Fic: [Uta no Oniisan] a sex drive doesn't run on automatic, genius
Title: a sex drive doesn't run on automatic, genius
Characters/Pairing: Kenta/Manabe, background Arashi, Mamoru/Sayaka
Word Count: 3618
Rating: Young children are watching you, Yano-kun!
Summary: Kenta is on a mission to get laid.
Notes: this whole fic is a big joke
It's a completely unfortunate day in midwinter when Kenta realizes that, yes, he still has a dick and that, yes, it's still very much interested in women. It's like he's suddenly awakened from the frantic state that near unemployment and being dumped by his long-time girlfriend had put him into.
To put it more candidly, he's suddenly awoken by his wet and soggy sheets after an entirely pleasant dream about breasts.
"Fucking hell," Kenta sighs, and kicks his sheets aside.
Considering the first and most important rule for a Singing Brother is no alcohol, no tobacco, no men and no women and he's already sworn off (grudgingly, okay) alcohol and smoking, he can-- wait.
Yeah. There's no fucking way Kenta is swearing off boobs.
He's going to get laid.
***
"Are you a man or not?" Kenta scowls at Mamoru's shocked and scandalized look when he brings it up during their weekly drinking session in which the two of them try their best to pretend that their orange juice is really beer in disguise.
"No way, Yano-kun," Mamoru finally splutters out, red in the face. "Not after we've finally got this far! You want to ruin it all just to-- to--"
"Screw?"
"That!"
Kenta ducks down low and glances around stealthily, checking for watchers. There's no one else in the lowly lit, smoky izakaya except a giggling couple and a drunk salaryman philosophically poking his stomach fat. "Look, what Manabe doesn't know won't hurt her!"
"Manabe-san knows everything!" Mamoru hisses. "I won't let you do this! You traitor!"
He angrily drains his juice and slams it down on the bar like it's a shot of shochu, storming out.
Kenta frowns. This is an unexpected obstacle.
***
"First rehearsal will be from eight to ten, then we'll run it again at thirteen hours with the lights. Then at fifteen thirty we can do the actual shooting…"
Kenta lets the familiar grumble of Sumiyoshi's voice wash over him as he leans back against the papyrus tree and naps.
"…oi, Youko! What are you doing with those carp!"
"Well, you told me to-- I thought they'd feel better wet--"
"They're stuffed animals, Youko! They can't feel anything! I swear, why do we keep trying to rely on newbies, can't do anything right…"
The thing is, Kenta is kind of stupidly in love with Let's Sing, Everyone. Thinking about going to work makes him smile. At the same time, just the fact that his job description alone involves singing about puppies and kittens and ducks is enough to lower his man-cred. He can imagine two little pieces of his conscience sitting on either shoulder. They look like Macaron Kids.
One's in white and saying, "Be a good boy, Kenta. Sex can be fun but it's not as fun as your job! Is it really worth it?"
The other one's in black. "Kenta! What are you waiting for? Go out and get them, tiger!"
"Bear-kun," someone's saying. "Bear-kun!"
No, Kenta thinks with confusion, I'm a tiger.
A pointy, heeled shoe kicks him in the knee and crudely drags him out of sleep. Kenta hisses, clutching at his shin, and looks up at Manabe.
"Ow," he yelps. "That hurt, you crazy woman!"
"No sleeping on set!" Her eyes narrow. "And if you must absolutely persist in using bad language, I suppose you wouldn't mind if I washed your mouth out with soap…"
Kenta pales and clutches at the bear head he's been holding. Manabe clucks in disapproval, plops it on his head with a heavy whump, and clip-clops away on her heels.
"Crazy woman," Kenta mutters.
Michiru sits down next to him, all skinny little shoulders. "Would you stop antagonizing Manabe-san already, idiot?"
"Ah, so says the tantrum-ridden brat experiencing puberty for the first time," he smirks at her entirely against his own best judgement.
Kenta gets kicked in the other knee. When he looks up from yelping in pain, Mamoru is standing across the room glaring daggers at him and running a threatening finger over his throat. He's mouthing, Sex is bad for you, baaaad for you, Kenta-kun.
He has no idea why he likes this job.
***
"Hey, you, dawdler, get the spare duck hats from Studio A's storage room!" Sumiyoshi yells -- bellows -- across the set.
Kenta groans. "Fine, fine…"
He drags himself the entire long way from Studio D to Studio A counting the ceiling tiles. It's chilly in the hallways if you're not wearing any sort of costume with fur and he can feel goosebumps rising on his shoulders. Grumbling under his breath and rubbing his arms, he wrestles the heavy door open with the aid of his shoulder-- and stops.
There's voices, whispering and moaning. Someone is getting it on in the storage room that isn't him.
When he listens closer, it becomes clear that the voices are male and familiar, in the heard-them-often-on-TV way.
Kenta sidles into the cold room with the air of someone with absolutely no tact and a fair bit of jealousy. He tiptoes around a rack full of Domo-kun specialty plushies, slowly leaning to peer through a narrow crack in between two boxes.
"Mmm, Yuuji…"
"Taka, don't be greedy. Oh…"
Kenta rubs his eyes. The image doesn't change. Two of the nation's most beloved idols are enthusiastically making out in front of him. They're apparently into roleplay. And tongues, and stripping. And really, this would be interesting if one of them didn't look a lot like him-- creepy--
"Yuuji, touch me--"
"Don't worry, Taka… I'll find the cannon..."
Kenta tries to leave upon Ninomiya sticking his hand down Ohno's pants. He really does. It's just his luck that he trips over the box of duck hats.
Ninomiya and Ohno lurch apart with a wet, slurping sound of alarm as he crashes down in front of them, clutching his side.
"Uh," he says. There's silence while he gets up and dusts off his elbows. "I'm very, very sorry."
Ohno blinks at him slowly. "Oh, you're that guy Sho-kun told us about…"
Ninomiya starts smiling at him. It's not a very nice smile.
***
Kenta stands on his balcony and squints towards the rising sliver of the sun. It's too bright and cheerful, he thinks, for a guy to face after getting threatened to an inch of his life.
He will never trust any doe eyes sparkling out from the covers of idol magazines again.
A cool morning breeze brushes his cheeks and Kenta sags against the railing, perching his chin on top of it and staring out dully. He doesn't know why he can't find even one woman interested in him - it may have something to do with Mamoru making a fool of himself whenever Kenta tries to pick up chicks, it may have something to do with that little troll Ninomiya's threat of castration by Wii power cord (which Kenta now finds completely and terrifyingly plausible)--
He's fooling himself.
Today is Akane's birthday.
Kenta sighs and trots back into his room, sliding the door closed behind him with a shiiick. He bends down and picks up the gift-wrapped box from his table. It's her favorite chocolates.
Akane, Kenta thinks abruptly, had been like sunshine.
She'd been bright and warm, and sometimes painful. They'd been children together, sneaking giggling kisses under the sheets, clasping hands while staring at the stars, arguing over refrains when they should've been thinking about the future. They'd held each other back. Akane had broken away and even if she hadn't done it right, at least she was smiling now.
Kenta hitches his bag on to his shoulder and drops the present in a drawer of his desk. He's got to get to work.
It's his turn, now.
***
The issue he's having must be born from the plain fact that he doesn't have a target. Kenta needs to hunt. He needs to find a woman and corner her like a cheetah does a gazelle in the savannah -- silent, deadly, charming--
Manabe comes in to the set and tosses her hair over her shoulder. Kenta's eyes track the glossy fall of it over her slender shoulders and between her shoulder blades. Then his eyes widen in horror.
"No," he breathes, looking down at his crotch. "No, are you crazy? Don't you dare decide on this, I swear, you fucking--"
He looks up when someone clears their throat. Michiru is giving him a flat stare.
"Kenta. Do you not have any friends? I mean, if you don't have anything to talk to except--"
Kenta scowls at her and walks away. He's got bigger issues than being ridiculed by a twelve year old daily.
It's not like it's a secret to himself that he's attracted to Manabe. The woman is hot. But it's never mattered before, not when he was still convinced he could make things work again with Akane. Now that that's all over, his dick has apparently decided that Manabe is a very real possibility.
Except she's not.
Kenta respects Manabe. He likes her determination and hard work. He likes the way she holds to her own principles. He likes her slender legs and her various hairstyles and pretty dresses. He likes the way she thinks she can sing, and the way she goes crazy occasionally and the little hairs stick to her forehead with sweat, and--
And--
He's not just attracted to her. Holy fuck, he's in love with her.
Kenta looks down at his crotch dully.
"You are never getting laid."
***
The whole plan of being 'charming' is never going to work out. Manabe knows he's lazy, irate, sometimes (okay, a lot) incompetent, still pretty bad with children, kind of unmotivated, liable to fall asleep on set; it's all traits she scolds him for almost everyday.
Actually, Kenta sometimes wonders if there's anything Manabe actually likes about him. To be personally honest, it's a hard sell. He sinks into an even blacker mood over two days. His right hand gets a lot of exercise.
Sumiyoshi glares at him. "Don't you dare track that depression sludge all over my set! Go to the makeup room and get yourself looking rosy! Chop-chop!"
Seriously, Kenta gets no respect.
He mutters under his breath as he turns the corner and opens the door to the makeup room. He takes two steps inside and stops.
"You've got to be kidding me."
Mamoru disconnects himself from Sayaka's tonsils with a gasp and trips over backwards from where he'd been pressing her into the counter. "Yano-kun, this isn't what you think!"
"You! You hypocrite!" Kenta screeches. "You've been stopping me from getting laid this whole time and this is what you've been doing! Are you kidding me?"
"Look, um, sometimes you've just got to take the opportunity--"
"Fuck your opportunity! You're obviously doing that already!"
"Yano-kun--"
Kenta holds up a hand. "I'm going home."
He makes it halfway down the hallway before Manabe appears in front of him, twirling her staff lanyard around her finger. "And where are you going, Yano-kun?"
Kenta narrows his eyes at her. "Home."
"I thought we were past the point where I needed to chain you to the set."
"Uh." His mind derails for a dangerous second with thoughts of an empty set, Manabe, him and a copious amount of chains. "Uh…"
He blurs back into focus to find Manabe in front of him, face concerned and resting a hand lightly on his shoulder. "Is everything all right, Yano-kun?"
Baseless longing is so not okay, he thinks frantically. He shrugs her hand off his shoulder and turns on his heels, stomping back towards makeup. "No! I'm good! Going to work!"
As he steps back into the makeup room where Mamoru and Sayaka are murmuring together in the corner, Kenta catches a brief glimpse of Manabe still standing there. Her hand's still outstretched in the air after him and she's got a funny expression on her face - he can't figure it out.
***
High ratings for Deluxe (everyone is surprised and slightly flabbergasted, but no one will say anything for fear of Manabe's wrath and a threat of a 90-minute hula hoop session) have caused Manabe to let go of her normal rules and agree to hold a cast party.
Which would be awesome, but then it isn't, because Kenta has discovered that none of these people should ever be allowed to drink.
They've rented out an izakaya for the night and Kenta sits at one of the low tables, nursing a beer and looking out in awestruck horror at the things going on right in front of his face. Mamoru and Sayaka are still all over each other, giggling girlishly. Mamoru, he thinks, is a bastard.
Sumiyoshi's at the bar drinking himself into a stupor with a little snot bubble coming from his nose. The costuming people are playing some drinking game and yelling out names of amphibians. Youko is nose to nose with a stuffed animal and having a serious discussion with it.
The only consolation Kenta has is that Michiru isn't old enough to be here. He isn't in the mood for insults about his manhood.
Kenta's just started to peer around for Manabe when she shows up and sits down next to him. He can't help but look at her; her skin is lightly sheened with sweat where it's exposed by her dress and there's a pink flush on her cheeks. Kenta feels faint and crosses his legs. Do not hit on your boss, do not hit on your boss -- who you're in love with, fucking hell--
"You… uh, look nice."
Kenta mentally slaps himself over the head.
The flush over Manabe's cheeks deepens and she looks away. "…thank you, Yano-kun."
They fall into awkward silence. Kenta gets another beer. And another. They watch Youko start to waltz with her stuffed animal. Manabe gets another beer. Sumiyoshi sways and then crashes nose-first into the bar. Kenta smirks.
And jumps as he feels a warm weight fall on his shoulder. Kenta looks down and gets a face full of Manabe's sweet-smelling hair.
Kenta freezes.
"Um… Manabe-san. Manabe-san?"
"Yano-kun," Manabe says quietly. "You know, I…"
Kenta waits. And waits. He takes a nervous swallow of beer and waits. Then he realizes that he's kind of drunk and that, secondary to that, he's been waiting for her to continue for too long. He twists his head awkwardly to look down and the shift of weight makes her slip from his shoulder and right into his lap.
"Fuck."
Sumiyoshi wakes up enough to peel his face from the bar and give him a drunken, lecherous wink.
The izakaya is filled with smoke and the insistent drum beat continuing endlessly in the background mixes with the crashing going in Kenta's head, don don don don. He feels -- well, okay, there's a beautiful woman with her face in his lap, he's obviously feeling something and it's feeling more and every second -- but more than that, it's panic.
He's got a feeling Manabe wouldn't appreciate being seen like this.
Even if it's super hot.
Definitely hotter than making out in a storage room.
***
Kenta grunts, hitching Manabe's arm up higher over his shoulders as he drags them both down the hallway of her apartment complex. She's a dead weight at his side, head lolling and barely tottering along next to him.
"Here?" He manages to croak out.
She tilts on the inside of her feet. And giggles, like she's been doing ever since she put her face into his lap. Contrary to how that sounds, Kenta is horrified. "Yeeeep!"
The classiness of the apartment makes Kenta feel kind of -- bad. He searches around in his alcohol-addled mind for the source of the emotion. And then he gets it. The thing is his own room (in the same house where he's living with his perpetually angry father, perpetually manipulative sister, and his perpetually inept Kacchan, who Kenta generally counts as an object anyway) hasn't changed much from when he was in high school.
It's a young kid's room. Looking around the neat and ordered apartment makes Kenta wonder what he'd ever be able to offer her. And seriously, he shouldn't feel so bad with Manabe's breasts pushing into his arm but okay, alcohol really fucks him up.
Feelings over boobs.
"Okay, just-- here we go--"
She lands on her bed with a soft sound and immediately curls up on her side. Kenta steps back and shoves his hands into his pockets. Her makeup is smudged, her hair is ruined, they both smell like the bottom of an ashtray, and she's still beautiful.
Kenta sighs, stepping back. She'll be fine like this.
He, on the other hand, still has to make it home without either falling into a rare trashcan on the streets or being killed by a superidol-hired assassin. The second option is more likely.
He's just about to turn and walk out when something grasps the back of his jacket and he does an undignified stumble that leads to him falling back on the bed with a girly yelp and then in the next second he's--
he's--
-- being kissed to within an inch of his life. Thoroughly.
Kenta's eyes widen and he wheezes through his nose as Manabe crawls on top of him and proceeds to give full attention into slicking Kenta's mouth open with her tongue. Something in Kenta's brain gives with a sharp snap and the sound of engines whirring down.
"Manabe-san!"
He falls over the edge of the bed in his frantic scramble to get away. Manabe, for her part, raises her eyes and her glossy, glossy lips and, with a sad sniff and a last blurry look at him, collapses face-first into the pillows.
Standing with his back to her door, Kenta takes a series of deep breaths. He's shaking and seriously, feelings over boobs-- because--
Despite the fact that Kenta's own family calls him a horrible person on a pretty much daily basis, he's just not that kind of guy.
And he likes her.
There's that.
***
Manabe ignores him the next day.
The first time, she curtly answers his question about the correct way to wear a duck hat and then proceeds to stride away. The second time it seems that she sees him coming from down the hallway and disappears around a corner with red cheeks before he can catch her. The third time she jams the bear head down on his head -- backwards and painfully-- before he can say more than one word.
Now besides never getting laid (in a morally respectful manner) she's gone to hating him for not being a jerk for once, and he might actually be a teenager because this is upsetting.
Sumiyoshi lets him have an early break -- "Get off! Off of my set! Out, out!!" he rages -- when Kenta makes a kid cry by chucking the decapitated-looking duck hat across the floor.
Which he did not mean to do. It is not his fault that half of their costumes look like someone's actually been sacrificing animals.
The mid-day bustle of the street is mute to his ears as Kenta sits outside the nearby combini in a miserable funk on the curb, rebelliously smoking a cigarette. There's a small crowd of tiny, inquisitive-looking elementary schoolers staring at him across the way and being negatively influenced every passing second. Kenta can't bring himself to care.
He's on his second cigarette and regretting it when Manabe sits down next to him and laces her fingers under her chin.
"Yano-kun," she says almost hesitantly.
He gives her a sideways glance. She's put together cleanly again, such a contrast to last night where her hair was mussed and she'd given him that look from where she'd been laying in the pillows - and that kiss. He can't think anything except the fact that he'd accept her both ways, and everything in between.
"Yano-kun," Manabe says again, and she's not looking at him, she's looking at the kids across the road. "I thought you said you'd stopped. There's children looking."
"I know," Kenta says, and his voice comes out low. "Sorry." He puts the cig out under his shoe. "There I go again, being a jerk."
"That's not what I wanted to say." She sounds frustrated.
He looks down at where he's stubbing his toe into the pavement and sighs. "It's still what you said."
The brats across the street start looking like they're about to head over.
"Last night -- I mean." And really, Kenta's just noticing that she seems more frustrated with herself than anything else. "I'm sorry. That wasn't supposed to happen."
"Oh," Kenta replies. He doesn't feel hurt or anything. It's not like he'd expected anything else. "Whatever."
She runs the back of her hand across her forehead. "If things were different--"
"No, really," Kenta interrupts. "I get it. Whatever."
Manabe suddenly stands up and jabs a finger down at him, glaring. "Is that all you're going to say? Aren't you giving up too easily?"
"What?" Kenta gets up too, face to face with her due to the height given by her heels. "What in the hell are you talking about now?"
Manabe narrows her eyes and purses her red-kissed mouth. Her voice has risen and they're attracting attention. "Why are you always so passive? Why don't you ever try and prove yourself occasionally?"
Kenta staggers back. It's like the same things he was told back then by Akane -- except now it's over a hundred times worse because he's changed, and if he was still the same person as before he would've been a real jerk this whole time.
"No, really," he yells. "Prove myself! What does that even mean? What in the fuck do you want me to do, just grab you and kiss you without permission?!"
"That wouldn't be horrible!" She hollers back and then blanches, hands rising in horror.
Kenta stares at her. Then he strides forward, slides one hand around the back of her neck, the other one into the hair over her ear, and kisses her.
It's warm and wet and wonderful and she melts into him, winding her arms around his neck and okay, this might be the best thing ever. An entirely unnecessary cheer rises from the bystanders.
When Kenta opens his eyes and looks over Manabe's shoulder, Arashi's Ohno Satoshi is giving him an earnest thumbs up from inside the combini.
What in the fuck.
***
Kenta gets laid eventually. But what he has is a million times better than that.
Characters/Pairing: Kenta/Manabe, background Arashi, Mamoru/Sayaka
Word Count: 3618
Rating: Young children are watching you, Yano-kun!
Summary: Kenta is on a mission to get laid.
Notes: this whole fic is a big joke
It's a completely unfortunate day in midwinter when Kenta realizes that, yes, he still has a dick and that, yes, it's still very much interested in women. It's like he's suddenly awakened from the frantic state that near unemployment and being dumped by his long-time girlfriend had put him into.
To put it more candidly, he's suddenly awoken by his wet and soggy sheets after an entirely pleasant dream about breasts.
"Fucking hell," Kenta sighs, and kicks his sheets aside.
Considering the first and most important rule for a Singing Brother is no alcohol, no tobacco, no men and no women and he's already sworn off (grudgingly, okay) alcohol and smoking, he can-- wait.
Yeah. There's no fucking way Kenta is swearing off boobs.
He's going to get laid.
***
"Are you a man or not?" Kenta scowls at Mamoru's shocked and scandalized look when he brings it up during their weekly drinking session in which the two of them try their best to pretend that their orange juice is really beer in disguise.
"No way, Yano-kun," Mamoru finally splutters out, red in the face. "Not after we've finally got this far! You want to ruin it all just to-- to--"
"Screw?"
"That!"
Kenta ducks down low and glances around stealthily, checking for watchers. There's no one else in the lowly lit, smoky izakaya except a giggling couple and a drunk salaryman philosophically poking his stomach fat. "Look, what Manabe doesn't know won't hurt her!"
"Manabe-san knows everything!" Mamoru hisses. "I won't let you do this! You traitor!"
He angrily drains his juice and slams it down on the bar like it's a shot of shochu, storming out.
Kenta frowns. This is an unexpected obstacle.
***
"First rehearsal will be from eight to ten, then we'll run it again at thirteen hours with the lights. Then at fifteen thirty we can do the actual shooting…"
Kenta lets the familiar grumble of Sumiyoshi's voice wash over him as he leans back against the papyrus tree and naps.
"…oi, Youko! What are you doing with those carp!"
"Well, you told me to-- I thought they'd feel better wet--"
"They're stuffed animals, Youko! They can't feel anything! I swear, why do we keep trying to rely on newbies, can't do anything right…"
The thing is, Kenta is kind of stupidly in love with Let's Sing, Everyone. Thinking about going to work makes him smile. At the same time, just the fact that his job description alone involves singing about puppies and kittens and ducks is enough to lower his man-cred. He can imagine two little pieces of his conscience sitting on either shoulder. They look like Macaron Kids.
One's in white and saying, "Be a good boy, Kenta. Sex can be fun but it's not as fun as your job! Is it really worth it?"
The other one's in black. "Kenta! What are you waiting for? Go out and get them, tiger!"
"Bear-kun," someone's saying. "Bear-kun!"
No, Kenta thinks with confusion, I'm a tiger.
A pointy, heeled shoe kicks him in the knee and crudely drags him out of sleep. Kenta hisses, clutching at his shin, and looks up at Manabe.
"Ow," he yelps. "That hurt, you crazy woman!"
"No sleeping on set!" Her eyes narrow. "And if you must absolutely persist in using bad language, I suppose you wouldn't mind if I washed your mouth out with soap…"
Kenta pales and clutches at the bear head he's been holding. Manabe clucks in disapproval, plops it on his head with a heavy whump, and clip-clops away on her heels.
"Crazy woman," Kenta mutters.
Michiru sits down next to him, all skinny little shoulders. "Would you stop antagonizing Manabe-san already, idiot?"
"Ah, so says the tantrum-ridden brat experiencing puberty for the first time," he smirks at her entirely against his own best judgement.
Kenta gets kicked in the other knee. When he looks up from yelping in pain, Mamoru is standing across the room glaring daggers at him and running a threatening finger over his throat. He's mouthing, Sex is bad for you, baaaad for you, Kenta-kun.
He has no idea why he likes this job.
***
"Hey, you, dawdler, get the spare duck hats from Studio A's storage room!" Sumiyoshi yells -- bellows -- across the set.
Kenta groans. "Fine, fine…"
He drags himself the entire long way from Studio D to Studio A counting the ceiling tiles. It's chilly in the hallways if you're not wearing any sort of costume with fur and he can feel goosebumps rising on his shoulders. Grumbling under his breath and rubbing his arms, he wrestles the heavy door open with the aid of his shoulder-- and stops.
There's voices, whispering and moaning. Someone is getting it on in the storage room that isn't him.
When he listens closer, it becomes clear that the voices are male and familiar, in the heard-them-often-on-TV way.
Kenta sidles into the cold room with the air of someone with absolutely no tact and a fair bit of jealousy. He tiptoes around a rack full of Domo-kun specialty plushies, slowly leaning to peer through a narrow crack in between two boxes.
"Mmm, Yuuji…"
"Taka, don't be greedy. Oh…"
Kenta rubs his eyes. The image doesn't change. Two of the nation's most beloved idols are enthusiastically making out in front of him. They're apparently into roleplay. And tongues, and stripping. And really, this would be interesting if one of them didn't look a lot like him-- creepy--
"Yuuji, touch me--"
"Don't worry, Taka… I'll find the cannon..."
Kenta tries to leave upon Ninomiya sticking his hand down Ohno's pants. He really does. It's just his luck that he trips over the box of duck hats.
Ninomiya and Ohno lurch apart with a wet, slurping sound of alarm as he crashes down in front of them, clutching his side.
"Uh," he says. There's silence while he gets up and dusts off his elbows. "I'm very, very sorry."
Ohno blinks at him slowly. "Oh, you're that guy Sho-kun told us about…"
Ninomiya starts smiling at him. It's not a very nice smile.
***
Kenta stands on his balcony and squints towards the rising sliver of the sun. It's too bright and cheerful, he thinks, for a guy to face after getting threatened to an inch of his life.
He will never trust any doe eyes sparkling out from the covers of idol magazines again.
A cool morning breeze brushes his cheeks and Kenta sags against the railing, perching his chin on top of it and staring out dully. He doesn't know why he can't find even one woman interested in him - it may have something to do with Mamoru making a fool of himself whenever Kenta tries to pick up chicks, it may have something to do with that little troll Ninomiya's threat of castration by Wii power cord (which Kenta now finds completely and terrifyingly plausible)--
He's fooling himself.
Today is Akane's birthday.
Kenta sighs and trots back into his room, sliding the door closed behind him with a shiiick. He bends down and picks up the gift-wrapped box from his table. It's her favorite chocolates.
Akane, Kenta thinks abruptly, had been like sunshine.
She'd been bright and warm, and sometimes painful. They'd been children together, sneaking giggling kisses under the sheets, clasping hands while staring at the stars, arguing over refrains when they should've been thinking about the future. They'd held each other back. Akane had broken away and even if she hadn't done it right, at least she was smiling now.
Kenta hitches his bag on to his shoulder and drops the present in a drawer of his desk. He's got to get to work.
It's his turn, now.
***
The issue he's having must be born from the plain fact that he doesn't have a target. Kenta needs to hunt. He needs to find a woman and corner her like a cheetah does a gazelle in the savannah -- silent, deadly, charming--
Manabe comes in to the set and tosses her hair over her shoulder. Kenta's eyes track the glossy fall of it over her slender shoulders and between her shoulder blades. Then his eyes widen in horror.
"No," he breathes, looking down at his crotch. "No, are you crazy? Don't you dare decide on this, I swear, you fucking--"
He looks up when someone clears their throat. Michiru is giving him a flat stare.
"Kenta. Do you not have any friends? I mean, if you don't have anything to talk to except--"
Kenta scowls at her and walks away. He's got bigger issues than being ridiculed by a twelve year old daily.
It's not like it's a secret to himself that he's attracted to Manabe. The woman is hot. But it's never mattered before, not when he was still convinced he could make things work again with Akane. Now that that's all over, his dick has apparently decided that Manabe is a very real possibility.
Except she's not.
Kenta respects Manabe. He likes her determination and hard work. He likes the way she holds to her own principles. He likes her slender legs and her various hairstyles and pretty dresses. He likes the way she thinks she can sing, and the way she goes crazy occasionally and the little hairs stick to her forehead with sweat, and--
And--
He's not just attracted to her. Holy fuck, he's in love with her.
Kenta looks down at his crotch dully.
"You are never getting laid."
***
The whole plan of being 'charming' is never going to work out. Manabe knows he's lazy, irate, sometimes (okay, a lot) incompetent, still pretty bad with children, kind of unmotivated, liable to fall asleep on set; it's all traits she scolds him for almost everyday.
Actually, Kenta sometimes wonders if there's anything Manabe actually likes about him. To be personally honest, it's a hard sell. He sinks into an even blacker mood over two days. His right hand gets a lot of exercise.
Sumiyoshi glares at him. "Don't you dare track that depression sludge all over my set! Go to the makeup room and get yourself looking rosy! Chop-chop!"
Seriously, Kenta gets no respect.
He mutters under his breath as he turns the corner and opens the door to the makeup room. He takes two steps inside and stops.
"You've got to be kidding me."
Mamoru disconnects himself from Sayaka's tonsils with a gasp and trips over backwards from where he'd been pressing her into the counter. "Yano-kun, this isn't what you think!"
"You! You hypocrite!" Kenta screeches. "You've been stopping me from getting laid this whole time and this is what you've been doing! Are you kidding me?"
"Look, um, sometimes you've just got to take the opportunity--"
"Fuck your opportunity! You're obviously doing that already!"
"Yano-kun--"
Kenta holds up a hand. "I'm going home."
He makes it halfway down the hallway before Manabe appears in front of him, twirling her staff lanyard around her finger. "And where are you going, Yano-kun?"
Kenta narrows his eyes at her. "Home."
"I thought we were past the point where I needed to chain you to the set."
"Uh." His mind derails for a dangerous second with thoughts of an empty set, Manabe, him and a copious amount of chains. "Uh…"
He blurs back into focus to find Manabe in front of him, face concerned and resting a hand lightly on his shoulder. "Is everything all right, Yano-kun?"
Baseless longing is so not okay, he thinks frantically. He shrugs her hand off his shoulder and turns on his heels, stomping back towards makeup. "No! I'm good! Going to work!"
As he steps back into the makeup room where Mamoru and Sayaka are murmuring together in the corner, Kenta catches a brief glimpse of Manabe still standing there. Her hand's still outstretched in the air after him and she's got a funny expression on her face - he can't figure it out.
***
High ratings for Deluxe (everyone is surprised and slightly flabbergasted, but no one will say anything for fear of Manabe's wrath and a threat of a 90-minute hula hoop session) have caused Manabe to let go of her normal rules and agree to hold a cast party.
Which would be awesome, but then it isn't, because Kenta has discovered that none of these people should ever be allowed to drink.
They've rented out an izakaya for the night and Kenta sits at one of the low tables, nursing a beer and looking out in awestruck horror at the things going on right in front of his face. Mamoru and Sayaka are still all over each other, giggling girlishly. Mamoru, he thinks, is a bastard.
Sumiyoshi's at the bar drinking himself into a stupor with a little snot bubble coming from his nose. The costuming people are playing some drinking game and yelling out names of amphibians. Youko is nose to nose with a stuffed animal and having a serious discussion with it.
The only consolation Kenta has is that Michiru isn't old enough to be here. He isn't in the mood for insults about his manhood.
Kenta's just started to peer around for Manabe when she shows up and sits down next to him. He can't help but look at her; her skin is lightly sheened with sweat where it's exposed by her dress and there's a pink flush on her cheeks. Kenta feels faint and crosses his legs. Do not hit on your boss, do not hit on your boss -- who you're in love with, fucking hell--
"You… uh, look nice."
Kenta mentally slaps himself over the head.
The flush over Manabe's cheeks deepens and she looks away. "…thank you, Yano-kun."
They fall into awkward silence. Kenta gets another beer. And another. They watch Youko start to waltz with her stuffed animal. Manabe gets another beer. Sumiyoshi sways and then crashes nose-first into the bar. Kenta smirks.
And jumps as he feels a warm weight fall on his shoulder. Kenta looks down and gets a face full of Manabe's sweet-smelling hair.
Kenta freezes.
"Um… Manabe-san. Manabe-san?"
"Yano-kun," Manabe says quietly. "You know, I…"
Kenta waits. And waits. He takes a nervous swallow of beer and waits. Then he realizes that he's kind of drunk and that, secondary to that, he's been waiting for her to continue for too long. He twists his head awkwardly to look down and the shift of weight makes her slip from his shoulder and right into his lap.
"Fuck."
Sumiyoshi wakes up enough to peel his face from the bar and give him a drunken, lecherous wink.
The izakaya is filled with smoke and the insistent drum beat continuing endlessly in the background mixes with the crashing going in Kenta's head, don don don don. He feels -- well, okay, there's a beautiful woman with her face in his lap, he's obviously feeling something and it's feeling more and every second -- but more than that, it's panic.
He's got a feeling Manabe wouldn't appreciate being seen like this.
Even if it's super hot.
Definitely hotter than making out in a storage room.
***
Kenta grunts, hitching Manabe's arm up higher over his shoulders as he drags them both down the hallway of her apartment complex. She's a dead weight at his side, head lolling and barely tottering along next to him.
"Here?" He manages to croak out.
She tilts on the inside of her feet. And giggles, like she's been doing ever since she put her face into his lap. Contrary to how that sounds, Kenta is horrified. "Yeeeep!"
The classiness of the apartment makes Kenta feel kind of -- bad. He searches around in his alcohol-addled mind for the source of the emotion. And then he gets it. The thing is his own room (in the same house where he's living with his perpetually angry father, perpetually manipulative sister, and his perpetually inept Kacchan, who Kenta generally counts as an object anyway) hasn't changed much from when he was in high school.
It's a young kid's room. Looking around the neat and ordered apartment makes Kenta wonder what he'd ever be able to offer her. And seriously, he shouldn't feel so bad with Manabe's breasts pushing into his arm but okay, alcohol really fucks him up.
Feelings over boobs.
"Okay, just-- here we go--"
She lands on her bed with a soft sound and immediately curls up on her side. Kenta steps back and shoves his hands into his pockets. Her makeup is smudged, her hair is ruined, they both smell like the bottom of an ashtray, and she's still beautiful.
Kenta sighs, stepping back. She'll be fine like this.
He, on the other hand, still has to make it home without either falling into a rare trashcan on the streets or being killed by a superidol-hired assassin. The second option is more likely.
He's just about to turn and walk out when something grasps the back of his jacket and he does an undignified stumble that leads to him falling back on the bed with a girly yelp and then in the next second he's--
he's--
-- being kissed to within an inch of his life. Thoroughly.
Kenta's eyes widen and he wheezes through his nose as Manabe crawls on top of him and proceeds to give full attention into slicking Kenta's mouth open with her tongue. Something in Kenta's brain gives with a sharp snap and the sound of engines whirring down.
"Manabe-san!"
He falls over the edge of the bed in his frantic scramble to get away. Manabe, for her part, raises her eyes and her glossy, glossy lips and, with a sad sniff and a last blurry look at him, collapses face-first into the pillows.
Standing with his back to her door, Kenta takes a series of deep breaths. He's shaking and seriously, feelings over boobs-- because--
Despite the fact that Kenta's own family calls him a horrible person on a pretty much daily basis, he's just not that kind of guy.
And he likes her.
There's that.
***
Manabe ignores him the next day.
The first time, she curtly answers his question about the correct way to wear a duck hat and then proceeds to stride away. The second time it seems that she sees him coming from down the hallway and disappears around a corner with red cheeks before he can catch her. The third time she jams the bear head down on his head -- backwards and painfully-- before he can say more than one word.
Now besides never getting laid (in a morally respectful manner) she's gone to hating him for not being a jerk for once, and he might actually be a teenager because this is upsetting.
Sumiyoshi lets him have an early break -- "Get off! Off of my set! Out, out!!" he rages -- when Kenta makes a kid cry by chucking the decapitated-looking duck hat across the floor.
Which he did not mean to do. It is not his fault that half of their costumes look like someone's actually been sacrificing animals.
The mid-day bustle of the street is mute to his ears as Kenta sits outside the nearby combini in a miserable funk on the curb, rebelliously smoking a cigarette. There's a small crowd of tiny, inquisitive-looking elementary schoolers staring at him across the way and being negatively influenced every passing second. Kenta can't bring himself to care.
He's on his second cigarette and regretting it when Manabe sits down next to him and laces her fingers under her chin.
"Yano-kun," she says almost hesitantly.
He gives her a sideways glance. She's put together cleanly again, such a contrast to last night where her hair was mussed and she'd given him that look from where she'd been laying in the pillows - and that kiss. He can't think anything except the fact that he'd accept her both ways, and everything in between.
"Yano-kun," Manabe says again, and she's not looking at him, she's looking at the kids across the road. "I thought you said you'd stopped. There's children looking."
"I know," Kenta says, and his voice comes out low. "Sorry." He puts the cig out under his shoe. "There I go again, being a jerk."
"That's not what I wanted to say." She sounds frustrated.
He looks down at where he's stubbing his toe into the pavement and sighs. "It's still what you said."
The brats across the street start looking like they're about to head over.
"Last night -- I mean." And really, Kenta's just noticing that she seems more frustrated with herself than anything else. "I'm sorry. That wasn't supposed to happen."
"Oh," Kenta replies. He doesn't feel hurt or anything. It's not like he'd expected anything else. "Whatever."
She runs the back of her hand across her forehead. "If things were different--"
"No, really," Kenta interrupts. "I get it. Whatever."
Manabe suddenly stands up and jabs a finger down at him, glaring. "Is that all you're going to say? Aren't you giving up too easily?"
"What?" Kenta gets up too, face to face with her due to the height given by her heels. "What in the hell are you talking about now?"
Manabe narrows her eyes and purses her red-kissed mouth. Her voice has risen and they're attracting attention. "Why are you always so passive? Why don't you ever try and prove yourself occasionally?"
Kenta staggers back. It's like the same things he was told back then by Akane -- except now it's over a hundred times worse because he's changed, and if he was still the same person as before he would've been a real jerk this whole time.
"No, really," he yells. "Prove myself! What does that even mean? What in the fuck do you want me to do, just grab you and kiss you without permission?!"
"That wouldn't be horrible!" She hollers back and then blanches, hands rising in horror.
Kenta stares at her. Then he strides forward, slides one hand around the back of her neck, the other one into the hair over her ear, and kisses her.
It's warm and wet and wonderful and she melts into him, winding her arms around his neck and okay, this might be the best thing ever. An entirely unnecessary cheer rises from the bystanders.
When Kenta opens his eyes and looks over Manabe's shoulder, Arashi's Ohno Satoshi is giving him an earnest thumbs up from inside the combini.
What in the fuck.
***
Kenta gets laid eventually. But what he has is a million times better than that.