking dinner? We could go out to eat. I’ll even ride the train so we can go to your favorite curry place.”
Inoo hummed in consideration. He didn’t really want to move. Then again, the curry place wasn’t far away at all, and he did really like it; not because of the curry, but because of the rice.
“Fine!” He said, after a long moment, and Daiki cheered. “Fine. But only because I don’t have to walk much. And you’re paying! We’re going to be celebrating me.”
“Of course.” Daiki answered, and there was a laugh in his voice. “Want to meet there at six?”
“Sure.”
After some farewells Inoo hung up, and sighed at the ceiling. He knew it would be fun to go and have a meal with Daiki, but the thought of all the effort it would take to actually get ready and go after two full days off was almost too daunting.
He did it, though. He dragged himself off the couch, splashed water on his face, pulled a cap down over his hair, and changed into some of the simplest clothes he had. When the curry place came into view, he began frowning.
The place looked deserted. The lights were on though, and staff were in the restaurant, so after frowning and peering into the windows for a couple of moments, Inoo stepped hesitantly through the front doors.
“Congratulations!” Came a yell, and from behind the chairs and under the tables popped all of Hey Say JUMP, as well as their managers. Inoo jolted back in surprise, but the movement only situated him perfectly under the giant ball of confetti suspended on the ceiling that broke open over his head and spilled all over him.
Daiki was in the middle of it all, absolutely beaming, and Inoo pointed a dramatic finger at him.
“You!” He exclaimed, while Daiki just laughed harder, running up to give him a hug. “You did this!”
As it turned out, Daiki had. Or, he’d planned it. They’d bought out the entire restaurant for as long as they wanted it, and had a large room in the nearby karaoke place booked too, for when they finished up here. A simple meal with Daiki had now turned into an extravagant evening of excitement, and while Inoo did feel a little overwhelmed, he was happy to see everyone too. The happiness surged up in him at the sight of them all, stronger than he expected, and he felt a smile grow on his face. He just wished he’d dressed a little nicer.
Dinner was loud and fun, Inoo so entertained by the antics and conversations of his friends that at some points he almost forgot that he had food in front of him. They stayed in the restaurant for a couple of hours, uncomfortably full, more or less rolling themselves down the street to make it to their karaoke reservation.
The ridiculousness didn't stop at their secondary location, the sugary drinks ordered and a private area to perform just upping the opportunities for everyone to make fools of themselves. They went around in turns, Chinen always picking Arashi, Yabu always picking Mr. Children, and Inoo picking Hey Say JUMP songs just to laugh at the way the group would groan, but all sing along anyway.
Takaki chose Ganbaretsugo, and all of the BEST members lost their minds so completely that by the end of it Inoo was exhausted, and laughing so hard his head hurt. Yamada, Chinen, Yuto, and Keito were looking at them with a wild mix of amusement, surprise, and abject terror, Yamada hesitantly taking the microphone from Hikaru’s limp hand and picking a Kinki Kids ballad to calm the room down.
After that, the structure of them all taking turns dissolved. It got a little more serious, Inoo preferring to watch, listening to his friends sing, pulling out his phone to record when Yabu and Hikaru decided they wanted to sing a romantic Tackey and Tsubasa song together. He wasn’t the only one recording, and for the duration of the song Hikaru and Yabu’s heads got closer and closer until they were cheek to cheek. As soon as the song ended, the two of them went red and jumped away from each other, laughing, and Takaki somehow ended up with both of their microphones pushed into his lap. So he took one, leaning over both Chinen and Daiki to give the other to Inoo.
“Let’s sing.” He proposed, Inoo blinking at him in shock. Daiki, with a muted grin on his face now, scooted down the couch and gestured for Chinen to do the same until a space opened up next to Takaki.
Inoo, understanding the hint-though not understanding quite why the entire group was staring-sat down in the empty seat, his shoulder knocking into Takaki’s own, the sides of their legs touching all the way to their knees. He was close, incredibly close to Takaki, and for a moment his brain fully blanked.
“Well?” Takaki glanced at him, and… He was so handsome up close. Was anyone telling him that? Someone should be telling him that. Inoo should tell him that. “Are we going to sing or what?”
“Oh, am I picking?” Inoo asked back, keeping his tone light, and Takaki raised an eyebrow back. The cockiness of the eyebrow raise had Inoo scrolling through songs vindictively, grinning when he picked the perfect one.
Takaki gave him a look of open mouthed surprise when his song choice appeared onscreen, causing Inoo to break out into laughter and nudge Takaki’s shoulder with his own.
“C’mon, I know you secretly love cute stuff.” He said, trying to give Takaki a look that had his eyes as big as possible. “You said you would sing with me.”
“You're the worst.” Takaki responded, still slightly disbelieving, and then the song began.
Inoo couldn’t really make fun of Takaki for knowing all of the words to AKB48’s Heavy Rotation, because everybody and their grandfather knew all of the words to AKB48’s Heavy Rotation, but it was still funny anyways. Takaki tried to be cool about it, and that was even funnier than if he’d simply owned it, like Inoo was doing; Takaki’s slouched posture and dead delivery of the lyrics was especially hilarious next to the way Inoo was pointing around the room and doing small shoulder shakes.
About halfway through the song however, Inoo realized he’d shot himself in the foot, just a little bit. While the lyrics were cheesy and peppy to a disingenuous degree, it was still a love song, and Takaki wasn’t saying the words in the same hyped up way the girls did in the original. So Inoo sat there for nearly five minutes, hearing Takaki say “I want you, I need you, I love you” into the microphone with his deep voice in an almost serious tone, and Inoo had to keep his face completely unaffected. Acting like an idiot really helped.
As embarrassed as Takaki acted though, as soon as the song ended he burst out laughing, giving Inoo a look of genuine amusement, and Inoo had to laugh back. Then they looked to the rest of the group to see who would sing next, Inoo surprised to see all of them staring.
“...what?” Takaki asked, a question also in Inoo’s mind, that he would have voiced if Takaki hadn’t done it first.
“Nothing, I guess.” Yabu said with a shrug. “It’s just good to see you guys being friends.”
“It is?” Inoo asked, glancing at Takaki just as Takaki said,
“What do you mean?”
“You just don’t really act close, that’s all.”
“We do like each other.” Takaki said bluntly, and Inoo bit down on the side of his tongue. “Besides, we’re celebrating Inoo, right? Shouldn’t we all sing with him?”
The idea was accepted immediately, and Inoo was made to move around the karaoke room for the next half hour and sing duets with the rest of the members. It was fun, sure, but by the end of it Inoo was pretty positive that his voice would be completely gone tomorrow. After acting like a fool with Daiki to Kanjani8’s debut song, the night was declared over, and they all began going their separate ways. Inoo gave hugs to everyone as they left, holding especially tightly to Daiki after everyone else had begun to walk away.
“Thanks for this.” He said, and Daiki beamed up at him.
“Of course!”
“You can’t say of course!” Inoo exclaimed back. “That’s not humble at all! Stop bragging about how good of a person you are.”
Daiki just laughed, and after another hug and wish of congratulations to Inoo for graduating, left at a jog to catch up with the rest of the group, who were walking in a mob to the nearby train station. As Inoo watched them go, Takaki turned around and gave him a wave.