Work Text:
When Tamon awoke from his mid-evening nap, bleary, bag-heavy eyes blinking and squinting in the burning overhead light, the first thing that came to his attention was the back of a head. A person, seated by his bedside. But he hadn’t let anyone in, so how had they arrived there? He must’ve left the door unlocked again. It was entirely likely, stupid as he was, for that to be the case.
His heart skipped a beat–whatever he did now, he had to play this safe. He tried to focus on the person in front of him, mapping out their recognisable qualities. If he got out of this alive, he would need to be able to give a detailed description to Fujita-san. He wilted, thinking of the harsh tongue-lashing he’d received the last time. But what could he do? It was as he told Fujita-san. The dangerous individual had hair, and mean eyes. He was sorry that he’d been too terrified to recollect more details, and he was even more sorry after the fact.
Tamon stared at the back of the person’s head, trying to commit their features to memory. A head of short brown hair, pulled back into a neat ponytail. The exposed nape of a neck, slender and pale. Squinting, he followed the line of their neck to where it disappeared beneath a familiar neat, pressed collar.
Ah, his heart relaxed. Kinoshita. Of course it would be her. He must’ve napped longer than he’d realised, for her to be here already. Despite the nap, fatigue wore at him. Even his bones felt heavy.
He turned his eyes back to the ceiling. In his ears, the end notes of F/ACE’s newest song Rain fade out. He was granted a moment of silence before the song looped back. He’d been listening to it on repeat, analysing the lyrics line by line to ascertain the best way to sing it, to tap into the feelings of heartbreak and grief and loss that the producers demanded of him.
Natsuki had recorded this demo, and it’s his voice, low and sombre, that rumbled through the live wire of his earphones directly into his ears. Tamon had thought this before, but repeatedly listening to the track strengthened it–Natsuki’s voice, when singing about heartbreak and loss, was startlingly, upsettingly, genuine.
The soft tones of the song, as before, threatened to lull him back to sleep. He was so warm, too. He glanced down, noticing at last the blanket spread over his body. Kinoshita must have arranged it around him. It isn’t the one he had put in the laundry basket earlier (after spilling a just-made carton of two-minute noodles all over it) but a fresh one. The one his grandmother had knitted him, before he left for Tokyo.
She knew where he kept the spare blankets, he thought. He would bet she didn’t even have to go looking for them. A funny feeling twisted in his stomach. The centre of his chest ached. He was still exhausted. Tamon pressed a hand above his heart, feeling it pick up speed.
Fixing his still bleary eyes ahead, he refocused his attention on the girl in question, busy fiddling with some items on his coffee table. Despite the work uniform she wore, she looked at home in his apartment.
The lights in his apartment were too bright as always, but her chocolate-coloured hair shone under their buttery yellow tones. It reminded him of when they’d gone to the summer festival together: how the abundance of lantern light glanced off of every surface, how the fireworks had caught her in a smattering of dazzling colours. She was beautiful.
His lips parted. In his ear, Natsuki drew out the final notes of Rain. In the real world, Tamon stared, dazed, at the figure Utage made.
It would be the easiest thing in the world, then, to reach out and touch her.
Without delay, Tamon hauled himself half off the couch, wincing with the rough movement. The muscles in his neck and shoulders, overworked from the previous day's intensive training, were still tender.
The first brush of his hand across Kinoshita's midsection delighted him. She was solid and real under his palm. The second set his senses into harmony. The third touch ended with his arms wrapped around her, simultaneously tugging her back into his arms and leaning his weight onto her shoulders.
Finally, she was in his embrace. A loose strand of her hair tickled at his cheek, and he turned his face further into her neck, nuzzling at the soft skin there. He sighed, and it was as if the grip of the entire, strenuous day loosened all at once.
His arms tightened incrementally around Kinoshita’s waist. Small. Kinoshita-san is so small.
Pleased, Tamon let himself drift back to sleep.
Utage, for her part, stiffened at the sudden attack. Even her breathing came to a complete stop, the air in her lungs held in stasis. What…?
“Goomyhara-san?”
Tamon made a small, contented sound. It vibrated through Utage, from the point of contact that was most certainly his lips, pressed against the nape of her neck. She stared at her hands. Her upturned palms cupped a half-empty mug of tea that had been abandoned on the low coffee table. Her line of sight dipped lower, to where a different pair of hands circled her midsection.
Tamon was…hugging her in his sleep?
No, she hastily dismissed the thought. She was simply being delusional.
The arms around her waist tightened, just a fraction. Distantly, she could make out the faint tones of a song. It wasn’t one she had heard before, but the voice was strangely familiar.
The source of the music evaded her. Listening intently, it clicked–Tamon had been listening to F/ACE’s new, unreleased song, hadn’t he? So the music she was hearing was the music from his earphones, that were in his ears, that were on his head, that was on her shoulder.
This delusion was becoming too realistic, she thought.
When several moments passed, and it became clear that Tamon would neither wake up nor move on his own, Utage hesitantly accepted the fact that what she was experiencing was real.
“Gloomyhara-san?” Utage repeated. When it bore no response, she tried a different tactic. “Tamon-kun?” His given name spun from her mouth with its typical reverence, entering the quiet atmosphere of the apartment. It hovered in the air, weightless. Tamon held still. He puffed warm breath against her neck in a slow rhythm. Those, and his tiny rumbling exhales altered her, maddeningly, to the wildly thumping beat of her own heart.
She would try and disentangle herself from this situation, and then smooth things over with Tamon before he could get the wrong idea. He was asleep, so how would he know what he was doing? As his housekeeper and loyal fan, she had to do her utmost to protect him from would-be scandals. In that poignant, heavy space, gentle as possible, Utage made her move. She set the mug down in its original spot, then reached down, intending to grasp the hands of her sticky, beloved idol and pry them off of her.
At the last second she paused, hands hovering a bare centimetre above his own. The distance was so little that she could feel the warmth radiating off of his heated skin. A worrying thought sprung into her mind–had Tamon fallen ill? Could that be the cause of his evening nap, his unusual pallor?
It wouldn’t be good for him to get sick, not with the final competition to decide the new centre for F/ACE in 10 short days. She’d make some light nutritious soup for him, once she’d detangled herself from this sticky situation. Utage would bet he had been eating two-minute noodles and other processed foods again. And she’d prepare some fresh tea, too. Something calming, that promoted circulation.
Finally, when she could no longer stand to delay it, her hands settled over his. Tamon’s were so much larger than hers, but they were softer, too. The intensive skin care routine of an idol was not to be doubted, not even for a second!
She tugged at one hand. His grip loosened and came free, and she marvelled at how pliant he was. As Hottiehara, Tamon had a larger-than-life presence. He appeared solid, immoveable. As Gloomyhara, he often appeared as frail as a fluttering curtain, despite his tall, broad frame. Now, in sleep, Utage could see that he was soft through and through.
That thought, and remembering the exhaustion lining his features, and the mountain of tears he’d cried, and the way he’d implored her to help him understand love, gave her pause. Tamon…really was working hard, wasn’t he?
Utage, not for the first time, wished that she could make Tamon see himself the way that all of his fans saw him. But she also wondered if that would change anything, or if people were always doomed to recoil from the face they saw in the mirror.
Her grip trailed down till she held his wrist in her hands. An idea, unbidden, rose to mind. Her will of steel faltered. Worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, she cast looks left and right. When she was certain no new individuals had snuck into Tamon’s apartment while she wasn’t paying attention, Utage turned his palm upwards and slipped two fingers into the sleeve of Tamon’s hoodie.
A gruellingly slow minute marched by. Utage waited, listening for the tell-tale signs of movement within and beyond the apartment that would signal either Tamon rousing, or the imminent appearance of another person.
Tamon’s hair tickled where the thick of it brushed against her neck. She could picture it, its dazzling cherry blossom pink shade, miraculously soft and luxurious in spite of his intensive bleach routine. Beneath the perfume of his conditioner, she thought she could smell a hint of the chemical undertones.
With every second that passed, his embrace grew warmer and warmer. It was like being cocooned in a nest of blankets on the coldest day of the year. Like sipping a cup of hot chocolate with the steam still rising off of it. It was like putting on your favourite, fur lined jacket to stave off the cold, or the first moment of relief when you come home on a wet day and close your front door on the battering rain. It was all of that and more, a heavy, strange feeling in her chest that she couldn’t quite pin.
She waited so long, she nearly forgot what she was waiting for. Then, all at once, she could feel it: the steady, strong beat of Tamon’s pulse against her two fingers.
Utage closed her eyes. Let herself breathe in time with him. Dream, for a second, of her heart keeping pace too.
Every day seemed to be a fight for survival for Tamon. But here were the fruits of his efforts: his soft, rumbling breaths; the sweet, soft sighs that signalled his contentment. His strong, steady pulse. Rarely anyone saw the immense amount of effort he put into every day, and even less people applauded him for it. She wasn’t any more special than any other fan, but that, she knew, was something she did alone.
Utage shifted, leaning back ever so slightly. She cast her eyes to the ceiling. Would it really…be so bad, if she sat there for a little longer?
-
The world would make the decision for her, it seemed. In her back pocket, her phone vibrated wildly. It quieted after a second, but the deed was done. The sudden burst of sound jolted her from the strange state she’d fallen into, and the frame of Tamon against her, before nearing comfortable, was now akin to a ten-tonne weight pressing into her back. Hastily she withdrew her fingers from his sleeve, tugged at his fair wrists with renewed strength, and rose from her position on the ground.
Still she was gentle, guiding Tamon back to the couch though she could barely stand to look at his face. He’d been so vulnerable, and she’d–taken advantage of that! She was as bad as every horrible, obsessive fan out there, except that she was worse, because Tamon trusted her.
Trembling, Utage adjusted the blanket so that it covered Tamon’s frame again. His feet poked out at the end; he was too tall for it to fit fully.
Without a second’s delay, she retreated to the far side of the room, ducking into a crouch behind the kitchen table. She put her flaming, heated face into her hands and squeezed her eyes shut, imploring her tricky, misgiving heart to slow.
After a few minutes, Utage recovered enough to stand, though her time in a crouch on the floor left her legs wobbly and weak. It would pass. She steeled her heart. She was a professional, and she had a job to finish.
Alright, Utage! Back to work.
-
(Across the room, even in sleep, Tamon felt the loss of warmth and suffered for it. He dreamt of light shifting through hair, and the warm touch of a hand clasped in his).