Hey! Say! JUMP, 5 Times Hikaru Told JUMP What They Wanted To Hear

Title: 5 Times Hikaru Told JUMP What They Wanted To Hear (And Once He Didn’t) [Hikaru]
Rating/Warnings: G. Imagine that!
Summary: The Your Seed dance is totally beyond them, but Hikaru know better than to actually tell anybody that.
AN: The Your Seed making of triggered a lot of emotions in me that I haven’t worked through yet, but I know I want to write more fic about HSJ getting closer and Yabu and Hikaru especially taking care of younger members.

5 Times Hikaru Told JUMP What They Wanted To Hear (And Once He Didn’t)

When Hikaru hears the news that the Your Seed is supposed to be a dance PV, he has serious misgivings. But when he actually sees the dance demonstrated to them, he realizes that any apprehension he had before is nothing compared to what he feels now.

They can’t possibly do this dance.

Hikaru sneaks glances to his left and right, trying to gauge the others’ reactions. Inoo and Yabu look serious, Yuto looks worried. Takaki isn’t even here, still filming Gokusen with no idea what awaits his return, poor bastard. Daiki is tilting his head a little, like he can’t even make sense of what’s going on, and Chinen is tilting his the other way. Ryutarou looks blank and Yamada looks excited, which Hikaru figures just goes to show their individual freakinesses, but what really makes Hikaru want to wince is Keito’s face. His expression plainly says that all he’s thinking about is how cool this dance looks, and thus is not even good enough to judge how hard it’s going to be.

“How long,” Yabu asks, voice calm, and Hikaru knows that he’s thinking all the same things, “do we have to learn this?”

Yuto whimpers when they hear the answer, and Hikaru wants to. Keito looks up at them, and then suddenly seems to notice everyone’s expressions and furrows his brow in confusion. Inoo hisses for Daiki to text Takaki, but Chinen’s already got his phone out and is probably doing exactly that, unless he hasn’t sent Ohno-senpai his daily love note.

“Hikaru-kun,” Ryutarou asks, face still blank, “do you think we can do this?”

“Of course we can,” Hikaru answers, putting an arm around Ryutarou and squeezing his shoulder. “We’ll look great.”

It’s a patent lie, but Hikaru’s been a jyannis long enough to know that the truth isn’t going to get them anywhere, and although Ryutarou tilts his head back to look at Hikaru with his blank face that’s already starting to lose its baby fat, he’s one too and so doesn’t argue.

*****

“What do you think?” Yabu asks Hikaru halfway through their first practice. They’re taking a water break and both of them have their backs turned to the others, needing an emotional break from the pain of watching it as much as a physical one.

It’s exactly as bad as Hikaru had feared, only it’s worse. BEST might manage the dance in time, excepting the one member who is only present in the panicked mail he’d sent back to Daiki, but 7 might as well be doing interpretive backdance to Yamada’s quasi-competence.

What they’re interpreting is anybody’s guess.

Hikaru finishes draining his water bottle, but Yabu’s still waiting, and Hikaru reluctantly admits to himself that Yabu wasn’t asking a rhetorical question.

“Well,” Hikaru starts, pausing when there’s a crash and two yelps of pain behind them, “it can only get better, right?”

Yabu sighs, and they both put their faces back together and turn around to see if anybody’s bleeding.

*****

“Hikaru-kun,” Keito says several practices later, and Hikaru’s trying very hard not to count them, “I can’t do this dance, can I?”

Keito’s voice is low and rough and he won’t lift his gaze up from the floor. Hikaru figures that if Keito hasn’t been crying, he’s about to. It’s certainly well-deserved; Keito has to practice longer and harder than any of them, and sometimes still doesn’t seem to make any progress.

This dance is one of those times. Hikaru puts an arm on Keito’s shoulders and lets him shift closer. He and Keito aren’t particularly close, but then again, Keito isn’t particularly close to anyone in JUMP yet. At moments like these, Keito is more prone to seek out one of the older boys, and Hikaru wonders as a side note whether all those stories about British boarding schools are true after all.

Keito sniffles quietly and stands very still under Hikaru’s touch. On the one hand, it’s a good sign that he’s at least improved enough to figure out the dance is too complex for him, but on the other hand, Hikaru doubts Keito will take a lot of comfort in that fact.

“You can do it,” Hikaru says instead. “They wouldn’t have stuck you in here if you couldn’t, would they?”

Hikaru keeps his reassuring face pasted firmly on as Keito looks up with red eyes to search Hikaru’s face.

“O-okay.” Keito takes a shaky breath and lets it out, and Hikaru doesn’t know whether it’ll be better or worse in the end if somebody doesn’t explain how the Jimusho really works to Keito soon.

*****

“How does it look?” Takaki asks hopefully. His bangs are plastered to his forehead with sweat, his T-shirt soaked through. The hand that he runs through his hair is shaking slightly, and he’s starting to favor one of his knees.

It’s long after regular practice is over, but Inoo and Hikaru have agreed to stay after to help Takaki catch up, since Yabu and Daiki stayed yesterday, and Chinen is just hanging around because Takaki is.

Filming’s in two days, and this isn’t really the sort of dance you can perfect all by yourself, since most of the moves have to coordinate with others. On either side of Hikaru, Inoo and Chinen sit quietly, apparently unwilling to answer.

“Looks good,” Hikaru says. Chinen opens his mouth, and Hikaru pinches his thigh.

“I’ll run it again,” Takaki says wearily.

*****

The last practice is far and away the worst, because miraculously they’ve improved too much to just give it up, but not far enough that the choreographer will let them go away to die in peace.

“I can’t,” Yabu says quietly so that no one but Hikaru will hear. Ryutarou would hear too, if he weren’t curled up in an exhausted ball, breathing evenly. “I can’t do it again. I think I’m going to pass out.”

“Take this.” Hikaru hands Yabu his sports drink and stands up, ignoring the way his legs shake. “I’ll go…I’ll…well, I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll do something.”

“I just need like fifteen minutes,” Yabu says as he leans his head against the wall, and Hikaru would argue with him if he thought it would do any good, but instead he just turns and trudges back into the hallway and down to the other practice room, every muscle aching dully.

Takaki’s down, a bag of ice on one knee, and Yamada’s down beside him, his ankle propped up on top of the same bag of ice. Daiki, Keito, and Yuto are practicing with the mirror while the choreographer explains what’s wrong with one of the hand motions to Inoo and Chinen for the fifteenth time.

“Where’s Yabu-kun and Morimoto-kun?” the choreographer asks when he notices Hikaru’s return. “I sent you to go find them.”

“Yabu’s helping Ryutarou out with one of the moves,” Hikaru says. “They needed more space. They’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

“Fine, fine,” the choreographer grumbles, then turns to stop Yuto from doing essentially everything that he’s doing.

Hikaru slumps down on the floor beside Takaki with relief, then lays his head on Takaki’s thigh and moans weakly. Takaki drops the bag of ice on his head and pats his shoulder.

*****

“Tell me we’re done,” Inoo moans when Hikaru pokes him with a foot. He’s flat on his back on the cold concrete of the sound stage, Chinen and Daiki beside him. Hikaru kind of feels like he’s kicking puppies, puppies dressed up in embarrassingly adorable clothes by psychotic little old lady owners, but then again that’s the Jimusho in a nutshell, he figures.

“Nope,” Hikaru answers honestly, then holds out a hand when Inoo cracks an eye to glare at him. “But we’d be really close if you hauled your ass up off the floor.”

Inoo grumbles but lets Hikaru pull him up, then they help Chinen and Daiki up too, and Hikaru turns them all towards where Yabu is standing on the stage and getting the others into a circle, and pushes them forward until they’re in the circle too.

He squeezes his way in right beside Yabu, giving a disgruntled Ryutarou a dorky grin, then turns his attention to the encouragement Yabu’s offering.

The last couple weeks have sucked a lot, Hikaru thinks as he puts his hand in with the others, but it all pulled together in the end, like it usually does. JUMP pulled together, which is still a new feeling, and Hikaru feels proud of them all, because everybody did what they could, and then did whatever else had to be done on top of that.

As they break apart and head back to their positions, Yabu pauses just long enough to put a hand on Hikaru’s shoulder and offer him a smile, and Hikaru knows that Yabu’s thinking all the same things.