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10 drabbles: Prince of Tennis/J-pop, K-pop
These were all written via the music meme. There are five Prince of Tennis ones and five J-pop/K-pop ones.
1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.
2. Put iTunes or equivelent media player on random.
3. For each song that plays, write something related to the theme you picked inspired by the song. You have only the time frame of the song: no planning beforehand: you start when it starts, and no lingering afterward; once the song is over, you stop writing. (No fair skipping songs either; you have to take what comes by chance!)
4. Do 10 of these, then post.
1. Vienna Teng, Soon Love Soon
The day after his match with Tezuka is the worst. Atobe comes to school with an aching head, carries it low, chin down, defeated. It surprises him when he's congratulated at the school gates, he has to shake himself inside. You won, remember.
Through the day, girls chase him at regular intervals, keen to be the first, then the best to give him celebratory tokens of their affection. Some of these are positively obscene, but the worst are the totally sincere. Cards and pictures, cropped from photographs, blasphemous words like 'winner', 'almighty', 'number 1' spread across them. One even shows Tezuka on his knees, as if that was the triumphant moment. Atobe feels sick, that that's what he might be remembered for. The image is burned onto his eyelids, he doesn't need it on a pretty little card.
It's only in Greek that afternoon, that he gets any peace. Everyone has done their bit, it's late, he's tired. Those who take Greek, they're on the fringes of high school society. A couple of people took it because Atobe chose to, but they dropped out fairly quickly, intimidated by its complexity. By and large, these people ignore Atobe. Tennis means little to them.
Today is pair work and one of the girls is moved to sit with Atobe. She is slight, quiet, with big, dark eyes. She looks at him and the look on her face suggests that she only knows who he is because of all the pictures, cards, presents that have been circulating all day.
"Hi," she says. Her Greek is natural. "Shall we talk about something that isn't tennis?"
2. Dresden Dolls, Backstabber
The first mistake Ryoma makes in third year is to pick regulars for their talent, not their attitude. As a first year, he got onto the Seigaku team for his talent, not for his mouth. He reckons that it's a good way to run things. It worked for Tezuka. Only, when it's his team, somehow it goes wrong. He passes over weaker players despite their harmonious personalities, thinks that a cut-throat team of prodigies will see them to their third Nationals trophy. Momo just about scraped them there, year 2, with weaker players than Ryoma would have liked. He doesn't want to make that same mistake.
Only, Ryoma has a reputation and some of the guys he picks are new to the school, new to the life. Talented and ruthless, the way Ryoma likes them. They start off successfully, pummelling the lower teams, and Ryoma is smug. He writes to Tezuka, boasting of Seigaku's success. Not since Tezuka's captaincy has the team done so well.
It's only when they reach the semi-finals that Ryoma realises something: the players aren't there for Seigaku. Aren't there for tennis, even. They're there for the glory and for the worshippers that come with it. They don't care for legacy, for the team that some other kid built two years ago. When the first games go badly (Hyotei's new regular wipes the court clean with Kachiro, which really turns the crowd), they piss off and find something better to do. Seigaku defaults.
Ryoma writes to Tezuka, but he doesn't allow him to dictate a lesson. This time, he writes of the lesson he's learnt himself.
3. ONE OK ROCK, Keep It Real
Yukimura holds the racket in his hand, twisted around grip tape that's wet, spongy, gives just so. He's hyper-aware of his senses: the sun, warm on his ears and the back of his neck. Where his hair is damp with sweat, yanked by the headband he has to keep adjusting. It's a hot day and the clay is hot, almost through his trainers. Those are well-worn in, toes crinkling in the corners, just so.
Ryoma stands opposite him, waiting. Yukimura wonders if he feels the same sensations, whether he's as aware of everything, whether he feels calm inside or whether his organs are churning. His face gives nothing away. For him, this isn't it. Yukimura has come back from things, to a loyal team. A team that supported him when he was weak and wearing a hospital gown, for God's sake. He is potential weakness to them, now. Whether they would admit it or otherwise, whether they could admit it to themselves -- he is weakness.
They need him to regain his edge and prove to them that he's never going to be weak again. That they can move from worry to confidence. So that they can focus on the tennis again. He bounces the ball and it thuds, thick, heavy, full of potential.
And he needs it for himself. For every moment that this or that muscle feels weak, for every moment that he wakes up mistaking his room for a hospital bed. Starchy sheets, the sterile smell, that interfere with his dreams. He needs them gone. This is the shot. Failure is not an option.
He throws the ball high into the air and the sun blinds him when he tilts his head up.
4. Tegan and Sara, Where Does The Good Go
Fuji splits himself into bits because it's fun. He offers parts of himself to those who'll, chances are, react the strongest to them. He calls it a different kind of data collection. It means that people don't take him seriously. Obviously, most of them are frightened of him, that's a given. Their intimidation is serious. But Fuji is never serious, always a flowing sea of change, always a fickle, fluid surface that can't be collected by hand or mouth. Never stone, never something solid and malleable. Never something with a name.
Fuji doesn't have feelings. Fuji has broken fragments of something, whispers of a belief or a suggestion that he teases people with. He's a vending machine, ready and waiting to deliver whatever it is that people want. Sometimes he deliberately gives people what they don't want, just to see what'll happen. Whether they'll dare to shake or kick him, ask for their money back. Fuji doesn't have feelings of his own.
At one point, he had a feeling. It raged inside him, strong and forceful, threatening everything he could do well and adding things to his repertoire that he was terrible at. He didn't have the confidence to own this feeling. He didn't want to admit to it. So he split it, filtered it out like a kaleidoscope. Hinted at it when the person was around. Only the person, they wore glasses and those glasses seemed to protect them from the light. They never squinted. That person was good, complete. Solid and with a name. Strong. Not fluid, not a whisper. Someone who'd own up to a feeling.
So Fuji left it, realising that he was foolish for hoping that incompatible things could become compatible. And with the leftover pieces of himself, he had fun, because there was nothing else left to do. The good part of himself he kept, because that was the one commodity he couldn't sell. The person he'd wanted to give it to, they hadn't had the change in their pocket.
Or maybe he thought Fuji wasn't serious. That soon enough, the river would bend and make inlays somewhere else. Fuji lies in bed at night and tries not to think about this, because it means that Taka carries in his hands only fractured parts of feeling, not the real thing. It means that Taka is the person who found the chocolate bar stuck in the vending machine. And shook it, and shook it, until it dropped to the bottom.
5. Editors, An End Has A Start
When they get older, Atobe realises that life doesn't begin at 20, 30 or 40. It stops at 18. That's where the school stops, the tennis stops. He and everyone else around him slip off their skins and cover themselves in suit jackets, pressed trousers. Briefcases make their way into their hands. The end of the road isn't like the beginning, but the stupid ones call this the joyous journey through life. As far as Atobe sees it, you start off on a beautiful country trek and end up in the middle of poisonous vines, snakes and mud. This isn't joyous, unless you're an intrepid explorer, which Atobe isn't and will never be.
He confesses these thoughts to Yuushi, over sake (sake, fuck, his father drank this at Atobe's age) and Yuushi is thoughtful. For Yuushi, life begun at 14, that's when he got girlfriends, and since then his path has been a stream of sex, the occasional heart-bashing, lots of marriage proposals but no actual wedding. That's joyous, apparently. Yuushi doesn't understand Atobe's pessimistic outlook but he listens patiently, anyway.
As Atobe finishes ranting, it begins to rain outside, which makes him laugh because, well, it's obvious, isn't it. Yuushi looks out of the window, at the clothes on Atobe's line, getting soaked. At the houses in the distance, like when they'd stand on the school roof and try to see their houses, as kids. Atobe's was easier to identify. It still is: a huge building with tennis courts Atobe never uses.
"Let's play tennis," he says.
"It's raining," Atobe says.
Yuushi pulls a face. "So?"
It's a question Atobe can't answer, which says it all about his life. He's so braindead and so bored that he can't think up one logical reason why playing tennis in the rain in your suit is a stupid idea. At 16, he'd have had twenty reasons. All the reasons died out, too. They play and it's stupid, wet and horrible. And yet watching Yuushi slide through a puddle, hollering, "Oshitari Zone" makes him laugh so hard it almost reaches the memories, fifteen years back.
1. The Postal Service, Such Great Heights.
Jin's crap at maths, Yamapi at geography. If they clubbed together, they could fill in for each other. Jin knows where things are, can memorise cities and countries like that, and Yamapi can calculate the distances between them. If they clubbed together, they'd be a super being. Only the teachers are wise to this and keep them as far apart as possible.
It's fitting, then, that when they grow up, Jin goes places and Yamapi thinks about the distance between them. America is the worst, obviously, but sometimes just the length of Japan can feel intergalactic. As kids, they had dreams to conquer the country, then the world. To become idols, legends, so popular entire websites would be dedicated to them. Something to prove to their peers, that they were meant for greater things.
They both wanted to stand atop everyone else. They both wanted to escape what they already had. They wanted to wave down at everyone they once knew. They wanted to be together.
Only Yamapi finds himself alone more often than not. He stands atop everyone else, and from this place he can see Jin. Jin discovers cities and countries like that, and Yamapi calculates the distance between them.
2. Vienna Teng, Mission Street
Kame isn't sure about Koki, not at first. Koki is everything he'd naturally avoid: brash, brazen, full of attitude. He walks with a confidence Kame can only hope to imitate. Koki is the kind of person that makes Kame feel fraudulent, who reminds Kame of all the mistakes he's made and the chances he hasn't taken.
Koki always takes chances, figures that he might as well. If they go wrong, then he makes something of them anyway, because he's versatile and because he can laugh at himself. He never regrets. Kame always regrets. He regrets the things he does right, for one reason or another, let alone the things he does wrong. They are fundamentally incompatible and Kame is prepared just to work with Koki the way he'd work with anyone. He's resigned to the fact, comfortable with it.
Only Koki keeps trying to do things like get to know him, understand him, make small talk, and Kame doesn't understand why he bothers. He doesn't laugh at Koki's jokes because he doesn't get them, but unlike Jin, this doesn't upset Koki. He just keeps making them, until eventually, one sparks up something in Kame and Kame smiles.
And after that, things are easier, Kame thinks. Koki is still brash, brazen, full of attitude. But he makes Kame feel as if he can relax more, as if work isn't the be-all and the end-all. As if this crazy experience is the only chance they'll have, so they might as well make the most of it. And things do go wrong, but Kame learns to accept that and keep trying to get them right.
They do the photo shoot, even though Kame is afraid of what it'll look like, whether it's just a bit much. It's just that, when they're face to face and Koki goes slightly cross-eyed to wind him up, it doesn't feel a bit much. It feels somehow not enough.
3. Kanjani8, Kanfuu Fighting
Yamapi has an annoying habit of playing Kanjani8 music. Ryo thinks he does it just to wind him up, because when he's in NEWS, he likes to pretend to be a bit more suave than the Kanjani8 boys know him. It's like having two perfectly harmonious parts of himself that each need expression but can't be in the same room together. Only when Yamapi plays Kanfuu Fighting, which he does often, he forces those two parts of Ryo to cohabit. And Ryo suspects that he just does it to wind him up.
He confronts him about it, eventually, lazy and sexed-out, watching Yamapi tying his hair back with a bobble in his mouth. He's sort of loathe to bring it up, he can see Yamapi's reflection in the long mirror, the way he's stretching and pulling his vest top up (and he's barely even got his trousers on, god). Still. It niggles at him.
Yamapi's eyes meet his in the mirror. "Kanfuu Fighting?" he says, all innocence.
"I'm just surprised you like...listening to the band. You don't listen to KAT-TUN and Jin's your best mate."
Yamapi shrugs. "Oh, it's nothing."
Ryo narrows his eyes.
"Just," Yamapi says, cocking his hip. "I heard Ueda was looking to cover a JE song, you know, for their next tour. I think he'd make a great rock version of Kanfuu Fighting, don't you?"
4. Garbage, When I Grow Up
Sometimes, Jae has too much energy. 90% of the time, Changmin guesses, but he's being kind. It's useful when they're working but not so much when they retire to the hotel and everyone just wants to relax. Sharing a room with Jae is like living with a whirlwind. First, he organises his wardrobe, clothes into colour order, then in order of formality. Then he organises his toiletries. Then, Changmin's. And he's just got into reading the room service menu when Changmin can't stand it anymore.
"Have a bath," he suggests. "It might calm you down."
Jae looks at him. He's swinging his arms across himself. "I don't want to have a bath. I had a shower before. I want to run about. I'm never going to sleep."
Changmin takes the menu away from him. "Don't eat, you'll just make yourself worse."
Jae looks at the television, at the programme Changmin's trying to watch. It's about atrocities, always it's about atrocities. Jae finds the news depressing, really, but maybe watching it will calm him down. He'd like to be one of these people who understand politics and have intelligent opinions, but mostly he just comes out with the first thought that enters his head, and-
Apparently he's talking out loud.
Changmin is looking at him, reproachfully. "I will never suggest this again," he begins. "But you should probably jump on the bed and get it out that way."
Jae's face lights up and Changmin prays that he doesn't break anything, or himself, or the manager will have him for breakfast. Only Jae doesn't, he's too short and too light to damage anything, and the look on his face is so sweet and so happy that Changmin feels a touch of envy that he can't always be so lighthearted.
Jae reaches out a hand, then, and yanks him to his feet. Changmin was never allowed to do this, as a kid. It's kind of ironic that they're all grown up now and all they want to do is eat ice cream for dinner and jump up and down on their beds.
5. O-Zone, Dragostea din tei
For his birthday, Jin wants to have a beach party.
Ryo and Yamapi initially each put a foot down. The last time they had a beach party, Jin got completely wasted on mojitos, which he thought were completely masculine, then fell into the sea and had to be dragged out and carried home. And he still considered it the best party ever. It was very Jin, Yamapi supposed: bonfire, drink, colourful lights, music, dancing, food. He's tempted, just to give in. Beach parties are fun, after all-
"No," Ryo says. "No. I'll have to fucking carry him home again."
"I'll help!" Yamapi offers. "Come on, it's his birthday."
"If he wanted to throw himself off a rock for his birthday, would you let him do that?"
Yamapi thinks. "I'd probably follow him off it, actually. It might be fun."
"That's exactly why you should have no vote. No vote whatsoever. You're both fucking senile."
Yamapi can't think of a way to sell the party to Ryo, not a way that wasn't obscene, anyway, so he enlists Tego to help convince him. Tego just works on Ryo until Ryo can't bear it anymore and folds, explicitly leaving Shige to be the walking taxi.
Jin's face when the lot of them surprise him, that makes it worth it for Yamapi. He's in his element in the dim light, with the lights and the alcohol, the fire and the dancing. The excitement that runs through him, that could power Japan, Yamapi reckons.
What makes it worth it for Ryo is watching the pair of them, his best friends, through the night. They start off sober, they end up drunk. They dance together by the fire, ignoring everybody else, hands in each other's pockets, wriggling together. Eyes closed, happy, horny.
Ryo sends Shige home at 10pm after all.
1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.
2. Put iTunes or equivelent media player on random.
3. For each song that plays, write something related to the theme you picked inspired by the song. You have only the time frame of the song: no planning beforehand: you start when it starts, and no lingering afterward; once the song is over, you stop writing. (No fair skipping songs either; you have to take what comes by chance!)
4. Do 10 of these, then post.
1. Vienna Teng, Soon Love Soon
The day after his match with Tezuka is the worst. Atobe comes to school with an aching head, carries it low, chin down, defeated. It surprises him when he's congratulated at the school gates, he has to shake himself inside. You won, remember.
Through the day, girls chase him at regular intervals, keen to be the first, then the best to give him celebratory tokens of their affection. Some of these are positively obscene, but the worst are the totally sincere. Cards and pictures, cropped from photographs, blasphemous words like 'winner', 'almighty', 'number 1' spread across them. One even shows Tezuka on his knees, as if that was the triumphant moment. Atobe feels sick, that that's what he might be remembered for. The image is burned onto his eyelids, he doesn't need it on a pretty little card.
It's only in Greek that afternoon, that he gets any peace. Everyone has done their bit, it's late, he's tired. Those who take Greek, they're on the fringes of high school society. A couple of people took it because Atobe chose to, but they dropped out fairly quickly, intimidated by its complexity. By and large, these people ignore Atobe. Tennis means little to them.
Today is pair work and one of the girls is moved to sit with Atobe. She is slight, quiet, with big, dark eyes. She looks at him and the look on her face suggests that she only knows who he is because of all the pictures, cards, presents that have been circulating all day.
"Hi," she says. Her Greek is natural. "Shall we talk about something that isn't tennis?"
2. Dresden Dolls, Backstabber
The first mistake Ryoma makes in third year is to pick regulars for their talent, not their attitude. As a first year, he got onto the Seigaku team for his talent, not for his mouth. He reckons that it's a good way to run things. It worked for Tezuka. Only, when it's his team, somehow it goes wrong. He passes over weaker players despite their harmonious personalities, thinks that a cut-throat team of prodigies will see them to their third Nationals trophy. Momo just about scraped them there, year 2, with weaker players than Ryoma would have liked. He doesn't want to make that same mistake.
Only, Ryoma has a reputation and some of the guys he picks are new to the school, new to the life. Talented and ruthless, the way Ryoma likes them. They start off successfully, pummelling the lower teams, and Ryoma is smug. He writes to Tezuka, boasting of Seigaku's success. Not since Tezuka's captaincy has the team done so well.
It's only when they reach the semi-finals that Ryoma realises something: the players aren't there for Seigaku. Aren't there for tennis, even. They're there for the glory and for the worshippers that come with it. They don't care for legacy, for the team that some other kid built two years ago. When the first games go badly (Hyotei's new regular wipes the court clean with Kachiro, which really turns the crowd), they piss off and find something better to do. Seigaku defaults.
Ryoma writes to Tezuka, but he doesn't allow him to dictate a lesson. This time, he writes of the lesson he's learnt himself.
3. ONE OK ROCK, Keep It Real
Yukimura holds the racket in his hand, twisted around grip tape that's wet, spongy, gives just so. He's hyper-aware of his senses: the sun, warm on his ears and the back of his neck. Where his hair is damp with sweat, yanked by the headband he has to keep adjusting. It's a hot day and the clay is hot, almost through his trainers. Those are well-worn in, toes crinkling in the corners, just so.
Ryoma stands opposite him, waiting. Yukimura wonders if he feels the same sensations, whether he's as aware of everything, whether he feels calm inside or whether his organs are churning. His face gives nothing away. For him, this isn't it. Yukimura has come back from things, to a loyal team. A team that supported him when he was weak and wearing a hospital gown, for God's sake. He is potential weakness to them, now. Whether they would admit it or otherwise, whether they could admit it to themselves -- he is weakness.
They need him to regain his edge and prove to them that he's never going to be weak again. That they can move from worry to confidence. So that they can focus on the tennis again. He bounces the ball and it thuds, thick, heavy, full of potential.
And he needs it for himself. For every moment that this or that muscle feels weak, for every moment that he wakes up mistaking his room for a hospital bed. Starchy sheets, the sterile smell, that interfere with his dreams. He needs them gone. This is the shot. Failure is not an option.
He throws the ball high into the air and the sun blinds him when he tilts his head up.
4. Tegan and Sara, Where Does The Good Go
Fuji splits himself into bits because it's fun. He offers parts of himself to those who'll, chances are, react the strongest to them. He calls it a different kind of data collection. It means that people don't take him seriously. Obviously, most of them are frightened of him, that's a given. Their intimidation is serious. But Fuji is never serious, always a flowing sea of change, always a fickle, fluid surface that can't be collected by hand or mouth. Never stone, never something solid and malleable. Never something with a name.
Fuji doesn't have feelings. Fuji has broken fragments of something, whispers of a belief or a suggestion that he teases people with. He's a vending machine, ready and waiting to deliver whatever it is that people want. Sometimes he deliberately gives people what they don't want, just to see what'll happen. Whether they'll dare to shake or kick him, ask for their money back. Fuji doesn't have feelings of his own.
At one point, he had a feeling. It raged inside him, strong and forceful, threatening everything he could do well and adding things to his repertoire that he was terrible at. He didn't have the confidence to own this feeling. He didn't want to admit to it. So he split it, filtered it out like a kaleidoscope. Hinted at it when the person was around. Only the person, they wore glasses and those glasses seemed to protect them from the light. They never squinted. That person was good, complete. Solid and with a name. Strong. Not fluid, not a whisper. Someone who'd own up to a feeling.
So Fuji left it, realising that he was foolish for hoping that incompatible things could become compatible. And with the leftover pieces of himself, he had fun, because there was nothing else left to do. The good part of himself he kept, because that was the one commodity he couldn't sell. The person he'd wanted to give it to, they hadn't had the change in their pocket.
Or maybe he thought Fuji wasn't serious. That soon enough, the river would bend and make inlays somewhere else. Fuji lies in bed at night and tries not to think about this, because it means that Taka carries in his hands only fractured parts of feeling, not the real thing. It means that Taka is the person who found the chocolate bar stuck in the vending machine. And shook it, and shook it, until it dropped to the bottom.
5. Editors, An End Has A Start
When they get older, Atobe realises that life doesn't begin at 20, 30 or 40. It stops at 18. That's where the school stops, the tennis stops. He and everyone else around him slip off their skins and cover themselves in suit jackets, pressed trousers. Briefcases make their way into their hands. The end of the road isn't like the beginning, but the stupid ones call this the joyous journey through life. As far as Atobe sees it, you start off on a beautiful country trek and end up in the middle of poisonous vines, snakes and mud. This isn't joyous, unless you're an intrepid explorer, which Atobe isn't and will never be.
He confesses these thoughts to Yuushi, over sake (sake, fuck, his father drank this at Atobe's age) and Yuushi is thoughtful. For Yuushi, life begun at 14, that's when he got girlfriends, and since then his path has been a stream of sex, the occasional heart-bashing, lots of marriage proposals but no actual wedding. That's joyous, apparently. Yuushi doesn't understand Atobe's pessimistic outlook but he listens patiently, anyway.
As Atobe finishes ranting, it begins to rain outside, which makes him laugh because, well, it's obvious, isn't it. Yuushi looks out of the window, at the clothes on Atobe's line, getting soaked. At the houses in the distance, like when they'd stand on the school roof and try to see their houses, as kids. Atobe's was easier to identify. It still is: a huge building with tennis courts Atobe never uses.
"Let's play tennis," he says.
"It's raining," Atobe says.
Yuushi pulls a face. "So?"
It's a question Atobe can't answer, which says it all about his life. He's so braindead and so bored that he can't think up one logical reason why playing tennis in the rain in your suit is a stupid idea. At 16, he'd have had twenty reasons. All the reasons died out, too. They play and it's stupid, wet and horrible. And yet watching Yuushi slide through a puddle, hollering, "Oshitari Zone" makes him laugh so hard it almost reaches the memories, fifteen years back.
1. The Postal Service, Such Great Heights.
Jin's crap at maths, Yamapi at geography. If they clubbed together, they could fill in for each other. Jin knows where things are, can memorise cities and countries like that, and Yamapi can calculate the distances between them. If they clubbed together, they'd be a super being. Only the teachers are wise to this and keep them as far apart as possible.
It's fitting, then, that when they grow up, Jin goes places and Yamapi thinks about the distance between them. America is the worst, obviously, but sometimes just the length of Japan can feel intergalactic. As kids, they had dreams to conquer the country, then the world. To become idols, legends, so popular entire websites would be dedicated to them. Something to prove to their peers, that they were meant for greater things.
They both wanted to stand atop everyone else. They both wanted to escape what they already had. They wanted to wave down at everyone they once knew. They wanted to be together.
Only Yamapi finds himself alone more often than not. He stands atop everyone else, and from this place he can see Jin. Jin discovers cities and countries like that, and Yamapi calculates the distance between them.
2. Vienna Teng, Mission Street
Kame isn't sure about Koki, not at first. Koki is everything he'd naturally avoid: brash, brazen, full of attitude. He walks with a confidence Kame can only hope to imitate. Koki is the kind of person that makes Kame feel fraudulent, who reminds Kame of all the mistakes he's made and the chances he hasn't taken.
Koki always takes chances, figures that he might as well. If they go wrong, then he makes something of them anyway, because he's versatile and because he can laugh at himself. He never regrets. Kame always regrets. He regrets the things he does right, for one reason or another, let alone the things he does wrong. They are fundamentally incompatible and Kame is prepared just to work with Koki the way he'd work with anyone. He's resigned to the fact, comfortable with it.
Only Koki keeps trying to do things like get to know him, understand him, make small talk, and Kame doesn't understand why he bothers. He doesn't laugh at Koki's jokes because he doesn't get them, but unlike Jin, this doesn't upset Koki. He just keeps making them, until eventually, one sparks up something in Kame and Kame smiles.
And after that, things are easier, Kame thinks. Koki is still brash, brazen, full of attitude. But he makes Kame feel as if he can relax more, as if work isn't the be-all and the end-all. As if this crazy experience is the only chance they'll have, so they might as well make the most of it. And things do go wrong, but Kame learns to accept that and keep trying to get them right.
They do the photo shoot, even though Kame is afraid of what it'll look like, whether it's just a bit much. It's just that, when they're face to face and Koki goes slightly cross-eyed to wind him up, it doesn't feel a bit much. It feels somehow not enough.
3. Kanjani8, Kanfuu Fighting
Yamapi has an annoying habit of playing Kanjani8 music. Ryo thinks he does it just to wind him up, because when he's in NEWS, he likes to pretend to be a bit more suave than the Kanjani8 boys know him. It's like having two perfectly harmonious parts of himself that each need expression but can't be in the same room together. Only when Yamapi plays Kanfuu Fighting, which he does often, he forces those two parts of Ryo to cohabit. And Ryo suspects that he just does it to wind him up.
He confronts him about it, eventually, lazy and sexed-out, watching Yamapi tying his hair back with a bobble in his mouth. He's sort of loathe to bring it up, he can see Yamapi's reflection in the long mirror, the way he's stretching and pulling his vest top up (and he's barely even got his trousers on, god). Still. It niggles at him.
Yamapi's eyes meet his in the mirror. "Kanfuu Fighting?" he says, all innocence.
"I'm just surprised you like...listening to the band. You don't listen to KAT-TUN and Jin's your best mate."
Yamapi shrugs. "Oh, it's nothing."
Ryo narrows his eyes.
"Just," Yamapi says, cocking his hip. "I heard Ueda was looking to cover a JE song, you know, for their next tour. I think he'd make a great rock version of Kanfuu Fighting, don't you?"
4. Garbage, When I Grow Up
Sometimes, Jae has too much energy. 90% of the time, Changmin guesses, but he's being kind. It's useful when they're working but not so much when they retire to the hotel and everyone just wants to relax. Sharing a room with Jae is like living with a whirlwind. First, he organises his wardrobe, clothes into colour order, then in order of formality. Then he organises his toiletries. Then, Changmin's. And he's just got into reading the room service menu when Changmin can't stand it anymore.
"Have a bath," he suggests. "It might calm you down."
Jae looks at him. He's swinging his arms across himself. "I don't want to have a bath. I had a shower before. I want to run about. I'm never going to sleep."
Changmin takes the menu away from him. "Don't eat, you'll just make yourself worse."
Jae looks at the television, at the programme Changmin's trying to watch. It's about atrocities, always it's about atrocities. Jae finds the news depressing, really, but maybe watching it will calm him down. He'd like to be one of these people who understand politics and have intelligent opinions, but mostly he just comes out with the first thought that enters his head, and-
Apparently he's talking out loud.
Changmin is looking at him, reproachfully. "I will never suggest this again," he begins. "But you should probably jump on the bed and get it out that way."
Jae's face lights up and Changmin prays that he doesn't break anything, or himself, or the manager will have him for breakfast. Only Jae doesn't, he's too short and too light to damage anything, and the look on his face is so sweet and so happy that Changmin feels a touch of envy that he can't always be so lighthearted.
Jae reaches out a hand, then, and yanks him to his feet. Changmin was never allowed to do this, as a kid. It's kind of ironic that they're all grown up now and all they want to do is eat ice cream for dinner and jump up and down on their beds.
5. O-Zone, Dragostea din tei
For his birthday, Jin wants to have a beach party.
Ryo and Yamapi initially each put a foot down. The last time they had a beach party, Jin got completely wasted on mojitos, which he thought were completely masculine, then fell into the sea and had to be dragged out and carried home. And he still considered it the best party ever. It was very Jin, Yamapi supposed: bonfire, drink, colourful lights, music, dancing, food. He's tempted, just to give in. Beach parties are fun, after all-
"No," Ryo says. "No. I'll have to fucking carry him home again."
"I'll help!" Yamapi offers. "Come on, it's his birthday."
"If he wanted to throw himself off a rock for his birthday, would you let him do that?"
Yamapi thinks. "I'd probably follow him off it, actually. It might be fun."
"That's exactly why you should have no vote. No vote whatsoever. You're both fucking senile."
Yamapi can't think of a way to sell the party to Ryo, not a way that wasn't obscene, anyway, so he enlists Tego to help convince him. Tego just works on Ryo until Ryo can't bear it anymore and folds, explicitly leaving Shige to be the walking taxi.
Jin's face when the lot of them surprise him, that makes it worth it for Yamapi. He's in his element in the dim light, with the lights and the alcohol, the fire and the dancing. The excitement that runs through him, that could power Japan, Yamapi reckons.
What makes it worth it for Ryo is watching the pair of them, his best friends, through the night. They start off sober, they end up drunk. They dance together by the fire, ignoring everybody else, hands in each other's pockets, wriggling together. Eyes closed, happy, horny.
Ryo sends Shige home at 10pm after all.
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