Despite it still being 'Becky Month'...
Despite that, this is for waxrose. Aiba/Jun, 'finders keepers'. She knows why and that I love her. Thank you, Erica.
What you're looking for (in three hundred words or less)
When Jun was thirteen he met somebody who changed his life. Even at the time he realized that this boy wasn't just another new Junior he was meeting. There was something about Aiba Masaki that was more. Something about him that struck Jun, stuck inside of him. Aiba Masaki was brilliant in the way he had smiled and talked and in every little movement, even when he was so shy he couldn't even ask directions.
Jun stepped up. "I can show you where to go," he said. "Follow me."
And Aiba followed him and Jun thought he's MINE, he's MY friend and he didn't bother to think beyond it.
Of course, Aiba wasn't something he could keep, not some sort of ring he could wear around. Aiba was Aiba and he met Nino and Aiba and Nino became best friends. Jun privately seethed with jealousy thinking of them riding on the same train home, getting off stations before their stop so that they could get ramen together or something. He knew Aiba treated Nino because Nino never brought his wallet.
"Aren't you sick of it?" he snapped one day, watching Nino bully Toma into buying him a juice.
"Huh?"
"Paying for him all the time."
Aiba smiled at Nino across the room. "No."
Jun was more hurt than jealous and he didn't understand why and he really didn't care to.
One day he did understand. They were looking at nudie magazines, him and Aiba and Nino, and he realized that he was looking at the wrong part of the picture when Aiba slapped his hand over the guy. "It's better without this!" he laughed.
Jun…maybe he'd known it about himself, maybe he hadn't, but in that moment Jun admitted it and accepted it: he preferred looking at men, liked looking at men. Liked men. He liked Aiba's hand on the page even if it was covering up the part he was looking at. The room spun around crazily.
"Move your hand, stupid," Nino said with a click of his tongue. "I was looking at the whole thing." Jun sucked in breath, realizing he hadn't even been breathing, and Nino looked at him, ears red but eyes steady. "Yeah, I don't care," he said.
Jun wasn't sure if Nino meant that he didn't care if it was men or women or if Nino didn't care what Jun thought of him or if Nino didn't care if Jun himself liked men. He couldn't ask. He only stared at him, wide-eyed.
Aiba laughed again and his hand moved. "Okay, okay, but if it's a gross, hairy guy I'm gonna turn the page. I don't care if you wanna look."
Jun didn't say another word as they continued to look at the magazine. He was glad when Toma came in and still cared more about getting his hip rolls right than he did about getting to use the hip rolls for a more…practical purpose.
On the way home he thought of something he could have said. He thought of all kinds of things he could have said.
Me too.
Me neither.
All right.
"Move your hand, stupid," he whispered out loud as he unlocked the door and let himself in at home. "Move your hand," he said again and he pictured Aiba's hand on his own. Then he pictured it on a girl's hand, on the handle of an umbrella. Aiba had deliberately hurt himself just to walk home with a girl.
"Move your hand, stupid."
It all got tangled together in his head and in his heart after a while. The things he hated about himself, the things he hated about his job, the things he hated about the fans and his bandmates and his life. Glued swampily together by his teenaged hormones to the things he loved about his job, the fans, his bandmates, himself and his life. Everything jostled for space, a delicate balancing act, and it left his heart full of shattered pieces every time he dropped something.
He knew he was being an ass. He just couldn't do anything about it because everything he did was wrong somehow.
If Hana Yori Dango could fix any one part of it maybe he could find a little purchase room and shore everything up somewhere. He didn't know if it would, though. It wasn't a Johnny's job-he had no way of knowing if he'd even pass the auditions. He wondered what kind of sign it was that it was pouring down rain as he dashed into his building.
And stopped.
"What?" he croaked.
Aiba was crouched down next to his front door, drenched and miserable looking. He looked up when Jun spoke, however, and his sunshine-brilliance was faded, covered as if by clouds. "Nobody was home," he said ruefully. "So I waited."
"What if I had something after the audition?" Jun snapped, jerking out his keys and opening the door. "Everybody else is gone until tomorrow, visiting my cousin's new baby."
Aiba just shivered in the genkan and smiled at him weakly. "Then I guess I would have waited a while longer," he said.
"And where is your umbrella," Jun demanded, stalking off to get him a towel from the bathroom. He was unsettled, unhappy, happy. "It's been raining all day." He jerked a towel off the shelf and turned to march back to the front door only to run smack into Aiba. "What the hell!"
"Mattsun," Aiba breathed and then hugged him close, wet and clammy and cold. "Mattsun, I can't stand it anymore. Why are you so mean? Why are you so mad? I know you can't still be the cute little kid you used to be but how come you had to grow up to be like this? How come the second you start to smile you start scowling again? How can you glare at everybody like you hate us and then you carry extra batteries for Nino in your stuff whenever we go on a long trip? You…" he stopped abruptly and hugged Jun even closer.
Jun didn't even know where to start. He shoved against Aiba's chest but Aiba was stronger than he looked, stronger than he seemed. "Let go. Let go! Aiba, let me go!"
But Aiba held him. "If I let you go, then what?" he asked. He sounded desolate and so completely sure of himself. "Then where will you go? You get so far away I think we won't be able to find you, you know. And I don't know if you want to come back, you know that too?"
Pushing away, trying to escape, Jun struggled against both of them. "Shut up! Why are you such an idiot? Can't you just leave me alone?"
"No."
Jun pushed. "Aiba, god damn it!"
Aiba sniffled. "I don't want you to be alone. I don't care if I'm an idiot. I won't let you keep turning into this hateful guy that everybody worries about. I know you're not that guy. I just don't know how to get you to come out instead of that guy." He sniffled again and let out a breath that was half a sigh. "I miss my Jun."
He gave up and went still, went lax in Aiba's hold. He let his head rest on the cold expanse of Aiba's wet-shirt shoulder, his face turned away, hidden as much as possible. He let his arms come up and his hands settle uneasily at Aiba's waist. He didn't say anything, not until he felt cold and Aiba felt warm against him. "I don't-"
"I know you don't, Mattsun," Aiba interrupted. He sounded sad. "I know. I just couldn't help myself anymore." He laughed, a watery sound. "I should probably tell you to do whatever makes you happy but I don't want you to leave me." Jun felt a warm touch at the back of his head, a pressure like a kiss. "So I won't let you go, even when you're mean to me."
Jun slid his arms around Aiba's waist and spread his hands flat against the long muscles of Aiba's back. "You're so dumb," he muttered. He shifted and looked at Aiba.
Aiba drew back and smiled at him, teary-eyed and breaking through with brightness. "You're mean," he said again. Then he kissed Jun right on the mouth, with no hesitation or waiting. With nothing but a smile and a warm look and soft lips that pressed and lingered and moved until Jun was kissing him back, unhurried despite the rush of desperation in his veins.
When Jun turned his head away he wasn't sure if his heart had stopped or if it was beating so fast that he couldn't tell one beat from the next. "I-" he couldn't think.
"Please be with me," Aiba said simply.
Jun was overcome. He thought his heart was breaking, too small for all the feelings with which Aiba was filling it. The pain and the beauty made tears well in his eyes and clog in his throat. He shook his head and then nodded, smiling so hard his face actually hurt and he punched Aiba in the shoulder as hard as he possibly could.
"Ow!"
When he was twenty-eight, Jun found the most perfect ring he'd ever seen. It was a dark-polished platinum band with five deeply set diamonds in the middle. It was obviously a wedding ring even without the velvet box that declared it a Cartier wedding band.
It was sitting behind the glass of a jewelry store window in the mall. Jun was supposed to be shopping for outfits for mannequin five but he couldn't stop himself from looking. But even as he looked at the ring he could see himself in the glass and behind him, the crew. As much as he wanted it, he couldn't have it.
"Ah! Matsujun, are you accessorizing? Whaaaaah! That's detail!" Aiba was a sudden, heavy weight against his back. His breath warm in Jun's ear. "That's detail!" He turned to his own crew, "That's the kind of serious thought Matsujun puts in to this kind of thing, you know!" he told the camera.
"Idiot," Jun rolled his eyes. "I'm not-"
"Let's go in! Let's go in!" Aiba put his hands on Jun's shoulders and steered him into the jewelry store. "Hey, hey, there's this ring in the window-the dark one, right? With the diamonds?"
Jun put his face in his hand. "Yes," he said. "You know, the theme is-"
"And because Matsujun's birthday is coming up, I will buy it for him!" Aiba announced grandly.
Jun stared at him. Aiba wasn't the brightest guy but he wasn't the dumb blond he often let himself be taken for. "It's a wedding ring, Aiba."
Smiling, Aiba just looked at him, leaning on the counter as the manager took the box out of the display and brought it over. "Are you gonna say no?" he asked whimsically.
The manager set the band in its black velvet box on the counter. "This is thirteen-thousand, nine-hundred sixty dollars," he announced.
"HOW MUCH?" Aiba asked.
"I'd like to wear that out," Jun told the manager. Aiba's mouth was gaping. "Are you going to withdraw the offer?" Jun asked him, grinning. "Because I didn't say no-I just pointed out what kind of ring it was."
Aiba's head hit the counter with a shockingly loud noise. "For Matsujun," he said in a muffled voice, "for Matsujun, because-" he lifted his head and his voice and his eyes were clear, sparkling, brilliantly shining-"because I love him so much, I will buy the most expensive thing I have ever bought that was not an apartment." He pulled out his wallet and laid out an impressive number of bills.
"You were just carrying that?" Jun asked.
"For this segment," Aiba said, distracted as he handed over the money and took the ring box. "Can somebody go to the bank for me?" Jun was kind of stuck, thunderstruck, watching Aiba wiggle the ring free of the plush cushion.
He didn't even think to move when Aiba lifted up his hand and slid the ring on his finger. It fit him perfectly, the size and the weight of it, the color and feel and Aiba was smiling, smiling, smiling. Brilliant and life-altering, the person who gave Jun all the things he thought he couldn't have. Jun punched him on the shoulder as hard as he could. "Now what are people going to think?"
You're MINE, Jun thought.
What you're looking for (in three hundred words or less)
When Jun was thirteen he met somebody who changed his life. Even at the time he realized that this boy wasn't just another new Junior he was meeting. There was something about Aiba Masaki that was more. Something about him that struck Jun, stuck inside of him. Aiba Masaki was brilliant in the way he had smiled and talked and in every little movement, even when he was so shy he couldn't even ask directions.
Jun stepped up. "I can show you where to go," he said. "Follow me."
And Aiba followed him and Jun thought he's MINE, he's MY friend and he didn't bother to think beyond it.
Of course, Aiba wasn't something he could keep, not some sort of ring he could wear around. Aiba was Aiba and he met Nino and Aiba and Nino became best friends. Jun privately seethed with jealousy thinking of them riding on the same train home, getting off stations before their stop so that they could get ramen together or something. He knew Aiba treated Nino because Nino never brought his wallet.
"Aren't you sick of it?" he snapped one day, watching Nino bully Toma into buying him a juice.
"Huh?"
"Paying for him all the time."
Aiba smiled at Nino across the room. "No."
Jun was more hurt than jealous and he didn't understand why and he really didn't care to.
One day he did understand. They were looking at nudie magazines, him and Aiba and Nino, and he realized that he was looking at the wrong part of the picture when Aiba slapped his hand over the guy. "It's better without this!" he laughed.
Jun…maybe he'd known it about himself, maybe he hadn't, but in that moment Jun admitted it and accepted it: he preferred looking at men, liked looking at men. Liked men. He liked Aiba's hand on the page even if it was covering up the part he was looking at. The room spun around crazily.
"Move your hand, stupid," Nino said with a click of his tongue. "I was looking at the whole thing." Jun sucked in breath, realizing he hadn't even been breathing, and Nino looked at him, ears red but eyes steady. "Yeah, I don't care," he said.
Jun wasn't sure if Nino meant that he didn't care if it was men or women or if Nino didn't care what Jun thought of him or if Nino didn't care if Jun himself liked men. He couldn't ask. He only stared at him, wide-eyed.
Aiba laughed again and his hand moved. "Okay, okay, but if it's a gross, hairy guy I'm gonna turn the page. I don't care if you wanna look."
Jun didn't say another word as they continued to look at the magazine. He was glad when Toma came in and still cared more about getting his hip rolls right than he did about getting to use the hip rolls for a more…practical purpose.
On the way home he thought of something he could have said. He thought of all kinds of things he could have said.
Me too.
Me neither.
All right.
"Move your hand, stupid," he whispered out loud as he unlocked the door and let himself in at home. "Move your hand," he said again and he pictured Aiba's hand on his own. Then he pictured it on a girl's hand, on the handle of an umbrella. Aiba had deliberately hurt himself just to walk home with a girl.
"Move your hand, stupid."
It all got tangled together in his head and in his heart after a while. The things he hated about himself, the things he hated about his job, the things he hated about the fans and his bandmates and his life. Glued swampily together by his teenaged hormones to the things he loved about his job, the fans, his bandmates, himself and his life. Everything jostled for space, a delicate balancing act, and it left his heart full of shattered pieces every time he dropped something.
He knew he was being an ass. He just couldn't do anything about it because everything he did was wrong somehow.
If Hana Yori Dango could fix any one part of it maybe he could find a little purchase room and shore everything up somewhere. He didn't know if it would, though. It wasn't a Johnny's job-he had no way of knowing if he'd even pass the auditions. He wondered what kind of sign it was that it was pouring down rain as he dashed into his building.
And stopped.
"What?" he croaked.
Aiba was crouched down next to his front door, drenched and miserable looking. He looked up when Jun spoke, however, and his sunshine-brilliance was faded, covered as if by clouds. "Nobody was home," he said ruefully. "So I waited."
"What if I had something after the audition?" Jun snapped, jerking out his keys and opening the door. "Everybody else is gone until tomorrow, visiting my cousin's new baby."
Aiba just shivered in the genkan and smiled at him weakly. "Then I guess I would have waited a while longer," he said.
"And where is your umbrella," Jun demanded, stalking off to get him a towel from the bathroom. He was unsettled, unhappy, happy. "It's been raining all day." He jerked a towel off the shelf and turned to march back to the front door only to run smack into Aiba. "What the hell!"
"Mattsun," Aiba breathed and then hugged him close, wet and clammy and cold. "Mattsun, I can't stand it anymore. Why are you so mean? Why are you so mad? I know you can't still be the cute little kid you used to be but how come you had to grow up to be like this? How come the second you start to smile you start scowling again? How can you glare at everybody like you hate us and then you carry extra batteries for Nino in your stuff whenever we go on a long trip? You…" he stopped abruptly and hugged Jun even closer.
Jun didn't even know where to start. He shoved against Aiba's chest but Aiba was stronger than he looked, stronger than he seemed. "Let go. Let go! Aiba, let me go!"
But Aiba held him. "If I let you go, then what?" he asked. He sounded desolate and so completely sure of himself. "Then where will you go? You get so far away I think we won't be able to find you, you know. And I don't know if you want to come back, you know that too?"
Pushing away, trying to escape, Jun struggled against both of them. "Shut up! Why are you such an idiot? Can't you just leave me alone?"
"No."
Jun pushed. "Aiba, god damn it!"
Aiba sniffled. "I don't want you to be alone. I don't care if I'm an idiot. I won't let you keep turning into this hateful guy that everybody worries about. I know you're not that guy. I just don't know how to get you to come out instead of that guy." He sniffled again and let out a breath that was half a sigh. "I miss my Jun."
He gave up and went still, went lax in Aiba's hold. He let his head rest on the cold expanse of Aiba's wet-shirt shoulder, his face turned away, hidden as much as possible. He let his arms come up and his hands settle uneasily at Aiba's waist. He didn't say anything, not until he felt cold and Aiba felt warm against him. "I don't-"
"I know you don't, Mattsun," Aiba interrupted. He sounded sad. "I know. I just couldn't help myself anymore." He laughed, a watery sound. "I should probably tell you to do whatever makes you happy but I don't want you to leave me." Jun felt a warm touch at the back of his head, a pressure like a kiss. "So I won't let you go, even when you're mean to me."
Jun slid his arms around Aiba's waist and spread his hands flat against the long muscles of Aiba's back. "You're so dumb," he muttered. He shifted and looked at Aiba.
Aiba drew back and smiled at him, teary-eyed and breaking through with brightness. "You're mean," he said again. Then he kissed Jun right on the mouth, with no hesitation or waiting. With nothing but a smile and a warm look and soft lips that pressed and lingered and moved until Jun was kissing him back, unhurried despite the rush of desperation in his veins.
When Jun turned his head away he wasn't sure if his heart had stopped or if it was beating so fast that he couldn't tell one beat from the next. "I-" he couldn't think.
"Please be with me," Aiba said simply.
Jun was overcome. He thought his heart was breaking, too small for all the feelings with which Aiba was filling it. The pain and the beauty made tears well in his eyes and clog in his throat. He shook his head and then nodded, smiling so hard his face actually hurt and he punched Aiba in the shoulder as hard as he possibly could.
"Ow!"
When he was twenty-eight, Jun found the most perfect ring he'd ever seen. It was a dark-polished platinum band with five deeply set diamonds in the middle. It was obviously a wedding ring even without the velvet box that declared it a Cartier wedding band.
It was sitting behind the glass of a jewelry store window in the mall. Jun was supposed to be shopping for outfits for mannequin five but he couldn't stop himself from looking. But even as he looked at the ring he could see himself in the glass and behind him, the crew. As much as he wanted it, he couldn't have it.
"Ah! Matsujun, are you accessorizing? Whaaaaah! That's detail!" Aiba was a sudden, heavy weight against his back. His breath warm in Jun's ear. "That's detail!" He turned to his own crew, "That's the kind of serious thought Matsujun puts in to this kind of thing, you know!" he told the camera.
"Idiot," Jun rolled his eyes. "I'm not-"
"Let's go in! Let's go in!" Aiba put his hands on Jun's shoulders and steered him into the jewelry store. "Hey, hey, there's this ring in the window-the dark one, right? With the diamonds?"
Jun put his face in his hand. "Yes," he said. "You know, the theme is-"
"And because Matsujun's birthday is coming up, I will buy it for him!" Aiba announced grandly.
Jun stared at him. Aiba wasn't the brightest guy but he wasn't the dumb blond he often let himself be taken for. "It's a wedding ring, Aiba."
Smiling, Aiba just looked at him, leaning on the counter as the manager took the box out of the display and brought it over. "Are you gonna say no?" he asked whimsically.
The manager set the band in its black velvet box on the counter. "This is thirteen-thousand, nine-hundred sixty dollars," he announced.
"HOW MUCH?" Aiba asked.
"I'd like to wear that out," Jun told the manager. Aiba's mouth was gaping. "Are you going to withdraw the offer?" Jun asked him, grinning. "Because I didn't say no-I just pointed out what kind of ring it was."
Aiba's head hit the counter with a shockingly loud noise. "For Matsujun," he said in a muffled voice, "for Matsujun, because-" he lifted his head and his voice and his eyes were clear, sparkling, brilliantly shining-"because I love him so much, I will buy the most expensive thing I have ever bought that was not an apartment." He pulled out his wallet and laid out an impressive number of bills.
"You were just carrying that?" Jun asked.
"For this segment," Aiba said, distracted as he handed over the money and took the ring box. "Can somebody go to the bank for me?" Jun was kind of stuck, thunderstruck, watching Aiba wiggle the ring free of the plush cushion.
He didn't even think to move when Aiba lifted up his hand and slid the ring on his finger. It fit him perfectly, the size and the weight of it, the color and feel and Aiba was smiling, smiling, smiling. Brilliant and life-altering, the person who gave Jun all the things he thought he couldn't have. Jun punched him on the shoulder as hard as he could. "Now what are people going to think?"
You're MINE, Jun thought.