Prompt 6: Idol Rule #3724: Don't ask girls their cup size - Team What-If
Title: Typhon
Rating: Pg/Pg-13
Pairing: Ohno/Scandal-girl, a little Ohno/Ninomiya
Summary: What if Ohno really did get stoned and have a threesome? What if he really didn't use a condom? And what if the answer to 'did I accidentally get you pregnant' was 'yes' instead of 'no'?
Prompt: Idol Rule #3724: Don't ask girls their cup size.
Warnings: Mentions of het sex and drug use? Arashi members being gay?
Notes: Obviously this is a throwback to Ohno's scandal in July of 2008.
Typhon
His first words to her, ever, were these:
"How big are your boobs?"
Some little hotspot near his dorm and he'd been seventeen and stoned, she'd been nineteen and stoned as well, and it really had seemed like a valid question at the time.
Machida had laughed and leaned on him and "I think you just broke a rule!"
And maybe he had (and later, so much later, he would learn that he had and that was Aiba's favorite) but it hadn't made the sky fall.
Or maybe it had and maybe it'd taken a long time for the sky to hit the ground.
~*~
Ohno wets his lips and remembers the way the marijuana smoke clung to them that night, cloyingly sweet and herbal. Like summer in the late springtime. "Are you okay?"
She laughs a little bit and it is a quiet sound. It's distorted in an almost undetectable way. This is her laugh through her cell phone.
Her laugh that night had been raucous and loud. It had echoed through Ohno's whole body as he'd laid his head against her thigh. His arm had been around her back, the tips of her long hair brushing against it. He remembers that clearly despite the haze of the night.
"Yoshida-san," he says. Her name is Nanami but he doesn't feel right calling her that, even though he's called her that before.
"I don't know," she tells him "It's only been a few days. But…I don't know. Maybe."
Ohno's phone is an older DoCoMo and it makes a creaking sort of sound as his hand tightens on it. "When-when will you-?" he asks. His head is swimming. Not like that night. That night had been a twirl, a titl-a-whirl fun park night. This just makes him a little sick.
"I'll call you," Yoshida says. "I've got to go. My break is over."
She hangs up before Ohno can decide if he wants to say 'goodbye' or not.
~*~
I'll call you. She's said that to him before. When he knew her in Kyoto, when he left. Her friend had called Macchin but she hadn't bothered and Ohno hadn't cared and eventually he'd got a new phone number.
All they'd done before was smoke weed and fool around a little anyway.
How funny, then, that they would meet accidentally that night outside that club, him by himself and her with her new friends from her new job in Tokyo. How funny that he'd recognize her after so many years, just from hearing the lilt of Kyoto like a song in her voice.
~*~
Ohno forces himself to call his manager. "I didn't use a condom," he tells him.
"All right."
Ohno can hear the sound of Honda and his family having breakfast. He feels even worse. "I-"
"Who, where, when, and what exactly happened that night," Honda says and Ohno hears the noise of family fade. He feels guilty but he tells him. About the pot and Yoshida and her friend and how he came on one girl's face and fucked the other without a condom and didn't do fuck all to the third girl because she'd already left with her phone full of pictures.
He finishes with, "That was…it was last week. I think."
"Yes, last week; one of the girls already tried to sell the story. PR took care of it. I'll clear an hour in your schedule today and we'll talk about your options. When I've got that down, I'll call you. I think…" a pause, sounds of a second mobile, "Yes, Shioya can look after you today."
Shioya is Nino's manager and she once called Ohno's mother, looking for Nino. That had been the day he and Nino had run off together and created Ohmiya SK instead of going to dance practice. Shioya never lets him forget it; she always asks how his mother is when she sees him.
~*~
Really, how funny?
And they'd all been free.
~*~
There are ten rules on the official list given to every Johnny's, debut or not. The first number is: don't cause a scandal. Boiled down it really means 'don't get caught'. The rest of the rules are about drinking and drugs and sex and girlfriends and they also mean 'don't get caught'.
A more helpful list is the unofficial rules in Johnny's. The ones everybody, even the juniors, get to add to and update. It's kept online on a secure server and there are thousands entries; it covers everything from the right way to hit on a new-half to the wrong way to eat a fruit kebab. There are also several hundred from 'the wider collective conscious of the Idol Star', which means that Oguri Shun and Ogura and Daigo and others that have worked closely with Johnny's stars have something to add to the list.
The first rule on this list, this unofficial guide to everything else, was penned by either Nakai or Kimura but neither of them ever lays claim to it because it reads: Never punch a member in his cock-sucking mouth.
It's an even split in opinion on just who had the cock-sucking mouth.
In the hundreds, somewhere, are: Never suck a drunken member's cock and Never let a drunk member suck your cock.
In Arashi, only Nino and Jun are willing to give head. Well, and Sho if he's drunk enough but at that point Nino stands up for heterosexuality and takes Sho home.
They're good guys, all of them, even though Jun's favorite rule is the first one.
Ohno isn't really an 'Idol Star'. He's just regular Ohno Satoshi but for them, for Arashi, he works hard to be the best one that he can be. His heart owes them that.
~*~
Yoshida Nanami doesn't call Ohno. Ohno's manager calls him and when Ohno goes to 'get lunch' with him during the 'break between' photo shoots and interviews with the rest of the members Nanami is there with Honda. Morioka is with them. Morioka is the head of the 'scandals' section of Johnny's public relations department. He's an old guy, an old friend of Johnny's.
He's grandfatherly and kind. If you meet him on the streets.
Ohno meets him in an underground parking garage at the side of one of the fleet cars. "You're a dumb shit," he says "who can't keep his dick in his pants."
There's not much to say to that so Ohno just nods and climbs into the back, with Yoshida. Nanami. He doesn't know what to call her, even in his own head.
He wishes she'd have called and told him.
"Hey," she says. It's a greeting, finally. She sounds nervous. She seems unnaturally still.
"Yeah," Ohno says.
Honda slides behind the wheel of the car. It's so bad they don't even have a driver. Ohno looks out the window as they make the winding drive up from the bottom level.
"Since it's too early for a urine pregnancy test-" Ohno winces at those words. It seems really wrong for his manager to say something like 'urine pregnancy test' despite the fact that this is the same man that once told Ohno about getting drunk with his friends and 'pissing in the bushes at Yoyogi park'. "We took her to the clinic for a blood serum analysis."
Ohno notices the way his manager says 'the clinic' rather than 'a clinic'. It's strange. For a moment Ohno gets lost, thinking about Johnny's having it's own clinic with it's own doctors and concert-style scrubs before he decides that it's probably just a clinic that Morioka pays off whenever the company needs to use it.
Whenever somebody gets caught.
Rule number one.
"We should have results-"
Morioka's phone rings and Ohno's manager stops talking.
"The rabbit died," Morioka says.
Oh, thinks Ohno.
And the car emerges from the parking garage, into the blue-sky rain of the afternoon, and merges with the flow of traffic.
Yoshida bites her lip and Ohno can see tears spring up in her eyes. He looks away, uncomfortable and embarrassed.
"The deal is this: We'll take you for an abortion and you don't say word one about Ohno Satoshi or any of this to anybody, not even your parents. In exchange we'll let you name your price." Morioka is cold.
"I-"
"We already paid off your friends. Don't be surprised if you find out they've both got new jobs and never want to talk to you again."
"I know," Yoshida says in a strangled whisper.
Johnny's is a cold place. Sometimes. And sometimes it makes the world a cold place.
But Ohno already knew this. Unofficial Idol Rule twenty-one is: Don't piss off management.
Just like he knew that 'options' didn't mean really mean 'you have a choice'.
Yoshida is openly crying now, but trying to hide it. Hide her face and her shame and it pretty much is all Ohno's fault so he takes her hand.
"Nanami, do you want to get married with me and have this baby?" he asks.
He guesses that he's calling her Nanami now.
~*~
"Hey, how was lunch with Honda-san?" Sho greets him when he rejoins the other.
"What'd you get?" Aiba wants to know.
Married, Ohno thinks.
Aiba and Sho are his food-buddies, his lunch-time pals.
Nino grins at him without looking up from his DS. "I bet it was ramen," he teases.
Jun punches him on the shoulder as he sits down between him and Aiba. It's affectionate.
"I think Johnny's is sort of like the yakuza," is what he says at last. He's thinking of the way a marriage certificate had appeared and the blood-work waived and how a lawyer to do the whole thing in private and seal the documents into the register had been right there to file everything and keep it secret.
"The mob is a mostly legitimate business," Nino says off-handedly.
Sho laughs and Aiba giggles and Jun's huge personal bubble of space seems to shrink and let Ohno closer.
There wasn't time to eat lunch.
Ohno's stomach is a miserable knot of nerves and hunger.
Arashi is just really beginning to cause their storm. They've finally come together as a group, all the way together, all of them happy. They're finally getting the projects they've wanted, the songs they like to sing. They're finally getting noticed for being just exactly who they are.
He's always worked so hard for his group and now he's done this. Caused this. Is this. Will be that.
I'm sorry, he thinks.
He doesn't say a word.
~*~
"Leader!" Aiba pulls him aside after their shoot. "Your manager called your phone while you were on the set; since it was Honda, I answered. He said he's picking you up for dinner at eight."
Ah, Ohno thinks. Setting up the rest of the rest of his life. "Thanks, Aiba-chan."
"Is-" Aiba looks at him hard. It's not common at all to have a meal with just their managers, not for any Johnny's. For Ohno to have two in one day with his is…well, worrisome. Even to Aiba. "Is everything all right, Leader?"
"Yeah-" Somehow, he can't do it. He can't lie to Aiba. Not entirely. "I might be in a bit of trouble. PR is handling things."
"Oh." Aiba hugs him quickly. "If you need anything, we're all behind you. We're Arashi."
"We're Arashi," Ohno echoes.
It's the sort of thing he probably should have thought about earlier, he thinks. Before the non-condom for sure, but he wishes it had been there before the question of cup sizes as well.
Arashi. For dream.
~*~
Rule number four on the Johnny's list is: Let the company speak for you.
Rule nine hundred sixty-one on the unofficial list is: Try your hardest~!
Sho wrote it one night when he was drunk and feeling his love for Arashi and, by extension, Johnny's. It's unabashedly his favorite.
It's not Ohno's favorite but it's the one he believes in the most.
~*~
"This-" Ohno shuffles his feet and glances at the newly minted Ohno Nanami. "This is a nice apartment," he says at last.
She answers with a slight nod of her head, her hands clasped so hard that her fingers are white.
Morioka snorts. "Lovely. Welcome home." He turns to Honda. "That's me done," he says. "Make sure he keeps his fool head down."
Honda sighs and checks his watch. "Satoshi-kun, you're due concert rehearsal soon. Let's get you back to work."
Honda leaves and Ohno makes to follow him when Nanami's voice catches him. "When-" she asks quietly, in a faltering voice. "When will you be…home?"
For a moment he doesn't understand and then he does and then it's awful, just awful. "This apartment," he says and then stops. "I have to go home tonight. My family…" he trails off. Nanami's head is down, her shoulders slumped. "Do your best," he tells her.
She makes a fist and lifts it weakly, the weakest fight gesture that Ohno has ever seen; he's watched a sick, pained Nino do concert rehearsals and be more spirited.
For a moment he almost reaches out to pat her shoulder but he doesn't. He turns and he leaves and goes back to work.
~*~
Nagase edited Sho's entry, putting a little heart between the ~ and the !
Since then it has been a free-for-all of emoticons: umbrellas and telephones and thumbs-ups and cat faces and even a garbage truck.
Ohno goes into the entry and adds a frowning face. And then goes back again and removes it and every single other emoticon until all that's there is Sho's original message.
~*~
Lying to his mother is not something that Ohno has never done before.
Every kid lies to their mother.
No, I wasn't smoking.
No, I wasn't drinking.
Yes, her parents were home the whole time.
Those are the kind of lies every kid tells and everybody knows he's lying but it's an expected lie and forgivable.
"I'm not hungry, mom," he says when his mother meets him at the door and tries to feed him. "I'm twenty-five years old. I can feed myself if I get hungry," he tells her. He slams his way into his room like an angry five-year-old.
A few minutes later, his father comes in. His father doesn't say anything.
Ohno has a sudden image of himself telling his father that he's gotten a girl pregnant and married her. He can see his family trooping over to Nanami's apartment right now even though it's past midnight. Mina is there with her new husband, already thinking about babies of her own. He can see the meeting and how he'll be living with Nanami from now on and how Mina will get pregnant right away and the babies will be born just a few months apart and be raised like siblings and Mina has a daughter and he has a son.
He's not ready for that.
Mentally he names his son 'Kazunari' and gives him a mixture of Sho and Jun and Aiba's faces.
Still not ready.
"It's nothing," he tells his father. "I have to go on location for a…a few days."
"Now tell the truth," his mother says gently. She's standing in the doorway of his bedroom, the room he's had since he was a baby.
Ohno looks at his mother and he loves her so. And so he lies. "I'm getting my own place. I just…can't live here anymore."
Maybe it's a little bit the truth.
~*~
The last rule on the official list is: Tell the truth.
It doesn't mean 'to everybody'. It means management and it's so management knows which way to lie in order to save the most money.
~*~
Nanami's apartment is beginning to look like a home. There are pictures on the wall, at least.
Ohno sits on her couch and stares at her turned-off television.
"Tea, Satoshi-san?" Nanami hesitates, stuttering over his name a bit.
He doesn't even know what she does with her days. If she works. If she stays home. Honda takes money for her out of every paycheck and Ohno doesn't care because he never spends his money anyhow.
Nanami's teacups are white with sunset blue-pink band around the top.
"I don't want this," Ohno says.
"Oh, I-" she starts to clear away the little tray and Ohno stops her by picking up the teacup. "Oh," she says. She sits down beside him.
Not closely.
"It was a stupid thing for me to offer," he says. He looks at Nanami. "But I wanted you to have a choice. If you wanted an abortion, if you wanted a baby…those were things for you to decide."
She smiles at him. Softly. "Thank you, Satoshi-san."
He wonders if she understands. "But I don't want to be married and I don't want to have a kid. I don't want any of this"
"I know," says Nanami.
"I didn't tell anybody," he says, trying to make it desperately clear. "Not one person. And I'm not going to because I don't want this. I don't want-" you, he thinks, not either of you. "This. Any of this."
Nanami takes his teacup and he realizes that it's empty. He doesn't remember drinking it. "I know," she says. He follows her to the tiny kitchen. It's next to the entryway and he scuffs his shoes on and watches her rinse his cup. She turns and smiles at him, her eyes a little blind but still clear. "I'm glad you made the offer," she says. "Satoshi-san is still the same from that time."
Ohno remembers his stubborn past-self and doesn't say another word, just pulls the door shut behind himself.
~*~
Nino's favorite rule is six hundred twelve. It's the lyrics to V6's 'Made in Japan'.
It's obviously not really a rule at all and that's probably why it's Nino's favorite.
Ohno thinks this is the cutest thing he knows about Nino.
~*~
"Hey, I'm going to America," Nino says suddenly. He's sprawled out in 'his' chair at Ohno's apartment.
Ever since Ohno got the place, Nino has been over just about every week. It makes it less lonely and more home-like to have Nino there. Which is weird because Nino never came over to his place when he lived with his parents.
Nanami doesn't even have the address.
"For vacation?" Ohno asks. He uncaps two bottles of beer and passes one to Nino before sitting on the floor at his feet. He thinks of New York and all the god awful English he heard there.
Nino hands him the joint they've been sharing. "For work. I got the part in that movie Eastwood is making." Ohno drags in a lungful of smoke and holds it, feeling cottony on the inside. "I'll be gone for a month or two."
"Cool," Ohno exhales the smoke along with the word. "That's great news! I-"
~*~
"I named her 'Amaya'," Nanami says, cradling the pink-wrapped bundle close to her before offering it out.
Ohno takes it only because he can't think of a polite way to decline.
His daughter. This is his daughter, Amaya. Ohno Amaya. His firstborn child. His daughter.
He doesn't feel anything, really. He's glad that he hasn't told his family. His mother and Mina would never let him ignore something like this.
"That's cute," he says obediently. "Hi, Amaya," he adds, because he thinks that it's expected.
Nanami beams at him. "I named her-because, do you remember the night we first met? And how it was-"
"No," he cuts her off. "I don't remember." He really doesn't. "I remember asking about your boobs and after that you showed me your push-up bra." He remembers Machida at his shoulder. He remembers that better than he remembers anything else about that night, including the bra. "You remember?"
Nanami's smile gets a little rigid, like she's fighting to hang on to it. She takes the baby back and Ohno is afraid that his gratitude shows right then. "I guess I don't," she says. "I just wanted to have something to tell her. If she ever asked."
~*~
"You what?" Nino asks, nudging him with his foot.
Ohno wraps his hand around Nino's ankle and holds on. "I think I love Nino more than anybody else," he says. He tugs and Nino slithers onto the floor beside him. Ohno rolls on top of him. "Anybody else," he repeats.
Nino grins at him, lazy, lazy. "Not more than your mom," he says.
Thinking about all the lies he's told, all the truths he hasn't, Ohno wonders just how much he really does love his family. Still. "More than my secret wife and secret baby," he tells Nino and then kisses him full on the mouth.
When he pulls away again, Nino is giggling at him breathlessly. "Oh-chan is so strange," he says.
Ohno kisses him again. "Nanami and Amaya are nowhere close to Nino," he says. "Nowhere near Arashi." He kisses Nino again. And again. And still again.
"This is gonna be awkward in the morning," Nino declares as they start getting naked.
For a moment Ohno considers stopping.
But he's made nothing but bad choices for so long that he can't regret adding one more to the list.
Surprisingly, this bad decision is full of laughter and tickling and hugging and when they wake up in the morning it's a little awkward but not bad. He doesn't have to regret this, Ohno thinks as Nino borrows one of his shirts to wear to work.
Not yet.
~*~
Honda is driving him home. Ohno has no clue why this is. He's pretty wasted. He can't even remember why he was drinking.
"To celebrate the successful run of your stageplay," Honda explains.
"You're a mind reader," Ohno tells his manager feelingly.
"You're talking to yourself over there," his manager returns. In the splashes of light from nighttime-Tokyo, Ohno can see the fond smile on his manager's face.
The world wheels around them, turning with Honda's hands on the steering wheel. At that moment Ohno wishes he knew how to drive. "Hey-"
"Satoshi-san, we've known each other since you were eighteen, right?" Honda says.
Ohno nods. "Since debut you've been my manager." He smiles, lopsided because he can't really control his lips anymore. "I'm really happy."
"Yeah," says Honda. "So…I'm going to overstep my bounds. Satoshi-san, you have a wife and a child now…"
"I don't want them," Ohno turns away churlishly. "I didn't ask for them."
"Except for the part where you asked her to marry you and keep the baby," Honda reminds him. "But-" he cuts Ohno off before Ohno can do more than open his mouth. "But I understand why you did that. Satoshi-san is Satoshi-san." It's the same thing that Nanami had told him a year ago, sitting in her little apartment the one time he'd visited her. "I only want for you to know that you will never get a chance like this again. With them. And Yoshida is a good woman. She works hard and she doesn't complain, she doesn't ask for things. The baby is very sweet, too. . You should be living with them. You could easily fall in love. You could do much worse, Satoshi-san, than a woman who loves you and a beautiful baby."
"Yoshida…" Ohno says, feeling the name slur in his mouth. "She doesn't-how do you know?" he asks.
Honda turns the wheel again and Ohno's apartment building appears out of the darkness. "Somebody has to bring her the money every week."
~*~
Rule seven (or eight, Ohno can never remember them in order) on the official list is: Do the work assigned to you.
~*~
After that night in the car with Honda, Ohno is given the task of taking money to his wife and child.
Sometimes he forgets and is days late, weeks late, but Nanami never says a word about. She thanks him, offers to let him come in and have tea and see their child. After the first few times he never takes her up on it and she doesn't say a word about that, either.
Eight months after Ohno takes over the money duty, he gets a call from her. He's not at work but he thinks about ignoring it anyway. "What?" he asks.
Her voice has that cell phone distortion going on, inaudible but there. "Morioka-san," she begins.
"Who?" Ohno asks.
"Morioka-san, from your agency, he died. I-will you bring flowers to his ceremony for me?"
It's not late and he's perfectly sober and Jun is in his kitchen making dinner. Somehow he's still not understanding. "What?"
Nanami seems to understand him, however. "He was kind to me," she tells him. "He came every month to see me and Ayama." She laughs a little bit and Ohno notices that it's slightly choked by tears. "He brought money from the agency even though we were married. He said it was because you were a bad husband. He didn't want us to think badly of the boys Johnny's produced."
Ohno remembers meeting Morioka beside the car and how he left, warning Honda to keep Ohno's head down. He honestly can't believe that the old man visited his illicit wife and near-bastard child out of the goodness of his heart. Hush money, good-will visits.
Maybe Morioka was the one in the company who worked hardest at his job.
"I will," he says to Nanami. He hangs up without a goodbye when Jun calls to him that dinner is done.
"Who was that?" Jun asks, setting a plate of pasta in front of him.
Ohno claps his hands, gives his thanks, and tucks in. "I'm supposed to go to that funeral for the PR director," he tells him.
Jun grins at him. "Nino and Aiba said they're going to go and spit on his grave." His face softens. "How come you're going?"
What can he say?
"I was asked to go," he settles on.
Jun smiles at him, sweet in the way only Jun can be. "That's Leader," he says.
Ohno takes his hand.
"Gross!" Jun laughs, but lets him hold his hand while they eat.
~*~
Ohno can recite the ten rules of Johnny's talent in his sleep but that doesn't mean he can remember them right away if asked for them by number. It's all by rote. Sheer habit.
He can rattle off a good number of the unofficial ones just because he knows them like a favorite joke.
Rule one thousand one hundred one is a big, blank space.
This is Ohno's favorite.
~*~
Not long after Morioka dies, Ohno beings to get his act together. He goes every week to bring Nanami the money and he goes in for tea and sees the child. He goes late at night, so that she's sleeping. Sometimes he looks at her and wishes he could feel something more than what he does. For both of them, really.
Soon after that, he gets the lead in Maou.
And the press gets a scandal.
~*~
"Wow, a 3p," Aiba says. He gives Ohno a brilliant smile. "Way to go, Leader!"
It's meant to cheer him up. It honestly is and he knows it. They are two weeks into his scandal and it's hard but they're trying. They're trying so much. For him.
"Stupid," Nino laughs. "It says he forgot the condom. Who forgets the fourth rule?"
"If he did, wouldn't it say 'abortion scandal'?" Jun adds. "Sloppy work."
"Two abortion scandals," Sho adds. One arm loops affectionately around Ohno's waist. Grounding him.
Arashi is smiling at him. They're standing with him, all of them taking the blow meant for him alone. They're letting the company speak for them, letting the company defend Ohno ferociously. But they're speaking, too. In a silent voice. Always there, always close. The message is clear.
He means to say I'm sorry but the words get lost on the way to his mouth.
"I got her pregnant," is what makes it out. "We got married. There's a kid."
Sho chokes on a breath. Aiba's eyes go wide. Jun finds a tentative smile. After all, they've joked about this before-Ohno's private life always so private, they'd never know he was married until he announced his divorce.
Nino is looking at him with solemn eyes. "When?"
Now is the time for regret, Ohno thinks. It hits him hard. "That night…" there is only the one night. So fun and so easy and the awkwardness of the next day had been fun, too, and they'd laughed and he still loved Nino better than maybe anybody else. "That was the day the baby came. It was that morning."
The others aren't stupid. Though neither he nor Nino ever said a word (Ohno assumes Nino hasn't, because why would he?) the others all take deep breaths.
Ohno waits.
After a moment, Nino smiles at him. It reminds him of the way Nanami smiles-something fake to cover up something real. "It's stupid to be pissed," Nino says calmly. "No, it really is, I know it is. We're not like that. We're just us. But you know I have…well, I'm kind of messed up. So…for right now…"
"Yeah," Ohno responds. "It's all right."
"Sure," Nino ducks his head. "Right now I'm gonna go…" he makes a twirling motion with his fingers and then leaves the room. The door clicks quietly behind him.
Jun and Aiba share a look and then they're out the door, too.
Sho looks like he wants to call after them but he doesn't. The three of them-Aiba and Nino and Jun-have a bond that predates Arashi. They will go and sort Nino out for now and Sho will hover over him later and Ohno will wait for Nino to come back to his side again. That's the way things work. The way Arashi works.
Ohno looks at Sho. "I-"
"I want to meet them," Sho says.
"I don't love them," he tells him. "I didn't even tell my family. They don't know at all."
"I want to meet them," Sho repeats. Sho looks solid and a little scared and totally determined and Ohno understands. This is something Sho needs to do. For all of them.
~*~
Debuting talent gets told 'Your members are your new best friends'.
It's not a rule except for the way that it sounds like one.
Funnily enough, nobody ever explains it or tries to clarify it. Publicly? Privately? For show? For real?
It's almost never true that members become best friends but it's always true that they're the ones who understand the best in the end.
Because they're the ones that are always there, like it or not.
~*~
Nanami answers the door with the baby on her hip.
Amaya isn't much of a baby anymore, already more than two. She's bigger than Ohno's niece, which still seems strange to him. Less strange is how the baby looks almost nothing like him. He can see bits of it, around the mouth, but mostly she looks like Amuro Namie.
"Hello," Nanami says, looking at Ohno and Sho with wide, wide eyes.
Sho bows a little. His hands are full of gifts. "Hello. I'm-"
"Ah!" Nanami steps back suddenly. "Come in! Please!"
Within seconds they're all in the charming little apartment and it's a whole lot more awkward than Ohno had ever dreamed it would be. "Ah, Nanami, this is Sakurai Sho. I work with him." It's the most unnecessary thing Ohno has ever said. In his whole entire life. And that includes the time he accidentally got Nino in the nuts with his knee and had apologized, saying he hadn't meant to do so. "Sho, this is…this is Ohno Nanami and Ohno Ayama. They're-" he frowns, trying to think what to call them. Something that wouldn't be insulting.
"I'm sorry," Nanami says.
Yeah, that about sums it up, thinks Ohno.
"For such a meeting…" she smiles her cover-up smile.
Sho smiles his idol star smile.
And things get even more awkward until Amaya reaches for the pink unicorn plushie in Sho's hands saying 'Please!" in very formal words with a very tiny voice.
"Cute!" Sho melts and the next thing Ohno knows is that Amaya is in Sho's lap and Sho is making the plush toy neigh and prance at her and she's laughing, clapping her baby-fat hands. Inside of three minutes, Sho is a better father than Ohno has been in the entire three years since he's known he was going to be a father.
"I'll make tea," Nanami says and slips away to the kitchen.
Ohno follows her and watches her hands as she fills the kettle, fetches the cups. He remembers watching her hands roll a joint a long time ago in Kyoto. He remembers watching her hands as she touched him, guiding him into her and accidentally starting all of this. She's thirty-one and he's twenty-eight and together they have a two year old daughter. "I'm a crappy husband and a worse father," he says, leaning against her refrigerator.
"You haven't really been either of those things," she answers. Her shoulders slump. "There are divorce papers. If you could find witnesses you trust…"
He thinks that he should feel something, something more than this wide, yawing blank space where the future should be, where loss and regret should live. "There's somebody else?" he asks after a moment, all ready nodding. Yes, he can find people he trusts to witness their divorce.
Nanami smiles at him and for the first time since Amaya's birth, he feels like it's something real. "No. But it's not you anymore, either."
"How was it ever me?" he asks. "We're strangers, practically."
Real smile, sad smile, and Nanami puts the tea aside and puts her hands on his shoulders and kisses him on the cheek, just at the edge of his mouth.
It's the first time they've touched since that disastrous day in the company car.
~*~
Somewhere in the thousands is a rule about making time to be with your family. Ohno, mama's boy that he is, has never bothered to remember the number. Even after everything, he still sees his parents almost every week. He's never needed a number.
"Mama? Dad? This is Nanami and Ayama. My wife and my daughter." He holds his breath. The divorce papers are in his pocket, thick and official feeling.
His mother grasps both of Nanami's hands in her own. "It's good to finally meet you both," she says.
Ohno's jaw drops.
His father leads him to the kitchen for a beer. "When we added your niece to the family registry it was there," he says simply.
Closing his eyes, Ohno counts back the years and months.
~*~
It's number one thousand six hundred eighty-three.
~*~
His first words to the room are these:
"Um, maybe it's inappropriate to say this here but: you should never ask a girl what her cup size is."
The assembled reporters and television crews titter.
Behind him, somewhere close, the members of Arashi are standing strong.
"I asked that once way back when I was a Johnny's Junior in Kyoto." He pauses, lost for a little while in memory. Had it rained that night? Or is it really just something to tell Amaya when she's grown? "She didn't slap me that night. She ended up becoming a friend, one of the women in the pictures from all the recent trouble. But, more importantly, she became my wife and the mother of my child."
The room erupts and it is several minutes before the PR team in charge of the conference get the room quiet again.
Ohno looks at the crowded room. "In keeping everything secret, I was trying to protect the people I cared about. But somehow, it seems like it's not necessary. Somehow…" He can't talk. He was never very good at it, ever. He looks to Arashi.
Sho steps up. "As Arashi, we fought to have this meeting with all of you today. Our agency was worried about the fans but…we love our fans, too. And we think they deserve our truth."
Jun takes over for Sho. "Our fans have always supported us, even when things were bad. We want to continue to deserve that true and heartfelt support and the only way to do that is to be true and heartfelt in everything we do."
Aiba replaces Jun and this isn't scripted, not really.
It's just things they've talked about as they worked for this moment for the last few days.
"We've always been Arashi by being just who we are," Aiba says. "We're going to continue to be just who we are, working hard for every moment and having fun while we work because that's always, always been our way. We've always been thinking of everybody as we work. Always-"
"That's too many 'always'," Nino interrupts, pushing Aiba away from the microphone. There is laughter among those assembled, even those from their agency. Nino smiles his sweet, embarrassed smile. "Maaa, between Aiba-chan and Leader…" he says. More laughter. Nino's eyes grow serious. "We're really just a bunch of guys who somehow became idol stars. Sometimes we might mess up a little and sometimes we might be downright bad at it. But this is who we are." His hand slides into Ohno's own, they twine fingers, and lift their hands for the press. Sho and Aiba and Jun follow suit until they're linked, all five of them together.
"Ah, we're really gross!" Jun says suddenly, shaking out of his spot between Ohno and Aiba.
Laughter, again.
Ohno bows his head. "As expected, I've been kind of hopeless as a husband and a father and so we've already become divorced." There is dead, dead silence. Ohno lifts his head and shrugs, smiling weakly. "I was really absolutely the worst. This, all of this, is the least I could do for them. So that they always know that I-I love them. As much as I can."
There is a sudden flurry of questions and Ohno can't tell one from another. "Arashi will go on," he says. "Our goal to cause a storm through all the world, to reach the top, those aren't accomplished yet. Please support us," he adds.
And then, just like that, it's over. They're being hustled off stage.
If they've caused a scandal today, at least it's not because they got caught.
"How was it?" Honda asks when he meets them in the other room. Then, before Ohno can answer him, "Fuji-san e-mailed me; Ikuta-kun wants you to know that there has been a script change and he wants to go over the new scene with you before filming begins today."
"Today feels like a good day," Ohno answers as life moves on around him, picking him up and carrying him along with it.
How long has it been since he could say that?
~*~
Four mails come in on his phone that night. Ohno looks at them between filming.
The first is from Nino and it's an animated picture of a stick man puking up a rainbow.
The second is from Jun and it says: Trust Leader. There's a little emoticon of a face-palm going on but there is also a background of fireworks going off.
The third is from Sho. It's kind of obvious that he was with Nino during Nino's mail because it says 'No matter what, Satoshi-kun, we're proud of you. We're proud of Arashi."
Aiba's mail is last and it simply says: It's my new favorite. Because it's Leader's.
Ohno ignores the little ( . ) ( . ) in the signature line of their mails. Mostly. He only laughs a little bit.
~*~
Whatever their future is-Arashi's, his, Nanami and Ayama's-it's not going to be a number or a rule. It's going to be whatever they can make. With the people they care for.
~*~
He skips a few numbers to add it, because it takes a while to get there, it really does, but rule three thousand seven hundred twenty-four is: Don't ask girls their cup size.
Poll Team What-If
Rating: Pg/Pg-13
Pairing: Ohno/Scandal-girl, a little Ohno/Ninomiya
Summary: What if Ohno really did get stoned and have a threesome? What if he really didn't use a condom? And what if the answer to 'did I accidentally get you pregnant' was 'yes' instead of 'no'?
Prompt: Idol Rule #3724: Don't ask girls their cup size.
Warnings: Mentions of het sex and drug use? Arashi members being gay?
Notes: Obviously this is a throwback to Ohno's scandal in July of 2008.
Typhon
His first words to her, ever, were these:
"How big are your boobs?"
Some little hotspot near his dorm and he'd been seventeen and stoned, she'd been nineteen and stoned as well, and it really had seemed like a valid question at the time.
Machida had laughed and leaned on him and "I think you just broke a rule!"
And maybe he had (and later, so much later, he would learn that he had and that was Aiba's favorite) but it hadn't made the sky fall.
Or maybe it had and maybe it'd taken a long time for the sky to hit the ground.
~*~
Ohno wets his lips and remembers the way the marijuana smoke clung to them that night, cloyingly sweet and herbal. Like summer in the late springtime. "Are you okay?"
She laughs a little bit and it is a quiet sound. It's distorted in an almost undetectable way. This is her laugh through her cell phone.
Her laugh that night had been raucous and loud. It had echoed through Ohno's whole body as he'd laid his head against her thigh. His arm had been around her back, the tips of her long hair brushing against it. He remembers that clearly despite the haze of the night.
"Yoshida-san," he says. Her name is Nanami but he doesn't feel right calling her that, even though he's called her that before.
"I don't know," she tells him "It's only been a few days. But…I don't know. Maybe."
Ohno's phone is an older DoCoMo and it makes a creaking sort of sound as his hand tightens on it. "When-when will you-?" he asks. His head is swimming. Not like that night. That night had been a twirl, a titl-a-whirl fun park night. This just makes him a little sick.
"I'll call you," Yoshida says. "I've got to go. My break is over."
She hangs up before Ohno can decide if he wants to say 'goodbye' or not.
~*~
I'll call you. She's said that to him before. When he knew her in Kyoto, when he left. Her friend had called Macchin but she hadn't bothered and Ohno hadn't cared and eventually he'd got a new phone number.
All they'd done before was smoke weed and fool around a little anyway.
How funny, then, that they would meet accidentally that night outside that club, him by himself and her with her new friends from her new job in Tokyo. How funny that he'd recognize her after so many years, just from hearing the lilt of Kyoto like a song in her voice.
~*~
Ohno forces himself to call his manager. "I didn't use a condom," he tells him.
"All right."
Ohno can hear the sound of Honda and his family having breakfast. He feels even worse. "I-"
"Who, where, when, and what exactly happened that night," Honda says and Ohno hears the noise of family fade. He feels guilty but he tells him. About the pot and Yoshida and her friend and how he came on one girl's face and fucked the other without a condom and didn't do fuck all to the third girl because she'd already left with her phone full of pictures.
He finishes with, "That was…it was last week. I think."
"Yes, last week; one of the girls already tried to sell the story. PR took care of it. I'll clear an hour in your schedule today and we'll talk about your options. When I've got that down, I'll call you. I think…" a pause, sounds of a second mobile, "Yes, Shioya can look after you today."
Shioya is Nino's manager and she once called Ohno's mother, looking for Nino. That had been the day he and Nino had run off together and created Ohmiya SK instead of going to dance practice. Shioya never lets him forget it; she always asks how his mother is when she sees him.
~*~
Really, how funny?
And they'd all been free.
~*~
There are ten rules on the official list given to every Johnny's, debut or not. The first number is: don't cause a scandal. Boiled down it really means 'don't get caught'. The rest of the rules are about drinking and drugs and sex and girlfriends and they also mean 'don't get caught'.
A more helpful list is the unofficial rules in Johnny's. The ones everybody, even the juniors, get to add to and update. It's kept online on a secure server and there are thousands entries; it covers everything from the right way to hit on a new-half to the wrong way to eat a fruit kebab. There are also several hundred from 'the wider collective conscious of the Idol Star', which means that Oguri Shun and Ogura and Daigo and others that have worked closely with Johnny's stars have something to add to the list.
The first rule on this list, this unofficial guide to everything else, was penned by either Nakai or Kimura but neither of them ever lays claim to it because it reads: Never punch a member in his cock-sucking mouth.
It's an even split in opinion on just who had the cock-sucking mouth.
In the hundreds, somewhere, are: Never suck a drunken member's cock and Never let a drunk member suck your cock.
In Arashi, only Nino and Jun are willing to give head. Well, and Sho if he's drunk enough but at that point Nino stands up for heterosexuality and takes Sho home.
They're good guys, all of them, even though Jun's favorite rule is the first one.
Ohno isn't really an 'Idol Star'. He's just regular Ohno Satoshi but for them, for Arashi, he works hard to be the best one that he can be. His heart owes them that.
~*~
Yoshida Nanami doesn't call Ohno. Ohno's manager calls him and when Ohno goes to 'get lunch' with him during the 'break between' photo shoots and interviews with the rest of the members Nanami is there with Honda. Morioka is with them. Morioka is the head of the 'scandals' section of Johnny's public relations department. He's an old guy, an old friend of Johnny's.
He's grandfatherly and kind. If you meet him on the streets.
Ohno meets him in an underground parking garage at the side of one of the fleet cars. "You're a dumb shit," he says "who can't keep his dick in his pants."
There's not much to say to that so Ohno just nods and climbs into the back, with Yoshida. Nanami. He doesn't know what to call her, even in his own head.
He wishes she'd have called and told him.
"Hey," she says. It's a greeting, finally. She sounds nervous. She seems unnaturally still.
"Yeah," Ohno says.
Honda slides behind the wheel of the car. It's so bad they don't even have a driver. Ohno looks out the window as they make the winding drive up from the bottom level.
"Since it's too early for a urine pregnancy test-" Ohno winces at those words. It seems really wrong for his manager to say something like 'urine pregnancy test' despite the fact that this is the same man that once told Ohno about getting drunk with his friends and 'pissing in the bushes at Yoyogi park'. "We took her to the clinic for a blood serum analysis."
Ohno notices the way his manager says 'the clinic' rather than 'a clinic'. It's strange. For a moment Ohno gets lost, thinking about Johnny's having it's own clinic with it's own doctors and concert-style scrubs before he decides that it's probably just a clinic that Morioka pays off whenever the company needs to use it.
Whenever somebody gets caught.
Rule number one.
"We should have results-"
Morioka's phone rings and Ohno's manager stops talking.
"The rabbit died," Morioka says.
Oh, thinks Ohno.
And the car emerges from the parking garage, into the blue-sky rain of the afternoon, and merges with the flow of traffic.
Yoshida bites her lip and Ohno can see tears spring up in her eyes. He looks away, uncomfortable and embarrassed.
"The deal is this: We'll take you for an abortion and you don't say word one about Ohno Satoshi or any of this to anybody, not even your parents. In exchange we'll let you name your price." Morioka is cold.
"I-"
"We already paid off your friends. Don't be surprised if you find out they've both got new jobs and never want to talk to you again."
"I know," Yoshida says in a strangled whisper.
Johnny's is a cold place. Sometimes. And sometimes it makes the world a cold place.
But Ohno already knew this. Unofficial Idol Rule twenty-one is: Don't piss off management.
Just like he knew that 'options' didn't mean really mean 'you have a choice'.
Yoshida is openly crying now, but trying to hide it. Hide her face and her shame and it pretty much is all Ohno's fault so he takes her hand.
"Nanami, do you want to get married with me and have this baby?" he asks.
He guesses that he's calling her Nanami now.
~*~
"Hey, how was lunch with Honda-san?" Sho greets him when he rejoins the other.
"What'd you get?" Aiba wants to know.
Married, Ohno thinks.
Aiba and Sho are his food-buddies, his lunch-time pals.
Nino grins at him without looking up from his DS. "I bet it was ramen," he teases.
Jun punches him on the shoulder as he sits down between him and Aiba. It's affectionate.
"I think Johnny's is sort of like the yakuza," is what he says at last. He's thinking of the way a marriage certificate had appeared and the blood-work waived and how a lawyer to do the whole thing in private and seal the documents into the register had been right there to file everything and keep it secret.
"The mob is a mostly legitimate business," Nino says off-handedly.
Sho laughs and Aiba giggles and Jun's huge personal bubble of space seems to shrink and let Ohno closer.
There wasn't time to eat lunch.
Ohno's stomach is a miserable knot of nerves and hunger.
Arashi is just really beginning to cause their storm. They've finally come together as a group, all the way together, all of them happy. They're finally getting the projects they've wanted, the songs they like to sing. They're finally getting noticed for being just exactly who they are.
He's always worked so hard for his group and now he's done this. Caused this. Is this. Will be that.
I'm sorry, he thinks.
He doesn't say a word.
~*~
"Leader!" Aiba pulls him aside after their shoot. "Your manager called your phone while you were on the set; since it was Honda, I answered. He said he's picking you up for dinner at eight."
Ah, Ohno thinks. Setting up the rest of the rest of his life. "Thanks, Aiba-chan."
"Is-" Aiba looks at him hard. It's not common at all to have a meal with just their managers, not for any Johnny's. For Ohno to have two in one day with his is…well, worrisome. Even to Aiba. "Is everything all right, Leader?"
"Yeah-" Somehow, he can't do it. He can't lie to Aiba. Not entirely. "I might be in a bit of trouble. PR is handling things."
"Oh." Aiba hugs him quickly. "If you need anything, we're all behind you. We're Arashi."
"We're Arashi," Ohno echoes.
It's the sort of thing he probably should have thought about earlier, he thinks. Before the non-condom for sure, but he wishes it had been there before the question of cup sizes as well.
Arashi. For dream.
~*~
Rule number four on the Johnny's list is: Let the company speak for you.
Rule nine hundred sixty-one on the unofficial list is: Try your hardest~!
Sho wrote it one night when he was drunk and feeling his love for Arashi and, by extension, Johnny's. It's unabashedly his favorite.
It's not Ohno's favorite but it's the one he believes in the most.
~*~
"This-" Ohno shuffles his feet and glances at the newly minted Ohno Nanami. "This is a nice apartment," he says at last.
She answers with a slight nod of her head, her hands clasped so hard that her fingers are white.
Morioka snorts. "Lovely. Welcome home." He turns to Honda. "That's me done," he says. "Make sure he keeps his fool head down."
Honda sighs and checks his watch. "Satoshi-kun, you're due concert rehearsal soon. Let's get you back to work."
Honda leaves and Ohno makes to follow him when Nanami's voice catches him. "When-" she asks quietly, in a faltering voice. "When will you be…home?"
For a moment he doesn't understand and then he does and then it's awful, just awful. "This apartment," he says and then stops. "I have to go home tonight. My family…" he trails off. Nanami's head is down, her shoulders slumped. "Do your best," he tells her.
She makes a fist and lifts it weakly, the weakest fight gesture that Ohno has ever seen; he's watched a sick, pained Nino do concert rehearsals and be more spirited.
For a moment he almost reaches out to pat her shoulder but he doesn't. He turns and he leaves and goes back to work.
~*~
Nagase edited Sho's entry, putting a little heart between the ~ and the !
Since then it has been a free-for-all of emoticons: umbrellas and telephones and thumbs-ups and cat faces and even a garbage truck.
Ohno goes into the entry and adds a frowning face. And then goes back again and removes it and every single other emoticon until all that's there is Sho's original message.
~*~
Lying to his mother is not something that Ohno has never done before.
Every kid lies to their mother.
No, I wasn't smoking.
No, I wasn't drinking.
Yes, her parents were home the whole time.
Those are the kind of lies every kid tells and everybody knows he's lying but it's an expected lie and forgivable.
"I'm not hungry, mom," he says when his mother meets him at the door and tries to feed him. "I'm twenty-five years old. I can feed myself if I get hungry," he tells her. He slams his way into his room like an angry five-year-old.
A few minutes later, his father comes in. His father doesn't say anything.
Ohno has a sudden image of himself telling his father that he's gotten a girl pregnant and married her. He can see his family trooping over to Nanami's apartment right now even though it's past midnight. Mina is there with her new husband, already thinking about babies of her own. He can see the meeting and how he'll be living with Nanami from now on and how Mina will get pregnant right away and the babies will be born just a few months apart and be raised like siblings and Mina has a daughter and he has a son.
He's not ready for that.
Mentally he names his son 'Kazunari' and gives him a mixture of Sho and Jun and Aiba's faces.
Still not ready.
"It's nothing," he tells his father. "I have to go on location for a…a few days."
"Now tell the truth," his mother says gently. She's standing in the doorway of his bedroom, the room he's had since he was a baby.
Ohno looks at his mother and he loves her so. And so he lies. "I'm getting my own place. I just…can't live here anymore."
Maybe it's a little bit the truth.
~*~
The last rule on the official list is: Tell the truth.
It doesn't mean 'to everybody'. It means management and it's so management knows which way to lie in order to save the most money.
~*~
Nanami's apartment is beginning to look like a home. There are pictures on the wall, at least.
Ohno sits on her couch and stares at her turned-off television.
"Tea, Satoshi-san?" Nanami hesitates, stuttering over his name a bit.
He doesn't even know what she does with her days. If she works. If she stays home. Honda takes money for her out of every paycheck and Ohno doesn't care because he never spends his money anyhow.
Nanami's teacups are white with sunset blue-pink band around the top.
"I don't want this," Ohno says.
"Oh, I-" she starts to clear away the little tray and Ohno stops her by picking up the teacup. "Oh," she says. She sits down beside him.
Not closely.
"It was a stupid thing for me to offer," he says. He looks at Nanami. "But I wanted you to have a choice. If you wanted an abortion, if you wanted a baby…those were things for you to decide."
She smiles at him. Softly. "Thank you, Satoshi-san."
He wonders if she understands. "But I don't want to be married and I don't want to have a kid. I don't want any of this"
"I know," says Nanami.
"I didn't tell anybody," he says, trying to make it desperately clear. "Not one person. And I'm not going to because I don't want this. I don't want-" you, he thinks, not either of you. "This. Any of this."
Nanami takes his teacup and he realizes that it's empty. He doesn't remember drinking it. "I know," she says. He follows her to the tiny kitchen. It's next to the entryway and he scuffs his shoes on and watches her rinse his cup. She turns and smiles at him, her eyes a little blind but still clear. "I'm glad you made the offer," she says. "Satoshi-san is still the same from that time."
Ohno remembers his stubborn past-self and doesn't say another word, just pulls the door shut behind himself.
~*~
Nino's favorite rule is six hundred twelve. It's the lyrics to V6's 'Made in Japan'.
It's obviously not really a rule at all and that's probably why it's Nino's favorite.
Ohno thinks this is the cutest thing he knows about Nino.
~*~
"Hey, I'm going to America," Nino says suddenly. He's sprawled out in 'his' chair at Ohno's apartment.
Ever since Ohno got the place, Nino has been over just about every week. It makes it less lonely and more home-like to have Nino there. Which is weird because Nino never came over to his place when he lived with his parents.
Nanami doesn't even have the address.
"For vacation?" Ohno asks. He uncaps two bottles of beer and passes one to Nino before sitting on the floor at his feet. He thinks of New York and all the god awful English he heard there.
Nino hands him the joint they've been sharing. "For work. I got the part in that movie Eastwood is making." Ohno drags in a lungful of smoke and holds it, feeling cottony on the inside. "I'll be gone for a month or two."
"Cool," Ohno exhales the smoke along with the word. "That's great news! I-"
~*~
"I named her 'Amaya'," Nanami says, cradling the pink-wrapped bundle close to her before offering it out.
Ohno takes it only because he can't think of a polite way to decline.
His daughter. This is his daughter, Amaya. Ohno Amaya. His firstborn child. His daughter.
He doesn't feel anything, really. He's glad that he hasn't told his family. His mother and Mina would never let him ignore something like this.
"That's cute," he says obediently. "Hi, Amaya," he adds, because he thinks that it's expected.
Nanami beams at him. "I named her-because, do you remember the night we first met? And how it was-"
"No," he cuts her off. "I don't remember." He really doesn't. "I remember asking about your boobs and after that you showed me your push-up bra." He remembers Machida at his shoulder. He remembers that better than he remembers anything else about that night, including the bra. "You remember?"
Nanami's smile gets a little rigid, like she's fighting to hang on to it. She takes the baby back and Ohno is afraid that his gratitude shows right then. "I guess I don't," she says. "I just wanted to have something to tell her. If she ever asked."
~*~
"You what?" Nino asks, nudging him with his foot.
Ohno wraps his hand around Nino's ankle and holds on. "I think I love Nino more than anybody else," he says. He tugs and Nino slithers onto the floor beside him. Ohno rolls on top of him. "Anybody else," he repeats.
Nino grins at him, lazy, lazy. "Not more than your mom," he says.
Thinking about all the lies he's told, all the truths he hasn't, Ohno wonders just how much he really does love his family. Still. "More than my secret wife and secret baby," he tells Nino and then kisses him full on the mouth.
When he pulls away again, Nino is giggling at him breathlessly. "Oh-chan is so strange," he says.
Ohno kisses him again. "Nanami and Amaya are nowhere close to Nino," he says. "Nowhere near Arashi." He kisses Nino again. And again. And still again.
"This is gonna be awkward in the morning," Nino declares as they start getting naked.
For a moment Ohno considers stopping.
But he's made nothing but bad choices for so long that he can't regret adding one more to the list.
Surprisingly, this bad decision is full of laughter and tickling and hugging and when they wake up in the morning it's a little awkward but not bad. He doesn't have to regret this, Ohno thinks as Nino borrows one of his shirts to wear to work.
Not yet.
~*~
Honda is driving him home. Ohno has no clue why this is. He's pretty wasted. He can't even remember why he was drinking.
"To celebrate the successful run of your stageplay," Honda explains.
"You're a mind reader," Ohno tells his manager feelingly.
"You're talking to yourself over there," his manager returns. In the splashes of light from nighttime-Tokyo, Ohno can see the fond smile on his manager's face.
The world wheels around them, turning with Honda's hands on the steering wheel. At that moment Ohno wishes he knew how to drive. "Hey-"
"Satoshi-san, we've known each other since you were eighteen, right?" Honda says.
Ohno nods. "Since debut you've been my manager." He smiles, lopsided because he can't really control his lips anymore. "I'm really happy."
"Yeah," says Honda. "So…I'm going to overstep my bounds. Satoshi-san, you have a wife and a child now…"
"I don't want them," Ohno turns away churlishly. "I didn't ask for them."
"Except for the part where you asked her to marry you and keep the baby," Honda reminds him. "But-" he cuts Ohno off before Ohno can do more than open his mouth. "But I understand why you did that. Satoshi-san is Satoshi-san." It's the same thing that Nanami had told him a year ago, sitting in her little apartment the one time he'd visited her. "I only want for you to know that you will never get a chance like this again. With them. And Yoshida is a good woman. She works hard and she doesn't complain, she doesn't ask for things. The baby is very sweet, too. . You should be living with them. You could easily fall in love. You could do much worse, Satoshi-san, than a woman who loves you and a beautiful baby."
"Yoshida…" Ohno says, feeling the name slur in his mouth. "She doesn't-how do you know?" he asks.
Honda turns the wheel again and Ohno's apartment building appears out of the darkness. "Somebody has to bring her the money every week."
~*~
Rule seven (or eight, Ohno can never remember them in order) on the official list is: Do the work assigned to you.
~*~
After that night in the car with Honda, Ohno is given the task of taking money to his wife and child.
Sometimes he forgets and is days late, weeks late, but Nanami never says a word about. She thanks him, offers to let him come in and have tea and see their child. After the first few times he never takes her up on it and she doesn't say a word about that, either.
Eight months after Ohno takes over the money duty, he gets a call from her. He's not at work but he thinks about ignoring it anyway. "What?" he asks.
Her voice has that cell phone distortion going on, inaudible but there. "Morioka-san," she begins.
"Who?" Ohno asks.
"Morioka-san, from your agency, he died. I-will you bring flowers to his ceremony for me?"
It's not late and he's perfectly sober and Jun is in his kitchen making dinner. Somehow he's still not understanding. "What?"
Nanami seems to understand him, however. "He was kind to me," she tells him. "He came every month to see me and Ayama." She laughs a little bit and Ohno notices that it's slightly choked by tears. "He brought money from the agency even though we were married. He said it was because you were a bad husband. He didn't want us to think badly of the boys Johnny's produced."
Ohno remembers meeting Morioka beside the car and how he left, warning Honda to keep Ohno's head down. He honestly can't believe that the old man visited his illicit wife and near-bastard child out of the goodness of his heart. Hush money, good-will visits.
Maybe Morioka was the one in the company who worked hardest at his job.
"I will," he says to Nanami. He hangs up without a goodbye when Jun calls to him that dinner is done.
"Who was that?" Jun asks, setting a plate of pasta in front of him.
Ohno claps his hands, gives his thanks, and tucks in. "I'm supposed to go to that funeral for the PR director," he tells him.
Jun grins at him. "Nino and Aiba said they're going to go and spit on his grave." His face softens. "How come you're going?"
What can he say?
"I was asked to go," he settles on.
Jun smiles at him, sweet in the way only Jun can be. "That's Leader," he says.
Ohno takes his hand.
"Gross!" Jun laughs, but lets him hold his hand while they eat.
~*~
Ohno can recite the ten rules of Johnny's talent in his sleep but that doesn't mean he can remember them right away if asked for them by number. It's all by rote. Sheer habit.
He can rattle off a good number of the unofficial ones just because he knows them like a favorite joke.
Rule one thousand one hundred one is a big, blank space.
This is Ohno's favorite.
~*~
Not long after Morioka dies, Ohno beings to get his act together. He goes every week to bring Nanami the money and he goes in for tea and sees the child. He goes late at night, so that she's sleeping. Sometimes he looks at her and wishes he could feel something more than what he does. For both of them, really.
Soon after that, he gets the lead in Maou.
And the press gets a scandal.
~*~
"Wow, a 3p," Aiba says. He gives Ohno a brilliant smile. "Way to go, Leader!"
It's meant to cheer him up. It honestly is and he knows it. They are two weeks into his scandal and it's hard but they're trying. They're trying so much. For him.
"Stupid," Nino laughs. "It says he forgot the condom. Who forgets the fourth rule?"
"If he did, wouldn't it say 'abortion scandal'?" Jun adds. "Sloppy work."
"Two abortion scandals," Sho adds. One arm loops affectionately around Ohno's waist. Grounding him.
Arashi is smiling at him. They're standing with him, all of them taking the blow meant for him alone. They're letting the company speak for them, letting the company defend Ohno ferociously. But they're speaking, too. In a silent voice. Always there, always close. The message is clear.
He means to say I'm sorry but the words get lost on the way to his mouth.
"I got her pregnant," is what makes it out. "We got married. There's a kid."
Sho chokes on a breath. Aiba's eyes go wide. Jun finds a tentative smile. After all, they've joked about this before-Ohno's private life always so private, they'd never know he was married until he announced his divorce.
Nino is looking at him with solemn eyes. "When?"
Now is the time for regret, Ohno thinks. It hits him hard. "That night…" there is only the one night. So fun and so easy and the awkwardness of the next day had been fun, too, and they'd laughed and he still loved Nino better than maybe anybody else. "That was the day the baby came. It was that morning."
The others aren't stupid. Though neither he nor Nino ever said a word (Ohno assumes Nino hasn't, because why would he?) the others all take deep breaths.
Ohno waits.
After a moment, Nino smiles at him. It reminds him of the way Nanami smiles-something fake to cover up something real. "It's stupid to be pissed," Nino says calmly. "No, it really is, I know it is. We're not like that. We're just us. But you know I have…well, I'm kind of messed up. So…for right now…"
"Yeah," Ohno responds. "It's all right."
"Sure," Nino ducks his head. "Right now I'm gonna go…" he makes a twirling motion with his fingers and then leaves the room. The door clicks quietly behind him.
Jun and Aiba share a look and then they're out the door, too.
Sho looks like he wants to call after them but he doesn't. The three of them-Aiba and Nino and Jun-have a bond that predates Arashi. They will go and sort Nino out for now and Sho will hover over him later and Ohno will wait for Nino to come back to his side again. That's the way things work. The way Arashi works.
Ohno looks at Sho. "I-"
"I want to meet them," Sho says.
"I don't love them," he tells him. "I didn't even tell my family. They don't know at all."
"I want to meet them," Sho repeats. Sho looks solid and a little scared and totally determined and Ohno understands. This is something Sho needs to do. For all of them.
~*~
Debuting talent gets told 'Your members are your new best friends'.
It's not a rule except for the way that it sounds like one.
Funnily enough, nobody ever explains it or tries to clarify it. Publicly? Privately? For show? For real?
It's almost never true that members become best friends but it's always true that they're the ones who understand the best in the end.
Because they're the ones that are always there, like it or not.
~*~
Nanami answers the door with the baby on her hip.
Amaya isn't much of a baby anymore, already more than two. She's bigger than Ohno's niece, which still seems strange to him. Less strange is how the baby looks almost nothing like him. He can see bits of it, around the mouth, but mostly she looks like Amuro Namie.
"Hello," Nanami says, looking at Ohno and Sho with wide, wide eyes.
Sho bows a little. His hands are full of gifts. "Hello. I'm-"
"Ah!" Nanami steps back suddenly. "Come in! Please!"
Within seconds they're all in the charming little apartment and it's a whole lot more awkward than Ohno had ever dreamed it would be. "Ah, Nanami, this is Sakurai Sho. I work with him." It's the most unnecessary thing Ohno has ever said. In his whole entire life. And that includes the time he accidentally got Nino in the nuts with his knee and had apologized, saying he hadn't meant to do so. "Sho, this is…this is Ohno Nanami and Ohno Ayama. They're-" he frowns, trying to think what to call them. Something that wouldn't be insulting.
"I'm sorry," Nanami says.
Yeah, that about sums it up, thinks Ohno.
"For such a meeting…" she smiles her cover-up smile.
Sho smiles his idol star smile.
And things get even more awkward until Amaya reaches for the pink unicorn plushie in Sho's hands saying 'Please!" in very formal words with a very tiny voice.
"Cute!" Sho melts and the next thing Ohno knows is that Amaya is in Sho's lap and Sho is making the plush toy neigh and prance at her and she's laughing, clapping her baby-fat hands. Inside of three minutes, Sho is a better father than Ohno has been in the entire three years since he's known he was going to be a father.
"I'll make tea," Nanami says and slips away to the kitchen.
Ohno follows her and watches her hands as she fills the kettle, fetches the cups. He remembers watching her hands roll a joint a long time ago in Kyoto. He remembers watching her hands as she touched him, guiding him into her and accidentally starting all of this. She's thirty-one and he's twenty-eight and together they have a two year old daughter. "I'm a crappy husband and a worse father," he says, leaning against her refrigerator.
"You haven't really been either of those things," she answers. Her shoulders slump. "There are divorce papers. If you could find witnesses you trust…"
He thinks that he should feel something, something more than this wide, yawing blank space where the future should be, where loss and regret should live. "There's somebody else?" he asks after a moment, all ready nodding. Yes, he can find people he trusts to witness their divorce.
Nanami smiles at him and for the first time since Amaya's birth, he feels like it's something real. "No. But it's not you anymore, either."
"How was it ever me?" he asks. "We're strangers, practically."
Real smile, sad smile, and Nanami puts the tea aside and puts her hands on his shoulders and kisses him on the cheek, just at the edge of his mouth.
It's the first time they've touched since that disastrous day in the company car.
~*~
Somewhere in the thousands is a rule about making time to be with your family. Ohno, mama's boy that he is, has never bothered to remember the number. Even after everything, he still sees his parents almost every week. He's never needed a number.
"Mama? Dad? This is Nanami and Ayama. My wife and my daughter." He holds his breath. The divorce papers are in his pocket, thick and official feeling.
His mother grasps both of Nanami's hands in her own. "It's good to finally meet you both," she says.
Ohno's jaw drops.
His father leads him to the kitchen for a beer. "When we added your niece to the family registry it was there," he says simply.
Closing his eyes, Ohno counts back the years and months.
~*~
It's number one thousand six hundred eighty-three.
~*~
His first words to the room are these:
"Um, maybe it's inappropriate to say this here but: you should never ask a girl what her cup size is."
The assembled reporters and television crews titter.
Behind him, somewhere close, the members of Arashi are standing strong.
"I asked that once way back when I was a Johnny's Junior in Kyoto." He pauses, lost for a little while in memory. Had it rained that night? Or is it really just something to tell Amaya when she's grown? "She didn't slap me that night. She ended up becoming a friend, one of the women in the pictures from all the recent trouble. But, more importantly, she became my wife and the mother of my child."
The room erupts and it is several minutes before the PR team in charge of the conference get the room quiet again.
Ohno looks at the crowded room. "In keeping everything secret, I was trying to protect the people I cared about. But somehow, it seems like it's not necessary. Somehow…" He can't talk. He was never very good at it, ever. He looks to Arashi.
Sho steps up. "As Arashi, we fought to have this meeting with all of you today. Our agency was worried about the fans but…we love our fans, too. And we think they deserve our truth."
Jun takes over for Sho. "Our fans have always supported us, even when things were bad. We want to continue to deserve that true and heartfelt support and the only way to do that is to be true and heartfelt in everything we do."
Aiba replaces Jun and this isn't scripted, not really.
It's just things they've talked about as they worked for this moment for the last few days.
"We've always been Arashi by being just who we are," Aiba says. "We're going to continue to be just who we are, working hard for every moment and having fun while we work because that's always, always been our way. We've always been thinking of everybody as we work. Always-"
"That's too many 'always'," Nino interrupts, pushing Aiba away from the microphone. There is laughter among those assembled, even those from their agency. Nino smiles his sweet, embarrassed smile. "Maaa, between Aiba-chan and Leader…" he says. More laughter. Nino's eyes grow serious. "We're really just a bunch of guys who somehow became idol stars. Sometimes we might mess up a little and sometimes we might be downright bad at it. But this is who we are." His hand slides into Ohno's own, they twine fingers, and lift their hands for the press. Sho and Aiba and Jun follow suit until they're linked, all five of them together.
"Ah, we're really gross!" Jun says suddenly, shaking out of his spot between Ohno and Aiba.
Laughter, again.
Ohno bows his head. "As expected, I've been kind of hopeless as a husband and a father and so we've already become divorced." There is dead, dead silence. Ohno lifts his head and shrugs, smiling weakly. "I was really absolutely the worst. This, all of this, is the least I could do for them. So that they always know that I-I love them. As much as I can."
There is a sudden flurry of questions and Ohno can't tell one from another. "Arashi will go on," he says. "Our goal to cause a storm through all the world, to reach the top, those aren't accomplished yet. Please support us," he adds.
And then, just like that, it's over. They're being hustled off stage.
If they've caused a scandal today, at least it's not because they got caught.
"How was it?" Honda asks when he meets them in the other room. Then, before Ohno can answer him, "Fuji-san e-mailed me; Ikuta-kun wants you to know that there has been a script change and he wants to go over the new scene with you before filming begins today."
"Today feels like a good day," Ohno answers as life moves on around him, picking him up and carrying him along with it.
How long has it been since he could say that?
~*~
Four mails come in on his phone that night. Ohno looks at them between filming.
The first is from Nino and it's an animated picture of a stick man puking up a rainbow.
The second is from Jun and it says: Trust Leader. There's a little emoticon of a face-palm going on but there is also a background of fireworks going off.
The third is from Sho. It's kind of obvious that he was with Nino during Nino's mail because it says 'No matter what, Satoshi-kun, we're proud of you. We're proud of Arashi."
Aiba's mail is last and it simply says: It's my new favorite. Because it's Leader's.
Ohno ignores the little ( . ) ( . ) in the signature line of their mails. Mostly. He only laughs a little bit.
~*~
Whatever their future is-Arashi's, his, Nanami and Ayama's-it's not going to be a number or a rule. It's going to be whatever they can make. With the people they care for.
~*~
He skips a few numbers to add it, because it takes a while to get there, it really does, but rule three thousand seven hundred twenty-four is: Don't ask girls their cup size.
Poll Team What-If