The Lonely Island - The Creep
Title: Please Creep Off the Grass
Pairing(s): NTT (Junno/Koki/Maru), implied NTT/Koyama
Rating: NC-17 (for loads of hipster Lonely Island references, creepiness, yes, even the sexy kind which would include some awkwardness, same room frottage, rimming, a threesome, backseatsmen and contact with bridal thighs)
Summary: Ogling from locker rooms when he was young, staring into ATM booths at night, stalking people in hallways, diving under bridal skirts, following in his car with his headlights dimmed: Nakamaru has his reasons.
Notes: To flawless goddess Mod-chan for the video idea and general modly patience. To S-chan, my beta and cheerleader, for lurking like a boss, correcting typos, giggling along with me at Maru mishaps and spamming me with questionable images.
LINK TO VIDEO: The Creep - Lonely Island
There’s really something wrong with Taguchi.
Maru’s heard it before. It never mattered; Junno can dance and sing and he’s always had the stamina and flexibility of a noodle on amphetamines.
“He’s just energetic and his brain moves faster than his social-inhibitions can regulate.”
Or so was his old argument. He used to say it dismissively like he really knew. Playing the role of the heart of his band made him say things like that carelessly. In the pockets of his memory there are colour-coded lists of excuses and apologies for each of his crazy band mates.
Now they are all understandable. Now he’s the one who doesn’t get Junno. Healing they’ve called him; Normal they say now.
For Maru, however, all he needs to do is glance across the meeting room table and fix his gaze on the wonder that is Taguchi Junnosuke and watch him offend a checklist of basic human principles.
To start with, Junno’s wearing a baseball cap that says “JUGGERNAUT,” which is inexplicable to start off with, and his arms are folded in what could be a listless position but for the fact that his back is rigid with an unnaturally attentive posture.
He’s biting the inside of his cheek pensively and one would assume his stare would be blank but for the fact that his eyes-Maru would compare them to the tinted windows of a Gang-Movie Rolls Royce (vague silhouette of someone living inside staring at you over the barrel of a semi-automatic)-- gaze off with some zealous aggression at something two chairs up from Maru.
On a whim, Maru counts the seconds between each blink. He gets to an alarming count of forty when those black, shining chasms flicker over at him curiously. With the buzz of the meeting going on in the background, they share a short, awkward exchange of gazes before Junno seems to lose interest and returns to looking off to that very same spot.
It would’ve been the smart thing to do if he’d tried to tune back into the subject of their meeting, but the weight and sheer concentration of where Junno stares has him puzzled. Inadvertently, Maru follows the trail of his gaze…
Koki!
Nodding to the deep discussion between Kame and the executives, he is in the oblivion of the most admired. Round, small palm against his cheek, the end of his pen bumping against the edge of the table, and a thoughtful frown furling the middle of his brow.
Slowly, like there’s clockwork moving him, Maru turns back to look at Junno uneasily. That horrifying expression has not changed.
To complicate matters entirely, as soon as the meeting breaks off, Junno appears to gravitate toward the object of his earlier stare. Maru follows at a close, safe distance as the two of them move down the hallway.
“I got you a present,” Junno states complacently, walking like he’s got a magnet in his middle with Koki set to positive; drifting far too close for comfort.
There are various people in the hallway and Maru notices how that doesn’t seem to faze Junno.
Koki, hands in his pockets, tilts his head up, mouth pursing in some type of amusement. “What the hell for?”
Junno digs in his shirt pocket and pulls out a long orange-coloured ruler-like thing. “Put out your wrist; let me show you!”
Koki stops in his tracks and Maru freezes--hands braced beside him-- against the wall three metres behind them; he watches as Koki puts out his wrist without a second thought, already decorated with leather, bracelets and metal. Junno enthusiastically grabs the proffered hand and in one sharp movement, he slaps the ruler over Koki’s forearm of which it bends and wraps around like a cloth-covered handcuff. Koki jumps back a bit delayed but the thing Junno hits him with remains.
Koki stares at him in injured distress. “What the hell, man?” He blinks then down at the strap littered with letters that Maru can’t make out from where he stands.
“It’s a slap bracelet. From the nineties! Very vintage.”
“Ah… really?” Koki examines it wordlessly, his now feathery blond fringe obscuring his face as he turns his wrist over to slip it between a leather wristband and a couple of hemp accessories.
Maru inches closer along the wall. Various execs and nameless people eye him with significant unease.
“It says ‘friendship’ on it…” Koki finally states tonelessly.
“Yes,” Junno replies, stepping closer. “Because we’re friends. Best friends.”
Koki lets out an incredulous laugh, shoulders shaking and smiling a little at this looming sunflower on legs. “Right.” He reaches out and offers a friendly punch to Junno’s arm. “Well, I have somewhere I gotta be…”
Maru only starts to breathe again as he watches Koki trot down the hall. He exhales when he glances back at a very still Junno watching the exact same thing, but somehow emitting rays of determined tension. Maru opens his mouth to call him back to a world that doesn’t involve the entirety of Koki’s retreating back, but Junno reaches into his own shirt pocket and removes another-- blue-- slap bracelet.
Junno turns, facing the wall where Koki stood until a moment ago and his long mouth twitches into a frenetic stretch of a smile. The snap of Junno slapping the bracelet on echoes down the crowded hall and Maru’s eyes widen at the words, “INFINITE FRIEND” inscribed on the fabric of it.
Maru swallows. Of course this means he’ll have to get to the bottom of this.
Such resolve isn’t based off any paranoia. When he’s on low, steady ground and there are no sudden, loud noises, Maru’s head remains clear and he’s unlikely to give in to illogical worries. He has a good notion of what Junno’s behaviour means and such notions do not clamber up from anywhere unknown.
It so happens that a few nights ago after drama filming, he’d stopped at a lone ATM booth. The time must’ve been far past midnight, though he can’t quite be certain.
The booth was full; a gaggle of pretty girls inside (something of which Maru prefers to watch from a distance). The only light: the fluorescence from within the booth. Maru stood in the dark, watching them from the shadows (nothing funny; he just didn’t want to be recognised at this hour) until they’d finish.
He had simply intended to stand there a short distance away, watching them mill about each other at the machine. He kept catching minute phrases of their conversation mixed with the clack of their pretty heels, when suddenly, “Speaking of Junno-kun, did the restraining order go through?” and one of the girls (she looked vaguely familiar to begin with) turned with a severely troubled look.
“I can’t take legal action against him. I forgot that when he registered us as a couple with his agency, there was a contract that said all disputes would be settled out-of-court with a settlement!”
“Oh, Rena-chan!” one girl gasped.
At that point, Maru leant closer to the booth, side pressed to the iron of the doorway. Junno’s girlfriend? Restraining order? His immediate inner queries were paled by the uproar in the booth.
“You weren’t even actually dating him!”
“How did he get you to sign that?!”
“What will you do?!”
Rena-san, center of the sympathetic circle of women, blinks at them wetly. “Well, I know some people disapprove of letting your stalker live with you, but he was just such a sweet and attentive stalker; it went bad before I realised it.”
Maru was both rapt and incredulous. He’d heard Junno go on and on in the sickest way about his girlfriend and their perpetual honeymoon state and he’d seen how happy she looked in the tabloid pictures and… (Thinking in hindsight, the pictures Junno had gladly passed around their break room were often of inexplicable situations) …and now such a sudden counter informative had him glued to the glass of the booth.
“What did he really do to you, Rena-chan~”
“It wasn’t what he’d do to me; it’s what he’d do around me,” Rena explained, accepting a ‘kerchief to dab at her eyes.
If Maru sidled any closer to the glass, he’d blend with it osmosis-style.
“He didn’t so much move in as he eased in. He’d sit behind things and stand around corners watching and smiling. In the middle of the night, he used my computer to watch strangely upsetting videos on youtube. He’d leave things like his toothbrush in my apartment and put paste on the hinges of my bedroom window so it wouldn’t close.” She shut her eyes; shuddering from the trauma of it. “Then I’d wake up to him standing at the foot of my bed; he always did have such a bright, contagious smile, I couldn’t…”
“Oh, Rena~” another girl chorused once more.
“I’d go on trips just to get away from it all, and the pressure of his feelings…” The word adopted a slimy note. “He’d be there already; he took a separate plane and he was waiting for me at the hotel. H-he kept calling it our first of many honeymoons.” Rena’s pretty face hit the palms of her cupped hands as the women around her formed a collective hive of patting hands and empathetic murmurs.
“Honeymoons?!” Woman#3 gasped. “So does that mean…”
“Well, he paid for everything, so I may have slept with him on occasion.” Rena punctuated this confession with an adorable hiccup. An ominous and contemplative silence had begun to swim through the ATM booth.
Well, it certainly explained Junno’s disappearances come nearly every holiday.
“And then…” Rena continued and Maru pressed his nose to the slit in the doors of the booth. “And then after all that! I woke up one morning and he was in his usual spot in front of my window, staring at me. I told him good morning but he simply said, ‘I think we should see other people,’ and he set down this ring I’d never seen before and just like that he left!”
Whimpers and sobs had filled the booth blending cacophonously with the hums of disapproval and condolence. Indeed even Maru himself-- pressed to the booth’s entrance, eyes riveted-- felt a certain investment in poor Komine-san’s tale of woe.
Wait…
“Why the restraining order then?!” Maru had exclaimed without thinking, mouth against the metal plates separating the glass doors. (The glass was thick; he had wanted his words to transmit).
Within seconds, there was a count of eight high-pitched, startled screams ringing into the night. There had been a total of seven women in that booth…
That aside, Maru had learned something all too horrifying about Junno. The words, “there’s really something wrong with Junno” no longer had an excuse to go with it. And there’d be no excuse for Maru if he simply left the issue alone. So by the time he’d made it three blocks away and had fled politely into the shadows, he had already resolved to keep an eye on KAT-TUN’s tallest.
Only a fool wouldn’t be able to notice that Junno and Koki have become an amalgamation of what could be called a brotherhood. The whole thing doesn’t sit well with Maru anyway, so the situation at present is more than enough fodder for him to address his worries.
After that debacle in the hallway, Maru attempts to trail Junno to his car. It seems to be the most ideal way to get him alone and address such a tender subject.
In theory, Junno should be the easiest person to tail as he walks on a pair of stilts for legs, but somewhere on the stairs to the underground parking lot, Maru loses him. He keeps a natural distance of one flight between them but when he peeks over the end of the banister, the echoing footsteps ahead of him have long stilled and the bobbing head he’d been watching for has vanished.
The stairwell is deathly silent and only far off sounds of steps ring upward to Maru. Frustrated, he canters down the rest of the way until he gets to the parking level, wondering a bit vaguely why Junno didn’t take the elevator (It just strikes Maru as more of his sort of thing; sliding metal doors, being alone with songs he hums loudly to).
He gives up when he gets to the parking floor and doesn’t see Junno nor Junno’s sobering grey Toyota SUV. Slippery thing. Maru sighs and scratches his head. Tomorrow then. He unearths his keys and stalks off toward his own car.
The spark of his radio playing the last bars of something familiar makes him settle back on his headrest but it’s in that one movement that he sees the strange flash of colour in his rear view.
Were he in a film of the right genre, a sharp, shrieking violin chord would’ve accompanied him at the sound of “Looking for me?” coming from the backseat in that decidedly cheery, low voice.
Apart from any violin shriek, Maru claps his hand to his own mouth to prevent any further shrill affairs. Junno falls into delighted chortles all the same as Maru scrambles to turn in his seat. “Wh-HOW? No, forget that-WHY are you in here?!” he demands breathlessly, clutching his chest.
Junno straightens. “You were following me, Nakamaru-kun,” he replies with a wide-eyed look.
Maru waits for his heart to slow before he retorts. “I wanted to speak with you. Would you get out of my backseat?!”
Junno folds his arms and leans back on the leather, tinted window eyes unblinking. “No, I’m a backseatsman. And what about?”
Maru takes a heavy breath through his nose. “The staring, the infinite friends-thingy label on your bracelets! About Koki, of course!”
“Mmm,” Junno says and his eyes slide shut, long mouth twitching up into a smile without scruple. “Koki,” he mumbles.
Maru is appalled. “Stop that! That’s obscene!” he snaps.
This has gone even further out of hand than Maru thought. He sighs like Atlas and leans back against his headrest once more and glares at Junno in his rearview. He’s surprised to see Junno doing the same; clearly a contrary response.
“What’s with that look?” Maru shoots sternly.
“I like him. I want to be around him,” Junno explains stolidly. “He smells nice and musky and his skin is like a country peach, fuzz and softness; his voice is like a jungle cat baby, all purrs and growls…”
“You’ve never had a country peach…” Maru replies dryly; he’s nearly at the frayed edge of his tether.
“Does it matter?” is the smiling reply. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
“Of course.” Maru clips sternly. “That’s not the point right now. My present concern is that you fail to regulate your behaviour when it comes to whatever has caught your eye.”
The leather of the headrest next to Maru groans and squeaks as Junno grips it and leans forward. “So you stalked me to tell me to ‘regulate’ myself?” He murmurs puzzledly.
“You’re the one lurking in my backseat!”
“Your right lock needs replacing.”
“Argh, dammit!-and you’re bound to drive Koki mad with your little stalker quirks! I have to put a stop--”
He hears the shuck and click of his seat adjustment lever being pulled, but he still hollers when his seat swoops backward followed by Junno leaning into his personal bubble, the white of his smile like a snow blur and his eyelashes immediately countable in the dim parkade light.
“Stop?” he queries with some Junno-like bewilderment. “For who? For you, Nakamaru-kun? Ehhhh?” He drags it out, curious and at a ringing octave. “Not fair~! What if you took him for yourself?”
Maru scrambles and pushes Junno back so he bounces off the seat beside him and comes tumbling back with a little “oof!”
“You’re both heavy and preposterous!” Maru wails, shoving him off again and adjusting his seat. “I’m not talking about getting Koki to go out with me! That ship sailed years ago-“
This cues an over the top “Oh really~?”
“-as such I’m going to keep an eye on you. Koki doesn’t seem at all miffed by your behaviour; I bet he thinks of you as another one of his pet projects.”
“Mm, that’s fine. He’s one of mine too!” On those words, Junno clambers up to the front seat, all scrambling arms and palms grabbing Maru’s sweater, thighs edging over the headrest, long legs taking forever to catch up and dusty tennis shoe bottoms grazing everything. It’s a strangely long struggle with the car rocking, Maru’s angry muffled diatribes and Junno’s grunts and little, “heh’s” of amusement.
Junno finally straightens and leans back against the door, red-faced and still all smiles. “You su~ure you’re not after him?”
Maru, hair definitely tousled, simply offers his favourite glare and an open-hand smack on Junno’s upper arm, gratified at the “ow!” it incurs. “I’m watching you, Taguchi Junnosuke!” he reports darkly. “Where you lurk, I also shall lurk! Where you creep around corners, I’ll be there first!”
“Kay,” is the only reply he gets.
Such a candid response to his ominous pronouncement pisses him off all good and proper so he darts forward and pulls the handle of his car door and watches with great satisfaction as Junno tumbles out head-first.
Ignoring the quick way-- crouching and cat-like--Junno rights himself on the cement ground, Maru yanks his car door shut.
Koki seems remarkably pleased when Maru makes a point to sit beside him between rehearsals and accompany him to his car and walk him to the bathroom and sit outside the door and chat aimlessly.
The issue is that Maru’s time is in high demand and he finds himself rushing into their group shoots a bit late and runs right into Junno leaning over the back of Koki’s chair.
“A wedding, huh?” Junno is saying with heavy notes of intrigue dripping off his tone.
Maru glares across the room at the two of them and Koki, having heard him enter, tilts his fluffy blonde head from around Junno’s waist and greets him with an inexplicably soothing toothy grin. “How goes it?” Koki says.
“Fine,” he replies uneasily. “Just got back from drama filming…”
Koki elbows Junno lightly aside as he stretches and stands, small hands immediately sliding into pockets. “Make those ratings skyrocket, kay?”
Maru nods; soundless when his heart stops working on its own. He then spends the next few moments staring at the whitest wall and breathing shallowly. Junno is looking at him smugly from over Koki’s head. How strange.
He sees the invite in Junno’s hand after their filming and stands on his tip-toes to see it over his shoulder. “It was in his bag,” Junno says affably.
“A wedding?”
“Black-tie event...”
“Tanaka Yamato? His older brother! Ah, is that for a private reception?”
“Tomorrow night...”
Maru nods slowly. “I see…”
“Koki will probably wear a hakama or a tux,” Junno finally states plainly, tucking the invite into his jacket. “There’s something about his small hips in either of those things…”
Maru jumps back from the thrust of his own moral outrage. “You will not attend that reception, Taguchi!”
“Ok,” Junno replies quickly, grabbing his bag and making for the door in surprising silence.
Maru stares -- a bit taken aback -- but it’s as Junno turns to get the door that Maru sees the idiotically smug grin on his face. “Did you just lie to me?!” he calls. “Taguchi! Oi!”
He can even hear that frightful laughter echoing down the hallway through the closed door.
Maru curses creatively as he opens his phone to cancel his Saturday night appointment. This fucked up world needs regulating.
“Why are you dressed like me?!” Maru hisses, coming up behind Junno.
The lobby is crowded with guests, probably close-knit family and in the rainbow array of kimono, gowns, and suits, chronic stilt-legged Junno in front of the typically smartly-dressed, yet ostensibly understated Maru clad in the exact same apologetic, single-breasted grey suit with white shirt and even-toned forest green tie.
Junno turns; mouth stretches into a delighted grin at the sight of Maru and Maru’s clothing.
Maru takes note that the scant amount of lank, black hair Junno possesses after his recent haircut is slicked back and he sports a pair of thick black spectacles. “I didn’t want to be recognised,” he whispers back, tapping the glasses knowingly.
“It’s a horrible disguise and what’s more we look the same!”
“You know I found those very same blue argyle socks in a 100 yen shop… ”
Maru casts back, examining the crowd to make sure no one is giving them any double-takes. Such is the joy of the reunion that people mill about them with nary a glance.
“The pants were in a bargain bin, but they were a thirty-four length and-heh- I’m totally a forty; I tried pulling them down but then my belt gets uncomfortable…”
Maru is determined that neither of them are noticed and now that he’s apprehended this unruly lightbulb on a stick, he figures the next step is to slip out quietly before Koki sees either of them.
“…so that’s why I got the socks. Oh well~ that’s about 3460 yen saved! Hahahaha!”
“No one cares how much you saved! We’ve got to get out of here before someone asks us for our invitations!” he says fretfully, tugging on Junno’s suit jacket sleeve.
“But I have one~! How did you get in?“ Junno asks blankly, heels dragging.
“Enough! Use those damn legs!” Maru snaps, shoving him toward the doors at breathless intervals and Junno flails, arms up and loafers locked to the carpet.
“Nn-no!” Junno grunts as Maru wraps his arms around The Human Slinky’s waist and kicks at the backs of his legs to make them move. “At least let me get a picture~~” Suddenly it’s like Maru’s arms are full of bony, long, dead weight, arms splay and knees unlock and Junno makes a flightly, “Iyaa~” sound that sends a shudder up Maru’s spine.
One woman lets out a scream as the both of them topple, Maru buried under a pile of Junno.
“That man just fainted on that other man! Someone call a doctor!”
Maru scrambles under Junno’s still form and is near frantic as he spots several pairs of shoes gathering around them and a couple hands reach down to pull the larger man off of him. “Wait, wait!” he hollers, kicking out his legs and staggering to his knees. He glares down over Junno, who is faking a rather unconvincing episode of narcolepsy, eyes scrunched shut, twitching half-heartedly.
Deeply annoyed, Maru jams a finger in Junno’s coeliac plexus and Junno jerks, writhing upright and gasping.
Maru glances up at the small audience they’ve attracted. “It’s all right; I’m this man’s doctor,” he states solemnly before hissing down at Junno. “Get up. We’re leaving!”
Junno lolls his head back as he’s lifted, but he picks himself up sullenly.
“One look at him in a tux, Nakamaru-kun; just one, and then we’ll go wherever you want afterwards,” he whispers pleadingly once Maru gets them outside away from startled gazes.
“What?”
“Please!” Junno straightens, and rests his hands on Maru’s shoulders. “I like the way clothes seem to sleep on him and the way he wears pants. He’s like a buttered muffin in a shirt, I want to... I’m just so going to need that image later...”
Maru shakes him off. “Ugh, what are you, thirteen?!”
Granted, Koki does wear clothing in a feckless evocative way. Maru has been a long time supporter of Koki’s squarish shoulders in a tuxedo jacket...
Junno just hugs himself fretfully, looking frightfully pathetic. “Just a glimpse will do...”
“When we find him, you do not approach him and you don’t let him see you!” Maru warns stiffly as they stalk down the hallway of prep rooms toward the main hall.
“Wouldn’t...that be creepier?” Junno queries delightedly.
“I don’t care about that,” Maru sighs, looking up and down the hall. “The situation can’t be helped since you’re already here when you’re not supposed to be.”
Noncommital reply like, “Sure.”
“Quieter! There’s people in some of these rooms; if they hear us out here...”
Junno strides a bit forward calmly. Maru isn’t sure what he’s up to until he abruptly grabs the knob of a random door and flings it open, looking inside without inhibition.
“What are you doing?!” Maru hollers, rushing forward and closing the door to what he sees is an empty room.
“Looking for Koki,” Junno supplies absently, already moving for the next door.
He’s so loud that Maru panics. “Keep quiet! Stop opening doors!” He tries to intimate the sincerity of his pleas at a volume unlikely to attract attention. It comes out breathless and high-pitched.
Junno flings open another door and peeks in. As he closes it, he glances at Maru curiously. “You’re walking funny...”
Maru is tip-toeing, but naturally such gestures of subtlety are lost on creatures of Junno’s ilk.
“And your hands look scary...”
“It’d look weird to tip-toe with my hands at my side, wouldn’t it.”
“Cool,” Junno says, making better time down the hall since he’s not tip-toeing.
It’s the second to last door that is their undoing. Maru, quite miffed, hops a little faster on his toes and tries to intercept Junno as he goes for it. It is bound to go wrong the moment he gets his footing at the door lintels and Junno fists the knob and flings simultaneously, sending Maru flying past the threshold.
He’s swallowed by a cloud of white, lace and tulle, soon surrounded by a chorus of ringing bells and alarms. Something smells like expensive perfumes and he only knows to scramble back when his cheek touches warm, soft skin and realises that he’s dived under the bridal skirts with the bride still in them and the bells ringing in his head are actually screams; the operative word being, “Rapist!”
He can only mouth the words, “Nononono...” as he tries to find the exit; the bride is kicking at him with sharp heels and he makes the subsequent mistake of grabbing her ankles and imprisoning her thighs with his weight to keep her from hurting his face.
A series of blows from outside this shelter of satin land on the back of his head and he ploughs over as a pair of bride thighs struggle out of his hands. He hears the pounding of heavy footsteps coming from behind him before arms grab him and he’s yanked from all the lace abruptly.
Finally able to breathe and face burning red, he’s raised high and only sees a blur of colour and the ceiling. The poor bride is sobbing as Maru is dragged out, utterly dazed.
“There’s another one of them right there!” one of the girls shrieks and Maru, in some distant logical recess of his mind registers that Junno’s been spotted. He considers the irony of Junno having dressed like him as a form of inconspicuity.
As Maru’s senses return to him, he watches Junno being dragged ahead of him and the main hall doors being opened as the very strong-armed security personnel haul them through the back. Maru doesn’t protest but Junno’s putting up an almost obscene type of struggle.
Maru sighs and leans back into the arms shoving him out the doors and cravenly scans the room. Only a quarter of the party even bothers to glance over that commotion, the rest are either socialising and drinking or chatting dully around a table. In the middle of the table, there’s a boiled goose and that’s when he sees it, those coveted squarish shoulders in a tapered tuxedo top. “Hey!” he hisses in Junno’s direction without thinking.
Junno goes still and follows Maru’s gaze. There, quite distracted by the conversation at his table, is Koki. His collar has swallowed him quite up, first button only parted to show a far away glimpse of a sandy throat with shining clasps. It’s his hair that makes him stand out by far, though without it, Maru would’ve seen him but it’s like some sheer golden decoration. Koki is a ashy blonde beacon, smiling as he sits back in his seat, all cheeks and red-faced glow.
Junno grabs the sides of the door even while security bands together to shift him out. And Maru worries that the commotion will attract Koki’s attention, and then they’ll be seen, and then...
He doesn’t regret sticking his leg out and booting Junno out himself.
Pairing(s): NTT (Junno/Koki/Maru), implied NTT/Koyama
Rating: NC-17 (for loads of hipster Lonely Island references, creepiness, yes, even the sexy kind which would include some awkwardness, same room frottage, rimming, a threesome, backseatsmen and contact with bridal thighs)
Summary: Ogling from locker rooms when he was young, staring into ATM booths at night, stalking people in hallways, diving under bridal skirts, following in his car with his headlights dimmed: Nakamaru has his reasons.
Notes: To flawless goddess Mod-chan for the video idea and general modly patience. To S-chan, my beta and cheerleader, for lurking like a boss, correcting typos, giggling along with me at Maru mishaps and spamming me with questionable images.
LINK TO VIDEO: The Creep - Lonely Island
There’s really something wrong with Taguchi.
Maru’s heard it before. It never mattered; Junno can dance and sing and he’s always had the stamina and flexibility of a noodle on amphetamines.
“He’s just energetic and his brain moves faster than his social-inhibitions can regulate.”
Or so was his old argument. He used to say it dismissively like he really knew. Playing the role of the heart of his band made him say things like that carelessly. In the pockets of his memory there are colour-coded lists of excuses and apologies for each of his crazy band mates.
Now they are all understandable. Now he’s the one who doesn’t get Junno. Healing they’ve called him; Normal they say now.
For Maru, however, all he needs to do is glance across the meeting room table and fix his gaze on the wonder that is Taguchi Junnosuke and watch him offend a checklist of basic human principles.
To start with, Junno’s wearing a baseball cap that says “JUGGERNAUT,” which is inexplicable to start off with, and his arms are folded in what could be a listless position but for the fact that his back is rigid with an unnaturally attentive posture.
He’s biting the inside of his cheek pensively and one would assume his stare would be blank but for the fact that his eyes-Maru would compare them to the tinted windows of a Gang-Movie Rolls Royce (vague silhouette of someone living inside staring at you over the barrel of a semi-automatic)-- gaze off with some zealous aggression at something two chairs up from Maru.
On a whim, Maru counts the seconds between each blink. He gets to an alarming count of forty when those black, shining chasms flicker over at him curiously. With the buzz of the meeting going on in the background, they share a short, awkward exchange of gazes before Junno seems to lose interest and returns to looking off to that very same spot.
It would’ve been the smart thing to do if he’d tried to tune back into the subject of their meeting, but the weight and sheer concentration of where Junno stares has him puzzled. Inadvertently, Maru follows the trail of his gaze…
Koki!
Nodding to the deep discussion between Kame and the executives, he is in the oblivion of the most admired. Round, small palm against his cheek, the end of his pen bumping against the edge of the table, and a thoughtful frown furling the middle of his brow.
Slowly, like there’s clockwork moving him, Maru turns back to look at Junno uneasily. That horrifying expression has not changed.
To complicate matters entirely, as soon as the meeting breaks off, Junno appears to gravitate toward the object of his earlier stare. Maru follows at a close, safe distance as the two of them move down the hallway.
“I got you a present,” Junno states complacently, walking like he’s got a magnet in his middle with Koki set to positive; drifting far too close for comfort.
There are various people in the hallway and Maru notices how that doesn’t seem to faze Junno.
Koki, hands in his pockets, tilts his head up, mouth pursing in some type of amusement. “What the hell for?”
Junno digs in his shirt pocket and pulls out a long orange-coloured ruler-like thing. “Put out your wrist; let me show you!”
Koki stops in his tracks and Maru freezes--hands braced beside him-- against the wall three metres behind them; he watches as Koki puts out his wrist without a second thought, already decorated with leather, bracelets and metal. Junno enthusiastically grabs the proffered hand and in one sharp movement, he slaps the ruler over Koki’s forearm of which it bends and wraps around like a cloth-covered handcuff. Koki jumps back a bit delayed but the thing Junno hits him with remains.
Koki stares at him in injured distress. “What the hell, man?” He blinks then down at the strap littered with letters that Maru can’t make out from where he stands.
“It’s a slap bracelet. From the nineties! Very vintage.”
“Ah… really?” Koki examines it wordlessly, his now feathery blond fringe obscuring his face as he turns his wrist over to slip it between a leather wristband and a couple of hemp accessories.
Maru inches closer along the wall. Various execs and nameless people eye him with significant unease.
“It says ‘friendship’ on it…” Koki finally states tonelessly.
“Yes,” Junno replies, stepping closer. “Because we’re friends. Best friends.”
Koki lets out an incredulous laugh, shoulders shaking and smiling a little at this looming sunflower on legs. “Right.” He reaches out and offers a friendly punch to Junno’s arm. “Well, I have somewhere I gotta be…”
Maru only starts to breathe again as he watches Koki trot down the hall. He exhales when he glances back at a very still Junno watching the exact same thing, but somehow emitting rays of determined tension. Maru opens his mouth to call him back to a world that doesn’t involve the entirety of Koki’s retreating back, but Junno reaches into his own shirt pocket and removes another-- blue-- slap bracelet.
Junno turns, facing the wall where Koki stood until a moment ago and his long mouth twitches into a frenetic stretch of a smile. The snap of Junno slapping the bracelet on echoes down the crowded hall and Maru’s eyes widen at the words, “INFINITE FRIEND” inscribed on the fabric of it.
Maru swallows. Of course this means he’ll have to get to the bottom of this.
Such resolve isn’t based off any paranoia. When he’s on low, steady ground and there are no sudden, loud noises, Maru’s head remains clear and he’s unlikely to give in to illogical worries. He has a good notion of what Junno’s behaviour means and such notions do not clamber up from anywhere unknown.
It so happens that a few nights ago after drama filming, he’d stopped at a lone ATM booth. The time must’ve been far past midnight, though he can’t quite be certain.
The booth was full; a gaggle of pretty girls inside (something of which Maru prefers to watch from a distance). The only light: the fluorescence from within the booth. Maru stood in the dark, watching them from the shadows (nothing funny; he just didn’t want to be recognised at this hour) until they’d finish.
He had simply intended to stand there a short distance away, watching them mill about each other at the machine. He kept catching minute phrases of their conversation mixed with the clack of their pretty heels, when suddenly, “Speaking of Junno-kun, did the restraining order go through?” and one of the girls (she looked vaguely familiar to begin with) turned with a severely troubled look.
“I can’t take legal action against him. I forgot that when he registered us as a couple with his agency, there was a contract that said all disputes would be settled out-of-court with a settlement!”
“Oh, Rena-chan!” one girl gasped.
At that point, Maru leant closer to the booth, side pressed to the iron of the doorway. Junno’s girlfriend? Restraining order? His immediate inner queries were paled by the uproar in the booth.
“You weren’t even actually dating him!”
“How did he get you to sign that?!”
“What will you do?!”
Rena-san, center of the sympathetic circle of women, blinks at them wetly. “Well, I know some people disapprove of letting your stalker live with you, but he was just such a sweet and attentive stalker; it went bad before I realised it.”
Maru was both rapt and incredulous. He’d heard Junno go on and on in the sickest way about his girlfriend and their perpetual honeymoon state and he’d seen how happy she looked in the tabloid pictures and… (Thinking in hindsight, the pictures Junno had gladly passed around their break room were often of inexplicable situations) …and now such a sudden counter informative had him glued to the glass of the booth.
“What did he really do to you, Rena-chan~”
“It wasn’t what he’d do to me; it’s what he’d do around me,” Rena explained, accepting a ‘kerchief to dab at her eyes.
If Maru sidled any closer to the glass, he’d blend with it osmosis-style.
“He didn’t so much move in as he eased in. He’d sit behind things and stand around corners watching and smiling. In the middle of the night, he used my computer to watch strangely upsetting videos on youtube. He’d leave things like his toothbrush in my apartment and put paste on the hinges of my bedroom window so it wouldn’t close.” She shut her eyes; shuddering from the trauma of it. “Then I’d wake up to him standing at the foot of my bed; he always did have such a bright, contagious smile, I couldn’t…”
“Oh, Rena~” another girl chorused once more.
“I’d go on trips just to get away from it all, and the pressure of his feelings…” The word adopted a slimy note. “He’d be there already; he took a separate plane and he was waiting for me at the hotel. H-he kept calling it our first of many honeymoons.” Rena’s pretty face hit the palms of her cupped hands as the women around her formed a collective hive of patting hands and empathetic murmurs.
“Honeymoons?!” Woman#3 gasped. “So does that mean…”
“Well, he paid for everything, so I may have slept with him on occasion.” Rena punctuated this confession with an adorable hiccup. An ominous and contemplative silence had begun to swim through the ATM booth.
Well, it certainly explained Junno’s disappearances come nearly every holiday.
“And then…” Rena continued and Maru pressed his nose to the slit in the doors of the booth. “And then after all that! I woke up one morning and he was in his usual spot in front of my window, staring at me. I told him good morning but he simply said, ‘I think we should see other people,’ and he set down this ring I’d never seen before and just like that he left!”
Whimpers and sobs had filled the booth blending cacophonously with the hums of disapproval and condolence. Indeed even Maru himself-- pressed to the booth’s entrance, eyes riveted-- felt a certain investment in poor Komine-san’s tale of woe.
Wait…
“Why the restraining order then?!” Maru had exclaimed without thinking, mouth against the metal plates separating the glass doors. (The glass was thick; he had wanted his words to transmit).
Within seconds, there was a count of eight high-pitched, startled screams ringing into the night. There had been a total of seven women in that booth…
That aside, Maru had learned something all too horrifying about Junno. The words, “there’s really something wrong with Junno” no longer had an excuse to go with it. And there’d be no excuse for Maru if he simply left the issue alone. So by the time he’d made it three blocks away and had fled politely into the shadows, he had already resolved to keep an eye on KAT-TUN’s tallest.
Only a fool wouldn’t be able to notice that Junno and Koki have become an amalgamation of what could be called a brotherhood. The whole thing doesn’t sit well with Maru anyway, so the situation at present is more than enough fodder for him to address his worries.
After that debacle in the hallway, Maru attempts to trail Junno to his car. It seems to be the most ideal way to get him alone and address such a tender subject.
In theory, Junno should be the easiest person to tail as he walks on a pair of stilts for legs, but somewhere on the stairs to the underground parking lot, Maru loses him. He keeps a natural distance of one flight between them but when he peeks over the end of the banister, the echoing footsteps ahead of him have long stilled and the bobbing head he’d been watching for has vanished.
The stairwell is deathly silent and only far off sounds of steps ring upward to Maru. Frustrated, he canters down the rest of the way until he gets to the parking level, wondering a bit vaguely why Junno didn’t take the elevator (It just strikes Maru as more of his sort of thing; sliding metal doors, being alone with songs he hums loudly to).
He gives up when he gets to the parking floor and doesn’t see Junno nor Junno’s sobering grey Toyota SUV. Slippery thing. Maru sighs and scratches his head. Tomorrow then. He unearths his keys and stalks off toward his own car.
The spark of his radio playing the last bars of something familiar makes him settle back on his headrest but it’s in that one movement that he sees the strange flash of colour in his rear view.
Were he in a film of the right genre, a sharp, shrieking violin chord would’ve accompanied him at the sound of “Looking for me?” coming from the backseat in that decidedly cheery, low voice.
Apart from any violin shriek, Maru claps his hand to his own mouth to prevent any further shrill affairs. Junno falls into delighted chortles all the same as Maru scrambles to turn in his seat. “Wh-HOW? No, forget that-WHY are you in here?!” he demands breathlessly, clutching his chest.
Junno straightens. “You were following me, Nakamaru-kun,” he replies with a wide-eyed look.
Maru waits for his heart to slow before he retorts. “I wanted to speak with you. Would you get out of my backseat?!”
Junno folds his arms and leans back on the leather, tinted window eyes unblinking. “No, I’m a backseatsman. And what about?”
Maru takes a heavy breath through his nose. “The staring, the infinite friends-thingy label on your bracelets! About Koki, of course!”
“Mmm,” Junno says and his eyes slide shut, long mouth twitching up into a smile without scruple. “Koki,” he mumbles.
Maru is appalled. “Stop that! That’s obscene!” he snaps.
This has gone even further out of hand than Maru thought. He sighs like Atlas and leans back against his headrest once more and glares at Junno in his rearview. He’s surprised to see Junno doing the same; clearly a contrary response.
“What’s with that look?” Maru shoots sternly.
“I like him. I want to be around him,” Junno explains stolidly. “He smells nice and musky and his skin is like a country peach, fuzz and softness; his voice is like a jungle cat baby, all purrs and growls…”
“You’ve never had a country peach…” Maru replies dryly; he’s nearly at the frayed edge of his tether.
“Does it matter?” is the smiling reply. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
“Of course.” Maru clips sternly. “That’s not the point right now. My present concern is that you fail to regulate your behaviour when it comes to whatever has caught your eye.”
The leather of the headrest next to Maru groans and squeaks as Junno grips it and leans forward. “So you stalked me to tell me to ‘regulate’ myself?” He murmurs puzzledly.
“You’re the one lurking in my backseat!”
“Your right lock needs replacing.”
“Argh, dammit!-and you’re bound to drive Koki mad with your little stalker quirks! I have to put a stop--”
He hears the shuck and click of his seat adjustment lever being pulled, but he still hollers when his seat swoops backward followed by Junno leaning into his personal bubble, the white of his smile like a snow blur and his eyelashes immediately countable in the dim parkade light.
“Stop?” he queries with some Junno-like bewilderment. “For who? For you, Nakamaru-kun? Ehhhh?” He drags it out, curious and at a ringing octave. “Not fair~! What if you took him for yourself?”
Maru scrambles and pushes Junno back so he bounces off the seat beside him and comes tumbling back with a little “oof!”
“You’re both heavy and preposterous!” Maru wails, shoving him off again and adjusting his seat. “I’m not talking about getting Koki to go out with me! That ship sailed years ago-“
This cues an over the top “Oh really~?”
“-as such I’m going to keep an eye on you. Koki doesn’t seem at all miffed by your behaviour; I bet he thinks of you as another one of his pet projects.”
“Mm, that’s fine. He’s one of mine too!” On those words, Junno clambers up to the front seat, all scrambling arms and palms grabbing Maru’s sweater, thighs edging over the headrest, long legs taking forever to catch up and dusty tennis shoe bottoms grazing everything. It’s a strangely long struggle with the car rocking, Maru’s angry muffled diatribes and Junno’s grunts and little, “heh’s” of amusement.
Junno finally straightens and leans back against the door, red-faced and still all smiles. “You su~ure you’re not after him?”
Maru, hair definitely tousled, simply offers his favourite glare and an open-hand smack on Junno’s upper arm, gratified at the “ow!” it incurs. “I’m watching you, Taguchi Junnosuke!” he reports darkly. “Where you lurk, I also shall lurk! Where you creep around corners, I’ll be there first!”
“Kay,” is the only reply he gets.
Such a candid response to his ominous pronouncement pisses him off all good and proper so he darts forward and pulls the handle of his car door and watches with great satisfaction as Junno tumbles out head-first.
Ignoring the quick way-- crouching and cat-like--Junno rights himself on the cement ground, Maru yanks his car door shut.
Koki seems remarkably pleased when Maru makes a point to sit beside him between rehearsals and accompany him to his car and walk him to the bathroom and sit outside the door and chat aimlessly.
The issue is that Maru’s time is in high demand and he finds himself rushing into their group shoots a bit late and runs right into Junno leaning over the back of Koki’s chair.
“A wedding, huh?” Junno is saying with heavy notes of intrigue dripping off his tone.
Maru glares across the room at the two of them and Koki, having heard him enter, tilts his fluffy blonde head from around Junno’s waist and greets him with an inexplicably soothing toothy grin. “How goes it?” Koki says.
“Fine,” he replies uneasily. “Just got back from drama filming…”
Koki elbows Junno lightly aside as he stretches and stands, small hands immediately sliding into pockets. “Make those ratings skyrocket, kay?”
Maru nods; soundless when his heart stops working on its own. He then spends the next few moments staring at the whitest wall and breathing shallowly. Junno is looking at him smugly from over Koki’s head. How strange.
He sees the invite in Junno’s hand after their filming and stands on his tip-toes to see it over his shoulder. “It was in his bag,” Junno says affably.
“A wedding?”
“Black-tie event...”
“Tanaka Yamato? His older brother! Ah, is that for a private reception?”
“Tomorrow night...”
Maru nods slowly. “I see…”
“Koki will probably wear a hakama or a tux,” Junno finally states plainly, tucking the invite into his jacket. “There’s something about his small hips in either of those things…”
Maru jumps back from the thrust of his own moral outrage. “You will not attend that reception, Taguchi!”
“Ok,” Junno replies quickly, grabbing his bag and making for the door in surprising silence.
Maru stares -- a bit taken aback -- but it’s as Junno turns to get the door that Maru sees the idiotically smug grin on his face. “Did you just lie to me?!” he calls. “Taguchi! Oi!”
He can even hear that frightful laughter echoing down the hallway through the closed door.
Maru curses creatively as he opens his phone to cancel his Saturday night appointment. This fucked up world needs regulating.
“Why are you dressed like me?!” Maru hisses, coming up behind Junno.
The lobby is crowded with guests, probably close-knit family and in the rainbow array of kimono, gowns, and suits, chronic stilt-legged Junno in front of the typically smartly-dressed, yet ostensibly understated Maru clad in the exact same apologetic, single-breasted grey suit with white shirt and even-toned forest green tie.
Junno turns; mouth stretches into a delighted grin at the sight of Maru and Maru’s clothing.
Maru takes note that the scant amount of lank, black hair Junno possesses after his recent haircut is slicked back and he sports a pair of thick black spectacles. “I didn’t want to be recognised,” he whispers back, tapping the glasses knowingly.
“It’s a horrible disguise and what’s more we look the same!”
“You know I found those very same blue argyle socks in a 100 yen shop… ”
Maru casts back, examining the crowd to make sure no one is giving them any double-takes. Such is the joy of the reunion that people mill about them with nary a glance.
“The pants were in a bargain bin, but they were a thirty-four length and-heh- I’m totally a forty; I tried pulling them down but then my belt gets uncomfortable…”
Maru is determined that neither of them are noticed and now that he’s apprehended this unruly lightbulb on a stick, he figures the next step is to slip out quietly before Koki sees either of them.
“…so that’s why I got the socks. Oh well~ that’s about 3460 yen saved! Hahahaha!”
“No one cares how much you saved! We’ve got to get out of here before someone asks us for our invitations!” he says fretfully, tugging on Junno’s suit jacket sleeve.
“But I have one~! How did you get in?“ Junno asks blankly, heels dragging.
“Enough! Use those damn legs!” Maru snaps, shoving him toward the doors at breathless intervals and Junno flails, arms up and loafers locked to the carpet.
“Nn-no!” Junno grunts as Maru wraps his arms around The Human Slinky’s waist and kicks at the backs of his legs to make them move. “At least let me get a picture~~” Suddenly it’s like Maru’s arms are full of bony, long, dead weight, arms splay and knees unlock and Junno makes a flightly, “Iyaa~” sound that sends a shudder up Maru’s spine.
One woman lets out a scream as the both of them topple, Maru buried under a pile of Junno.
“That man just fainted on that other man! Someone call a doctor!”
Maru scrambles under Junno’s still form and is near frantic as he spots several pairs of shoes gathering around them and a couple hands reach down to pull the larger man off of him. “Wait, wait!” he hollers, kicking out his legs and staggering to his knees. He glares down over Junno, who is faking a rather unconvincing episode of narcolepsy, eyes scrunched shut, twitching half-heartedly.
Deeply annoyed, Maru jams a finger in Junno’s coeliac plexus and Junno jerks, writhing upright and gasping.
Maru glances up at the small audience they’ve attracted. “It’s all right; I’m this man’s doctor,” he states solemnly before hissing down at Junno. “Get up. We’re leaving!”
Junno lolls his head back as he’s lifted, but he picks himself up sullenly.
“One look at him in a tux, Nakamaru-kun; just one, and then we’ll go wherever you want afterwards,” he whispers pleadingly once Maru gets them outside away from startled gazes.
“What?”
“Please!” Junno straightens, and rests his hands on Maru’s shoulders. “I like the way clothes seem to sleep on him and the way he wears pants. He’s like a buttered muffin in a shirt, I want to... I’m just so going to need that image later...”
Maru shakes him off. “Ugh, what are you, thirteen?!”
Granted, Koki does wear clothing in a feckless evocative way. Maru has been a long time supporter of Koki’s squarish shoulders in a tuxedo jacket...
Junno just hugs himself fretfully, looking frightfully pathetic. “Just a glimpse will do...”
“When we find him, you do not approach him and you don’t let him see you!” Maru warns stiffly as they stalk down the hallway of prep rooms toward the main hall.
“Wouldn’t...that be creepier?” Junno queries delightedly.
“I don’t care about that,” Maru sighs, looking up and down the hall. “The situation can’t be helped since you’re already here when you’re not supposed to be.”
Noncommital reply like, “Sure.”
“Quieter! There’s people in some of these rooms; if they hear us out here...”
Junno strides a bit forward calmly. Maru isn’t sure what he’s up to until he abruptly grabs the knob of a random door and flings it open, looking inside without inhibition.
“What are you doing?!” Maru hollers, rushing forward and closing the door to what he sees is an empty room.
“Looking for Koki,” Junno supplies absently, already moving for the next door.
He’s so loud that Maru panics. “Keep quiet! Stop opening doors!” He tries to intimate the sincerity of his pleas at a volume unlikely to attract attention. It comes out breathless and high-pitched.
Junno flings open another door and peeks in. As he closes it, he glances at Maru curiously. “You’re walking funny...”
Maru is tip-toeing, but naturally such gestures of subtlety are lost on creatures of Junno’s ilk.
“And your hands look scary...”
“It’d look weird to tip-toe with my hands at my side, wouldn’t it.”
“Cool,” Junno says, making better time down the hall since he’s not tip-toeing.
It’s the second to last door that is their undoing. Maru, quite miffed, hops a little faster on his toes and tries to intercept Junno as he goes for it. It is bound to go wrong the moment he gets his footing at the door lintels and Junno fists the knob and flings simultaneously, sending Maru flying past the threshold.
He’s swallowed by a cloud of white, lace and tulle, soon surrounded by a chorus of ringing bells and alarms. Something smells like expensive perfumes and he only knows to scramble back when his cheek touches warm, soft skin and realises that he’s dived under the bridal skirts with the bride still in them and the bells ringing in his head are actually screams; the operative word being, “Rapist!”
He can only mouth the words, “Nononono...” as he tries to find the exit; the bride is kicking at him with sharp heels and he makes the subsequent mistake of grabbing her ankles and imprisoning her thighs with his weight to keep her from hurting his face.
A series of blows from outside this shelter of satin land on the back of his head and he ploughs over as a pair of bride thighs struggle out of his hands. He hears the pounding of heavy footsteps coming from behind him before arms grab him and he’s yanked from all the lace abruptly.
Finally able to breathe and face burning red, he’s raised high and only sees a blur of colour and the ceiling. The poor bride is sobbing as Maru is dragged out, utterly dazed.
“There’s another one of them right there!” one of the girls shrieks and Maru, in some distant logical recess of his mind registers that Junno’s been spotted. He considers the irony of Junno having dressed like him as a form of inconspicuity.
As Maru’s senses return to him, he watches Junno being dragged ahead of him and the main hall doors being opened as the very strong-armed security personnel haul them through the back. Maru doesn’t protest but Junno’s putting up an almost obscene type of struggle.
Maru sighs and leans back into the arms shoving him out the doors and cravenly scans the room. Only a quarter of the party even bothers to glance over that commotion, the rest are either socialising and drinking or chatting dully around a table. In the middle of the table, there’s a boiled goose and that’s when he sees it, those coveted squarish shoulders in a tapered tuxedo top. “Hey!” he hisses in Junno’s direction without thinking.
Junno goes still and follows Maru’s gaze. There, quite distracted by the conversation at his table, is Koki. His collar has swallowed him quite up, first button only parted to show a far away glimpse of a sandy throat with shining clasps. It’s his hair that makes him stand out by far, though without it, Maru would’ve seen him but it’s like some sheer golden decoration. Koki is a ashy blonde beacon, smiling as he sits back in his seat, all cheeks and red-faced glow.
Junno grabs the sides of the door even while security bands together to shift him out. And Maru worries that the commotion will attract Koki’s attention, and then they’ll be seen, and then...
He doesn’t regret sticking his leg out and booting Junno out himself.