#22: FIC: n things that possibly happen to Yano Kenta, PG-13
Title: n things that possibly happen to Yano Kenta
Fandom: Uta no Onii-san, Arashi
Pairing: Manabe/Kenta, Arashi ninja!pairings (SPOT THEM)
Rating: PG
Summary: They blame it on the happoshu, later on.
Disclaimer: All not mine.
Notes: I am eternally grateful to forochel and darong for looking through this. Here there be het.
1.
They blame it on the happoshu, later on.
Kenta kisses Manabe at the impromptu Christmas Eve party that takes place after they finish filming the Christmas special. He doesn't mean to, not really, not until he's standing with his face just inches from hers, the plastic bag of extra snacks they went to retrieve rustling as he leans forward. He thinks he hears her sigh the second their lips meet, but she pulls away just as suddenly as they had stepped into each other's space.
Manabe gives him that same searching look she's used time and again, except now, for just a moment, she seems startlingly fragile, and when she smiles Kenta feels something twist in his chest.
"I'm sorry," she says gently, "perhaps not now."
"Ah," he says, stepping away and finding himself unable to meet her gaze. "I'm sorry."
When they enter the studio Mamoru is giggling through his impression of Prince Himuro while the others inform him cheerfully that it's way off the mark; Sumiyoshi is attacking his third bento with relish. Manabe steps right into the thick of it, handing out snacks and laughing along with everyone.
2.
Manabe sparkles, now; hasn't stopped since the day she'd called them all back to inform them about Minna de Utao!! Deluxe. She laughs easily, even more often when there are children around for the shoot, and Yoko whispers that she once caught Manabe practically skipping down a corridor.
Kenta finds - and this surprises him more than he would expect - that he can't take his eyes off her.
He likes the way she strides around on the set in her pencil skirts and high heels, how she bounds up the stairs during a shoot with almost girlish excitement. She's almost always standing up or going somewhere, but when she does sit down he is mesmerised by the careless elegance of her limbs, the way she rests her chin on her right palm as she flips through a draft of a script, a cup of hot tea by her elbow.
She still whacks him with her shinai on a regular basis, and confiscates his alcohol and makes him copy out obscure kanji like an errant schoolboy, but as he nurses his bruises and mutters over his exercise book his mind wanders to all the moments bright in his memory - a smile, when she was helping him out of his bagworm costume; the way her brow furrowed when one of the children got upset; that look of genuine surprise and delight when he and Mamoru had burst into the studio with the special takoyaki she'd been craving for after seeing it brought into the TV Yuuhi building for another programme. He wonders how many of these Manabe moments he's missed, during the time when his world had still revolved around Akane's smile, around Giselle's music and the opportunity he'd been denied.
Kenta doesn't tell anyone about this, but very few things escape his sister's sixth sense.
"There's something different about you," says Sakura, over the evening's special soba.
"Nonsense," Kenta mumbles, busying himself with his chopsticks. When he looks up Sakura's beaming at him, but she doesn't say anything else.
3.
"There's someone I want you to meet," Michiru says one day, when Kenta has barely gotten out of his costume.
"Isn't there a rule against you not coming into our dressing room?" he snaps.
"No," says Michiru impudently, grabbing his arm. "Now come on."
It turns out she's filming a drama with Ohno Satoshi, who, as she informs him while they're hurrying down a corridor, really really is a spitting image of Kenta, except that he dresses more carelessly and doesn't look as if everyone in the room owes him a large sum of money.
Ohno is on the phone with someone when Michiru opens the door, but when he looks up and sees Kenta he literally does a double take and promises to call back.
"Sho-kun told me about you," he says, wandering over.
"Right," says Kenta, uncomfortable under Ohno's intent gaze.
"We could be doppelgangers," Ohno continues, seemingly unaware that this isn't really what people talk about when they first meet, "Which possibly means that one of us is going to die."
"Is that true?" Michiru asks, eyes wide.
"Of course not," says Kenta quickly.
"No," agrees Ohno, shrugging a little and giving Kenta a lopsided grin. "It's probably just a very good opportunity to mess with people's heads."
4.
The trick to being Ohno Satoshi, according to Ohno Satoshi, is to talk very little and look a little confused when someone asks you a question ("It buys you more time on television," he explains).
The trick to being Yano Kenta, according to Michiru, is to look irritable and be as monosyllabic as possible. ("I am not," Kenta says indignantly. "Oh, and remember that you only secretly find the children cute," adds Michiru.)
When they switch clothing in an unused dressing room Kenta sneaks a glance through the mirror at Ohno, only to find Ohno staring right back at him.
"We're almost exactly the same," says Ohno serenely, moving to stand beside Kenta.
"Our tan lines are different," Kenta points out.
Ohno smiles. "I like fishing."
There are minute differences, like the birthmark on Kenta's stomach that is missing on Ohno's, and, as Ohno notices, their knees.
"Your knees are knobblier."
"Are not."
Michiru knocks on the door. "Are you ready yet?"
"Our knees are different," Ohno calls back, and Kenta wonders why it doesn't feel more surreal to be standing almost naked next to that guy from Arashi, arguing about who has stranger knees.
"This is not going to work," says Kenta when he emerges from the dressing room, wearing Ohno's Yokohama FM T-shirt and his 800-yen trousers. Ohno trails after him, looking vaguely pleased in Kenta's uta no onii-san costume.
"This should be fun," he says, fiddling with the round badge on his chest. "KE-N-TA."
"Come one, you'll be late," snaps Michiru, grabbing Ohno's arm, and for a moment Kenta is vaguely gratified that he isn't the only one she treats that way.
"We're filming on the fourth floor, you should go over to our dressing room," Ohno calls back at him, while Kenta stares after them, bewildered. It's only when he's on the lift going down to the fourth floor that he realises he doesn't even know the name of Arashi's new single.
5.
It doesn't work.
Kenta manages to get past both Sakurai and Aiba, who are lounging on a sofa reading the newspaper and consuming a selection of brightly-coloured mochi respectively. Matsujun is dozing on another armchair, curled up in a position that looks incredibly uncomfortable, and only waves a little and grunts, "Riida", before going back to sleep. He thinks it would be safe to sit down somewhere near Ninomiya, who seems thoroughly absorbed with his DS, but five minutes after he's made himself comfortable Nino glances up at him for a moment, frowning.
"You," he says, thumbs still working madly at his DS.
"Me?" asks Kenta, trying his best to look confused.
There is an explosion from the DS, and then the Game Over music. Nino tears his eyes from the screen and fixes his gaze on Kenta.
"Good morning," Kenta offers.
"You're not Ohno," Nino points out.
If Kenta had been as excited about this hare-brained scheme as Ohno and Michiru, he would probably have attempted to convince Nino, but it's a good thing he doesn't, because at the very same moment the door to the dressing room opens, revealing Ohno, Michiru, and a very angry-looking Manabe.
"Your pardon for intruding," snaps Manabe, striding over to Kenta with little regard for the rest of Arashi. Her glare of death is a Manabe moment Kenta doesn't want to remember. "You're coming with me now."
Sakurai, in the meantime, is waving at Ohno. "It's you again!" he calls cheerily.
"I'm Ohno," Ohno clarifies, waving back anyway. "That's Yano Kenta, the uta no onii-san."
"That's really cool!" Aiba explodes, while Sakurai gapes a little. They wake Matsujun in their scramble to get their cameras. "I'm taking photos!"
6.
"I can tell," Manabe remarks much later, when she's cooled down considerably (and put away her shinai). "Always."
"The others said they couldn't," says Kenta, pulling on his jacket.
"I can tell," says Manabe.
7.
Manabe's place is a small apartment in Takanawa, and by all appearances she lives alone.
It is nicely decorated, almost painfully tidy, the faint floral scent of floor detergent permeating the living room. Kenta sets down the heaviest carton over in a corner and goes down to Manabe's car to get the others, while she tries to find space in her perfectly ordered house for the costumes to reside temporarily. (Mamoru would have been the one helping, but he'd been hit by an unfortunate case of hay fever.)
When Kenta brings up the last of the items (a large garbage bag containing a hideous daikon costume he suspects he might eventually have to wear) Manabe is making tea in her tiny kitchen. For a moment he just pauses at the doorway, pauses to take in exactly how lovely she is, standing barefoot in front of the kettle, toying with the packet of green tea while she waits for the water to boil. He finds that he loves the curve of her neck, the stray strands of hair that have fallen out of her chignon, her relaxed posture.
"Here you go," Manabe says, turning round.
Kenta tries to take the cup from her in a way that keeps their fingers from touching, but they brush nonetheless and it's like electricity, static shock of skin on skin.
He looks up and finds Manabe gazing at him with that brittle expression again. They've spilled some of the tea, most of it on Manabe's fingers, but she doesn't seem to notice the pain.
"You should run it under tap water," Kenta says slowly, unable to move, just waiting for a sign, any indication that Manabe wants the same thing that he does.
There is a flicker in Manabe's expression that could be a yes, that could also be nothing, and when Kenta brings his hand up to rest against the side of her upper arm her eyes flutter shut.
"Let's deal with this like adults," says Manabe after an age.
"Let's not," says Kenta, and stays the night.
8.
Things change after that.
It's in the small things, like when Manabe doesn't linger after a rehearsal is over, but hurries up to the control room with seemingly never-ending notes and instructions. She still smiles and sparkles and laughs, but Kenta has caught, more than once, that look like glass that she gets when nobody is watching. He remembers her touches that night, very little about them tentative or hesitant, but she appears to be trying for all she's worth to look like she's forgotten his.
"Fix it," hisses Mamoru during a break, when Manabe's disappeared and they're sitting around with their panda costumes half-off. "I don't know what happened but fix it."
"I don't know how to," says Kenta, completely honestly.
"You're useless," Michiru tells him. There is something in her voice that might be commiseration.
9.
Manabe looks like the sort who wouldn't like flowers as much as someone like Akane (who, really, is Kenta's only basis for comparison), so he doesn't get her any. Instead, he buys her a packet of takoyaki.
"It's cold," he says, holding out the plastic bag. "But if you heat it up it should be fine."
"I don't think it works that way," says Manabe slowly.
"What?"
"I don't think it's the same if you reheat it."
"Oh," says Kenta, wondering if it's some sort of extended metaphor that he doesn't get. He writes lyrics; he should be good at metaphors.
Manabe takes the plastic bag from him with a gentle smile that Kenta supposes is an 'I'm sorry'. She doesn't say anything of the sort, though, just turns to pick up her briefcase. Her heels echo loudly as she walks towards the studio doors, and it's like any other day except that this time, it feels like the end of something - the inevitable return to tedious acquaintanceship; to being professional and proper and all too distant.
And then Manabe stops by the glass doors, unmoving even when they slide open automatically. When Kenta looks up she's gazing at him with a bemused expression.
"Well, aren't you coming, then?"
"...I'm sorry?"
"Look, if it tastes revolting you're going to have to finish it." She fishes around in her handbag and pulls out her car keys with a triumphant flourish. "Shall we?"
n.
They are in an elevator in the TV Yuuhi building when Kenta confesses, belated and abrupt; awkward like only he can manage.
"...I'm in love with you," he says, looking fixedly at the DOOR OPEN button.
Manabe smiles. "I can tell."
Fandom: Uta no Onii-san, Arashi
Pairing: Manabe/Kenta, Arashi ninja!pairings (SPOT THEM)
Rating: PG
Summary: They blame it on the happoshu, later on.
Disclaimer: All not mine.
Notes: I am eternally grateful to forochel and darong for looking through this. Here there be het.
1.
They blame it on the happoshu, later on.
Kenta kisses Manabe at the impromptu Christmas Eve party that takes place after they finish filming the Christmas special. He doesn't mean to, not really, not until he's standing with his face just inches from hers, the plastic bag of extra snacks they went to retrieve rustling as he leans forward. He thinks he hears her sigh the second their lips meet, but she pulls away just as suddenly as they had stepped into each other's space.
Manabe gives him that same searching look she's used time and again, except now, for just a moment, she seems startlingly fragile, and when she smiles Kenta feels something twist in his chest.
"I'm sorry," she says gently, "perhaps not now."
"Ah," he says, stepping away and finding himself unable to meet her gaze. "I'm sorry."
When they enter the studio Mamoru is giggling through his impression of Prince Himuro while the others inform him cheerfully that it's way off the mark; Sumiyoshi is attacking his third bento with relish. Manabe steps right into the thick of it, handing out snacks and laughing along with everyone.
2.
Manabe sparkles, now; hasn't stopped since the day she'd called them all back to inform them about Minna de Utao!! Deluxe. She laughs easily, even more often when there are children around for the shoot, and Yoko whispers that she once caught Manabe practically skipping down a corridor.
Kenta finds - and this surprises him more than he would expect - that he can't take his eyes off her.
He likes the way she strides around on the set in her pencil skirts and high heels, how she bounds up the stairs during a shoot with almost girlish excitement. She's almost always standing up or going somewhere, but when she does sit down he is mesmerised by the careless elegance of her limbs, the way she rests her chin on her right palm as she flips through a draft of a script, a cup of hot tea by her elbow.
She still whacks him with her shinai on a regular basis, and confiscates his alcohol and makes him copy out obscure kanji like an errant schoolboy, but as he nurses his bruises and mutters over his exercise book his mind wanders to all the moments bright in his memory - a smile, when she was helping him out of his bagworm costume; the way her brow furrowed when one of the children got upset; that look of genuine surprise and delight when he and Mamoru had burst into the studio with the special takoyaki she'd been craving for after seeing it brought into the TV Yuuhi building for another programme. He wonders how many of these Manabe moments he's missed, during the time when his world had still revolved around Akane's smile, around Giselle's music and the opportunity he'd been denied.
Kenta doesn't tell anyone about this, but very few things escape his sister's sixth sense.
"There's something different about you," says Sakura, over the evening's special soba.
"Nonsense," Kenta mumbles, busying himself with his chopsticks. When he looks up Sakura's beaming at him, but she doesn't say anything else.
3.
"There's someone I want you to meet," Michiru says one day, when Kenta has barely gotten out of his costume.
"Isn't there a rule against you not coming into our dressing room?" he snaps.
"No," says Michiru impudently, grabbing his arm. "Now come on."
It turns out she's filming a drama with Ohno Satoshi, who, as she informs him while they're hurrying down a corridor, really really is a spitting image of Kenta, except that he dresses more carelessly and doesn't look as if everyone in the room owes him a large sum of money.
Ohno is on the phone with someone when Michiru opens the door, but when he looks up and sees Kenta he literally does a double take and promises to call back.
"Sho-kun told me about you," he says, wandering over.
"Right," says Kenta, uncomfortable under Ohno's intent gaze.
"We could be doppelgangers," Ohno continues, seemingly unaware that this isn't really what people talk about when they first meet, "Which possibly means that one of us is going to die."
"Is that true?" Michiru asks, eyes wide.
"Of course not," says Kenta quickly.
"No," agrees Ohno, shrugging a little and giving Kenta a lopsided grin. "It's probably just a very good opportunity to mess with people's heads."
4.
The trick to being Ohno Satoshi, according to Ohno Satoshi, is to talk very little and look a little confused when someone asks you a question ("It buys you more time on television," he explains).
The trick to being Yano Kenta, according to Michiru, is to look irritable and be as monosyllabic as possible. ("I am not," Kenta says indignantly. "Oh, and remember that you only secretly find the children cute," adds Michiru.)
When they switch clothing in an unused dressing room Kenta sneaks a glance through the mirror at Ohno, only to find Ohno staring right back at him.
"We're almost exactly the same," says Ohno serenely, moving to stand beside Kenta.
"Our tan lines are different," Kenta points out.
Ohno smiles. "I like fishing."
There are minute differences, like the birthmark on Kenta's stomach that is missing on Ohno's, and, as Ohno notices, their knees.
"Your knees are knobblier."
"Are not."
Michiru knocks on the door. "Are you ready yet?"
"Our knees are different," Ohno calls back, and Kenta wonders why it doesn't feel more surreal to be standing almost naked next to that guy from Arashi, arguing about who has stranger knees.
"This is not going to work," says Kenta when he emerges from the dressing room, wearing Ohno's Yokohama FM T-shirt and his 800-yen trousers. Ohno trails after him, looking vaguely pleased in Kenta's uta no onii-san costume.
"This should be fun," he says, fiddling with the round badge on his chest. "KE-N-TA."
"Come one, you'll be late," snaps Michiru, grabbing Ohno's arm, and for a moment Kenta is vaguely gratified that he isn't the only one she treats that way.
"We're filming on the fourth floor, you should go over to our dressing room," Ohno calls back at him, while Kenta stares after them, bewildered. It's only when he's on the lift going down to the fourth floor that he realises he doesn't even know the name of Arashi's new single.
5.
It doesn't work.
Kenta manages to get past both Sakurai and Aiba, who are lounging on a sofa reading the newspaper and consuming a selection of brightly-coloured mochi respectively. Matsujun is dozing on another armchair, curled up in a position that looks incredibly uncomfortable, and only waves a little and grunts, "Riida", before going back to sleep. He thinks it would be safe to sit down somewhere near Ninomiya, who seems thoroughly absorbed with his DS, but five minutes after he's made himself comfortable Nino glances up at him for a moment, frowning.
"You," he says, thumbs still working madly at his DS.
"Me?" asks Kenta, trying his best to look confused.
There is an explosion from the DS, and then the Game Over music. Nino tears his eyes from the screen and fixes his gaze on Kenta.
"Good morning," Kenta offers.
"You're not Ohno," Nino points out.
If Kenta had been as excited about this hare-brained scheme as Ohno and Michiru, he would probably have attempted to convince Nino, but it's a good thing he doesn't, because at the very same moment the door to the dressing room opens, revealing Ohno, Michiru, and a very angry-looking Manabe.
"Your pardon for intruding," snaps Manabe, striding over to Kenta with little regard for the rest of Arashi. Her glare of death is a Manabe moment Kenta doesn't want to remember. "You're coming with me now."
Sakurai, in the meantime, is waving at Ohno. "It's you again!" he calls cheerily.
"I'm Ohno," Ohno clarifies, waving back anyway. "That's Yano Kenta, the uta no onii-san."
"That's really cool!" Aiba explodes, while Sakurai gapes a little. They wake Matsujun in their scramble to get their cameras. "I'm taking photos!"
6.
"I can tell," Manabe remarks much later, when she's cooled down considerably (and put away her shinai). "Always."
"The others said they couldn't," says Kenta, pulling on his jacket.
"I can tell," says Manabe.
7.
Manabe's place is a small apartment in Takanawa, and by all appearances she lives alone.
It is nicely decorated, almost painfully tidy, the faint floral scent of floor detergent permeating the living room. Kenta sets down the heaviest carton over in a corner and goes down to Manabe's car to get the others, while she tries to find space in her perfectly ordered house for the costumes to reside temporarily. (Mamoru would have been the one helping, but he'd been hit by an unfortunate case of hay fever.)
When Kenta brings up the last of the items (a large garbage bag containing a hideous daikon costume he suspects he might eventually have to wear) Manabe is making tea in her tiny kitchen. For a moment he just pauses at the doorway, pauses to take in exactly how lovely she is, standing barefoot in front of the kettle, toying with the packet of green tea while she waits for the water to boil. He finds that he loves the curve of her neck, the stray strands of hair that have fallen out of her chignon, her relaxed posture.
"Here you go," Manabe says, turning round.
Kenta tries to take the cup from her in a way that keeps their fingers from touching, but they brush nonetheless and it's like electricity, static shock of skin on skin.
He looks up and finds Manabe gazing at him with that brittle expression again. They've spilled some of the tea, most of it on Manabe's fingers, but she doesn't seem to notice the pain.
"You should run it under tap water," Kenta says slowly, unable to move, just waiting for a sign, any indication that Manabe wants the same thing that he does.
There is a flicker in Manabe's expression that could be a yes, that could also be nothing, and when Kenta brings his hand up to rest against the side of her upper arm her eyes flutter shut.
"Let's deal with this like adults," says Manabe after an age.
"Let's not," says Kenta, and stays the night.
8.
Things change after that.
It's in the small things, like when Manabe doesn't linger after a rehearsal is over, but hurries up to the control room with seemingly never-ending notes and instructions. She still smiles and sparkles and laughs, but Kenta has caught, more than once, that look like glass that she gets when nobody is watching. He remembers her touches that night, very little about them tentative or hesitant, but she appears to be trying for all she's worth to look like she's forgotten his.
"Fix it," hisses Mamoru during a break, when Manabe's disappeared and they're sitting around with their panda costumes half-off. "I don't know what happened but fix it."
"I don't know how to," says Kenta, completely honestly.
"You're useless," Michiru tells him. There is something in her voice that might be commiseration.
9.
Manabe looks like the sort who wouldn't like flowers as much as someone like Akane (who, really, is Kenta's only basis for comparison), so he doesn't get her any. Instead, he buys her a packet of takoyaki.
"It's cold," he says, holding out the plastic bag. "But if you heat it up it should be fine."
"I don't think it works that way," says Manabe slowly.
"What?"
"I don't think it's the same if you reheat it."
"Oh," says Kenta, wondering if it's some sort of extended metaphor that he doesn't get. He writes lyrics; he should be good at metaphors.
Manabe takes the plastic bag from him with a gentle smile that Kenta supposes is an 'I'm sorry'. She doesn't say anything of the sort, though, just turns to pick up her briefcase. Her heels echo loudly as she walks towards the studio doors, and it's like any other day except that this time, it feels like the end of something - the inevitable return to tedious acquaintanceship; to being professional and proper and all too distant.
And then Manabe stops by the glass doors, unmoving even when they slide open automatically. When Kenta looks up she's gazing at him with a bemused expression.
"Well, aren't you coming, then?"
"...I'm sorry?"
"Look, if it tastes revolting you're going to have to finish it." She fishes around in her handbag and pulls out her car keys with a triumphant flourish. "Shall we?"
n.
They are in an elevator in the TV Yuuhi building when Kenta confesses, belated and abrupt; awkward like only he can manage.
"...I'm in love with you," he says, looking fixedly at the DOOR OPEN button.
Manabe smiles. "I can tell."