[one-shot] What You Mean to Me ~Kiss Kiss remix~
Title: What You Mean to Me ~Kiss Kiss remix~
Type: One-shot
Word count: 2,252
Rating: PG
Pairing: Shige/Massu
Summary: It started with a kiss.
Notes: A remix of What I mean to you by
shigefan1992 for
jentfic_remix Cycle 7, first posted here. Cynthia, I was really excited to be assigned to you because we like a lot of the same pairings. I had a lot of fun writing this! <3 To my beta, you own my heart.
"Is she a good kisser?" asks Massu.
Shige stiffens, unsure at what the question is supposed to imply, or how to answer it. Here they are alone in the dressing room backstage after Shige’s play Seminar, Koyama who had come with Massu having just gone out to take a phone call.
Massu has been standing with his back to Shige as if not wanting to face the younger man. Whether it’s from awkwardness or anxiety or even repulsion, Shige isn’t sure; but it does sting a tiny bit to see Massu treating him this way.
After all, he isn’t just anybody. He and Massu have been... well, he isn’t really sure what they have between them, but it’s definitely something. There had been kisses: both feverish and calm ones, rough and gentle, rushed and slow. Nothing is official yet; neither had ever brought up the issue of their relationship or lack thereof. And now Massu is asking Shige whether he thinks his co-star in the play, Kato Natsuki, is a good kisser. Natsuki, whom Shige had kissed repeatedly on stage earlier, with Massu watching in the audience.
Then it’s like something clicked in Shige’s mind. Massu had been watching in the audience, witnessing Shige act out love scenes with another person. Shige stares at Massu’s back and notices it now: his shoulders are drooping, his head hanging low. It suddenly becomes clear what Shige needs to do - what he’s supposed to have done long ago.
Shige walks over to Massu and puts his hands on his shoulders from behind. "She's not bad," he says, gently bending forward until his mouth is next to the Massu's ear, voice dropping low. "But I like kissing you much better.”
He can feel Massu’s body becoming tense before the older man slowly turns to face him. Massu’s eyes are filled with questions, and Shige can’t think of a better way to answer them than to lean over and capture his lips.
”How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.”
-Victor Hugo
That was also how it all started: with a kiss, something as simple as two pairs of lips meeting. The first one, like many other first kisses in history, was an accident.
It happened when they were at the dressing room, waiting for the other members to arrive. Such an innocent beginning: the two of them sitting at a center table, Massu checking his phone for new messages, Shige leafing through a book he had been reading on and off. Usually nothing occurred during these kinds of moments, some of the most boring periods they had to endure as artists who performed in groups and had to wait until the entire team was assembled before they could actually do anything.
Right now it seemed they could do nothing. Shige closed his book, eyes scanning the room for a nice spot to get a quick nap. Beside him, Massu stood up from his chair and announced, “I’m going to get a drink from the vending machine. Want anything?”
“No thanks, I’m good.”
Massu nodded and was just turning around to head for the door when he tripped over something. Shige wasn’t sure what it was; it could’ve been anything from the foot of the table to Massu’s own shoelaces. He was ready to laugh at his band mate’s clumsiness, but as Massu was falling (in slow motion, according to Shige’s perception) it became apparent that he was going to crash in Shige’s direction. Despite the perceived slow motion, Shige wasn’t fast enough to move away or stop Massu from tumbling into his lap, so he could only sit wide-eyed as their bodies squished together and, to top it off, their lips met.
If Shige had ever wondered how it felt to kiss Massu, which he never had any occasion to do, he wouldn’t have expected it to be this odd, this bizarre, this... good. The plump lips pressing against his own, the sweet and musky scent of Massu’s body, his weight bearing down upon him, all firm muscles - they all felt so foreign yet simultaneously so familiar.
It couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds (the slow motion was still in effect), and when Massu withdrew it was like an integral part of Shige was wrenched away. He very nearly leaned forward to taste those lips again, but a glance at Massu’s dumbstruck expression made him freeze. Mumbling a vague “Sorry”, Massu awkwardly disentangled himself from Shige, almost falling on top of him again as he struggled to his feet.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean... I’m sorry,” Massu repeated, one hand gripping the edge of the table for balance, the other wiping his lips as though they had been sullied.
“Massu-” Shige began, but the older man was already stepping back, turning around and fleeing the room as fast as he could.
Shige took a deep breath, but the erratic beating of his heart wouldn’t calm down. Inside him was a mix of tumultuous emotions, but in the midst of them all one thing was clear. He and Massu had kissed.
And it had felt so good.
”A kiss can be a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point.”
-Mistinguett (Jeanne Bourgeois)
Of course he couldn’t tell Massu that for many different reasons, but mainly because Massu acted like none of it ever happened. Even when he later returned to the room as the other members arrived, he had regained his composure, sitting and talking to everybody like usual. Everybody except Shige.
Shige couldn’t help thinking that, if Massu hadn’t really cared about the kiss, he wouldn’t have gone out of his way to avoid discussing it altogether. Why couldn’t they just bring it up once, laugh about it and then let it go? Shige watched Massu for some kind of sign of what he really thought, but he couldn’t find any. Not until the day of the concert.
All the members had been fired up since the beginning. The audience was lively, the stage perfect, the staff and juniors more than helpful. When Shige looked at his band mates’ faces, he could see the same enthusiasm he knew must be mirrored in his own. He was ready to give his all until the very end.
After the last song before the encore, the members left the stage in order to come back up using separate rising platforms. They parted ways, each going to the direction of his own platform. Shige had reached the small passageway leading to his when a voice behind him called, “Shige.”
He turned around and found Massu standing there, partially hidden by the shadows. “Yours isn’t here,” Shige said, thinking he had gone the wrong way. “It’s the one marked with yellow tape.”
Massu took a step forward and gave Shige a clear view of his face, jaw set and eyes determined, and Shige knew he had come here on purpose. As thousands of fans filled the stadium with cries of “Encore! Encore! Encore!”, Massu closed the distance between them and drew Shige in for a passionate kiss.
Apparently he wanted an encore too.
In the back of his mind Shige worried a staff member might round the corner and see them, but the thought was pushed away in favor of enjoying the feeling of Massu’s lips, even sweeter than it had been the last time. Just when Massu began to pull away, probably attacked by a sudden bout of hesitation, Shige wrapped his arms around him and deepened the kiss, their tongues clashing. Shige’s heartbeat rang in his ears, made more frantic by the heat emanating from Massu’s sweaty body.
“We’re back again - NEWS!!!”
Koyama’s announcement was followed by the banging of drums and heightened screams of the audience. There was no time. Now both Shige and Massu withdrew reluctantly, the latter giving Shige’s arm a squeeze before he backed away to find his own platform.
Still stunned, Shige somehow managed to stand in the right position before he was raised to the stage. The background music to "Kibou ~Yell~” started playing, and Shige took to simply waving to the audience because the lyrics suddenly escaped him. He only remembered to walk straight to the center of the stadium, where all of the members were supposed to go, and where he would find the man again.
There Massu was, throwing an autographed ball to the audience, perspiration running down his temple to his neck. He swiveled around and caught Shige’s eye, and when he smiled at him with flushed cheeks it was like everyone else, everything else, disappeared.
”A kiss, when all is said, what is it?
A rosy dot placed on the "i" in loving;
‘Tis a secret told to the mouth instead of to the ear.”
-Edmond Rostand
Things had shifted a bit between them since then. Like the universe tilting ever so slightly in its axis, the change was subtle and not immediately evident. They were still friends, members of the same group, who talked to each other regularly and went out together in their free time, but now there was an added dimension to it. Now, when Shige mailed Massu saying he was traveling out of town to fish, a brief reply came, “Drive safe. Come home soon.” No cute emojis, no unnecessary embellishments, just a simple message that sent a shot of warmth into Shige’s heart.
But the trouble with such changes, delicate as they were, was that they made it difficult to set clear boundaries. Shige was in the middle of dressing up for dinner with Massu when he stopped himself. He was only eating out with a friend; why was he dressing up anyway? But was Massu still a friend? Friends didn’t really steal kisses backstage during a concert or in a darkened movie theater.
It was hard to define what they had become to each other, and even harder because neither of them dared to broach the subject still. In retrospect Shige understood why Massu hadn’t raised the issue after the first, accidental kiss. Shige didn’t really want to do so now either. The situation was already complicated enough as it was, why make it more so? They were, to a certain extent, comfortable this way, secure in each other’s company, and Shige didn’t want to ruin it.
“Shige...?” Massu’s gentle hand on his shoulder roused him from his reverie. “We’re here.”
Shige glanced out of the taxi and saw they had arrived in front of his apartment building. He turned to Massu again. “I had a great time,” he said, then adding lamely, “We should go out for dinner more often.”
Massu smiled. “Sure, that’d be great.”
Silence filled the air between them before Shige cleared his throat and said, “Right. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”
“Good night.”
Shige opened the cab door and was already stepping outside when he turned back. Massu had a quizzical look on his face, which quickly changed when Shige planted a kiss on his lips. No teeth or tongue, just a steady pressure of the mouth. It amazed Shige how he still had butterflies in his stomach no matter how many times he had done this before. Massu seemed similarly affected; when Shige drew back he saw Massu staring at him dazedly, his lips parted.
“Good night, Massu,” said Shige.
“Uh huh,” Massu murmured indistinctly.
Shige got out of the taxi and entered his apartment building, trying and failing to convince himself that he was breathless from climbing the steps. In his mind was nothing but Massu: his laugh, his kisses, his gentleness, his positivity, his warmth, his everything.
Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.
-Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound
Shige had slowly been coming to terms with how precious Massu had become to him, how with each kiss he grows to want the man more and more. He hadn’t been certain if Massu felt the same, but seeing him now, after the play, delivering that tricky question, it’s as if Shige’s hearing the real, deeper question out loud.
“What do I mean to you?” ask Massu’s gleaming eyes.
Shige tries to convey it in his kiss, in the way he gently nips at Massu’s supple bottom lip, the way his tongue travels to the depths of Massu’s mouth. He hears Massu utter a quiet moan as he welcomes Shige’s endeavors and responds just as enthusiastically. Their bodies press closer by instinct and they kiss and kiss again like there’s no tomorrow. Shige thinks, This feels so right.
Massu is so right.
They break apart, and the blissful look on Massu’s face when he gazes up at Shige drives away all his doubts and worries. Shige’s hands cup Massu’s cheeks as he says, "You're a much better kisser.”
Massu’s lips are swollen pink but he’s smiling as he presses them against Shige’s once more. Shige will hardly stop him. If it’s up to him, they’re going to kiss all night.
Give me a kisse, and to that kisse a score;
Then to that twenty, adde a hundred more;
A thousand to that hundred; so kisse on,
To make that thousand up a million;
Treble that million, and when that is done,
Let’s kisse afresh, as when we first begun.
-Robert Herrick, “To Anthea (III)”
Type: One-shot
Word count: 2,252
Rating: PG
Pairing: Shige/Massu
Summary: It started with a kiss.
Notes: A remix of What I mean to you by
shigefan1992 for
jentfic_remix Cycle 7, first posted here. Cynthia, I was really excited to be assigned to you because we like a lot of the same pairings. I had a lot of fun writing this! <3 To my beta, you own my heart.
"Is she a good kisser?" asks Massu.
Shige stiffens, unsure at what the question is supposed to imply, or how to answer it. Here they are alone in the dressing room backstage after Shige’s play Seminar, Koyama who had come with Massu having just gone out to take a phone call.
Massu has been standing with his back to Shige as if not wanting to face the younger man. Whether it’s from awkwardness or anxiety or even repulsion, Shige isn’t sure; but it does sting a tiny bit to see Massu treating him this way.
After all, he isn’t just anybody. He and Massu have been... well, he isn’t really sure what they have between them, but it’s definitely something. There had been kisses: both feverish and calm ones, rough and gentle, rushed and slow. Nothing is official yet; neither had ever brought up the issue of their relationship or lack thereof. And now Massu is asking Shige whether he thinks his co-star in the play, Kato Natsuki, is a good kisser. Natsuki, whom Shige had kissed repeatedly on stage earlier, with Massu watching in the audience.
Then it’s like something clicked in Shige’s mind. Massu had been watching in the audience, witnessing Shige act out love scenes with another person. Shige stares at Massu’s back and notices it now: his shoulders are drooping, his head hanging low. It suddenly becomes clear what Shige needs to do - what he’s supposed to have done long ago.
Shige walks over to Massu and puts his hands on his shoulders from behind. "She's not bad," he says, gently bending forward until his mouth is next to the Massu's ear, voice dropping low. "But I like kissing you much better.”
He can feel Massu’s body becoming tense before the older man slowly turns to face him. Massu’s eyes are filled with questions, and Shige can’t think of a better way to answer them than to lean over and capture his lips.
”How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.”
-Victor Hugo
That was also how it all started: with a kiss, something as simple as two pairs of lips meeting. The first one, like many other first kisses in history, was an accident.
It happened when they were at the dressing room, waiting for the other members to arrive. Such an innocent beginning: the two of them sitting at a center table, Massu checking his phone for new messages, Shige leafing through a book he had been reading on and off. Usually nothing occurred during these kinds of moments, some of the most boring periods they had to endure as artists who performed in groups and had to wait until the entire team was assembled before they could actually do anything.
Right now it seemed they could do nothing. Shige closed his book, eyes scanning the room for a nice spot to get a quick nap. Beside him, Massu stood up from his chair and announced, “I’m going to get a drink from the vending machine. Want anything?”
“No thanks, I’m good.”
Massu nodded and was just turning around to head for the door when he tripped over something. Shige wasn’t sure what it was; it could’ve been anything from the foot of the table to Massu’s own shoelaces. He was ready to laugh at his band mate’s clumsiness, but as Massu was falling (in slow motion, according to Shige’s perception) it became apparent that he was going to crash in Shige’s direction. Despite the perceived slow motion, Shige wasn’t fast enough to move away or stop Massu from tumbling into his lap, so he could only sit wide-eyed as their bodies squished together and, to top it off, their lips met.
If Shige had ever wondered how it felt to kiss Massu, which he never had any occasion to do, he wouldn’t have expected it to be this odd, this bizarre, this... good. The plump lips pressing against his own, the sweet and musky scent of Massu’s body, his weight bearing down upon him, all firm muscles - they all felt so foreign yet simultaneously so familiar.
It couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds (the slow motion was still in effect), and when Massu withdrew it was like an integral part of Shige was wrenched away. He very nearly leaned forward to taste those lips again, but a glance at Massu’s dumbstruck expression made him freeze. Mumbling a vague “Sorry”, Massu awkwardly disentangled himself from Shige, almost falling on top of him again as he struggled to his feet.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean... I’m sorry,” Massu repeated, one hand gripping the edge of the table for balance, the other wiping his lips as though they had been sullied.
“Massu-” Shige began, but the older man was already stepping back, turning around and fleeing the room as fast as he could.
Shige took a deep breath, but the erratic beating of his heart wouldn’t calm down. Inside him was a mix of tumultuous emotions, but in the midst of them all one thing was clear. He and Massu had kissed.
And it had felt so good.
”A kiss can be a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point.”
-Mistinguett (Jeanne Bourgeois)
Of course he couldn’t tell Massu that for many different reasons, but mainly because Massu acted like none of it ever happened. Even when he later returned to the room as the other members arrived, he had regained his composure, sitting and talking to everybody like usual. Everybody except Shige.
Shige couldn’t help thinking that, if Massu hadn’t really cared about the kiss, he wouldn’t have gone out of his way to avoid discussing it altogether. Why couldn’t they just bring it up once, laugh about it and then let it go? Shige watched Massu for some kind of sign of what he really thought, but he couldn’t find any. Not until the day of the concert.
All the members had been fired up since the beginning. The audience was lively, the stage perfect, the staff and juniors more than helpful. When Shige looked at his band mates’ faces, he could see the same enthusiasm he knew must be mirrored in his own. He was ready to give his all until the very end.
After the last song before the encore, the members left the stage in order to come back up using separate rising platforms. They parted ways, each going to the direction of his own platform. Shige had reached the small passageway leading to his when a voice behind him called, “Shige.”
He turned around and found Massu standing there, partially hidden by the shadows. “Yours isn’t here,” Shige said, thinking he had gone the wrong way. “It’s the one marked with yellow tape.”
Massu took a step forward and gave Shige a clear view of his face, jaw set and eyes determined, and Shige knew he had come here on purpose. As thousands of fans filled the stadium with cries of “Encore! Encore! Encore!”, Massu closed the distance between them and drew Shige in for a passionate kiss.
Apparently he wanted an encore too.
In the back of his mind Shige worried a staff member might round the corner and see them, but the thought was pushed away in favor of enjoying the feeling of Massu’s lips, even sweeter than it had been the last time. Just when Massu began to pull away, probably attacked by a sudden bout of hesitation, Shige wrapped his arms around him and deepened the kiss, their tongues clashing. Shige’s heartbeat rang in his ears, made more frantic by the heat emanating from Massu’s sweaty body.
“We’re back again - NEWS!!!”
Koyama’s announcement was followed by the banging of drums and heightened screams of the audience. There was no time. Now both Shige and Massu withdrew reluctantly, the latter giving Shige’s arm a squeeze before he backed away to find his own platform.
Still stunned, Shige somehow managed to stand in the right position before he was raised to the stage. The background music to "Kibou ~Yell~” started playing, and Shige took to simply waving to the audience because the lyrics suddenly escaped him. He only remembered to walk straight to the center of the stadium, where all of the members were supposed to go, and where he would find the man again.
There Massu was, throwing an autographed ball to the audience, perspiration running down his temple to his neck. He swiveled around and caught Shige’s eye, and when he smiled at him with flushed cheeks it was like everyone else, everything else, disappeared.
”A kiss, when all is said, what is it?
A rosy dot placed on the "i" in loving;
‘Tis a secret told to the mouth instead of to the ear.”
-Edmond Rostand
Things had shifted a bit between them since then. Like the universe tilting ever so slightly in its axis, the change was subtle and not immediately evident. They were still friends, members of the same group, who talked to each other regularly and went out together in their free time, but now there was an added dimension to it. Now, when Shige mailed Massu saying he was traveling out of town to fish, a brief reply came, “Drive safe. Come home soon.” No cute emojis, no unnecessary embellishments, just a simple message that sent a shot of warmth into Shige’s heart.
But the trouble with such changes, delicate as they were, was that they made it difficult to set clear boundaries. Shige was in the middle of dressing up for dinner with Massu when he stopped himself. He was only eating out with a friend; why was he dressing up anyway? But was Massu still a friend? Friends didn’t really steal kisses backstage during a concert or in a darkened movie theater.
It was hard to define what they had become to each other, and even harder because neither of them dared to broach the subject still. In retrospect Shige understood why Massu hadn’t raised the issue after the first, accidental kiss. Shige didn’t really want to do so now either. The situation was already complicated enough as it was, why make it more so? They were, to a certain extent, comfortable this way, secure in each other’s company, and Shige didn’t want to ruin it.
“Shige...?” Massu’s gentle hand on his shoulder roused him from his reverie. “We’re here.”
Shige glanced out of the taxi and saw they had arrived in front of his apartment building. He turned to Massu again. “I had a great time,” he said, then adding lamely, “We should go out for dinner more often.”
Massu smiled. “Sure, that’d be great.”
Silence filled the air between them before Shige cleared his throat and said, “Right. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”
“Good night.”
Shige opened the cab door and was already stepping outside when he turned back. Massu had a quizzical look on his face, which quickly changed when Shige planted a kiss on his lips. No teeth or tongue, just a steady pressure of the mouth. It amazed Shige how he still had butterflies in his stomach no matter how many times he had done this before. Massu seemed similarly affected; when Shige drew back he saw Massu staring at him dazedly, his lips parted.
“Good night, Massu,” said Shige.
“Uh huh,” Massu murmured indistinctly.
Shige got out of the taxi and entered his apartment building, trying and failing to convince himself that he was breathless from climbing the steps. In his mind was nothing but Massu: his laugh, his kisses, his gentleness, his positivity, his warmth, his everything.
Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.
-Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound
Shige had slowly been coming to terms with how precious Massu had become to him, how with each kiss he grows to want the man more and more. He hadn’t been certain if Massu felt the same, but seeing him now, after the play, delivering that tricky question, it’s as if Shige’s hearing the real, deeper question out loud.
“What do I mean to you?” ask Massu’s gleaming eyes.
Shige tries to convey it in his kiss, in the way he gently nips at Massu’s supple bottom lip, the way his tongue travels to the depths of Massu’s mouth. He hears Massu utter a quiet moan as he welcomes Shige’s endeavors and responds just as enthusiastically. Their bodies press closer by instinct and they kiss and kiss again like there’s no tomorrow. Shige thinks, This feels so right.
Massu is so right.
They break apart, and the blissful look on Massu’s face when he gazes up at Shige drives away all his doubts and worries. Shige’s hands cup Massu’s cheeks as he says, "You're a much better kisser.”
Massu’s lips are swollen pink but he’s smiling as he presses them against Shige’s once more. Shige will hardly stop him. If it’s up to him, they’re going to kiss all night.
Give me a kisse, and to that kisse a score;
Then to that twenty, adde a hundred more;
A thousand to that hundred; so kisse on,
To make that thousand up a million;
Treble that million, and when that is done,
Let’s kisse afresh, as when we first begun.
-Robert Herrick, “To Anthea (III)”