Kis-My-Ft2, The Color of Happiness’s Rainbow

Title: The Color of Happiness’s Rainbow [Tamamori/Miyata]
Rating/Warnings: PG for mittened hand-holding.
Summary: Tamamori’s always been able to see the colors, but it still takes him a while to figure out why Miyata’s always pink.
AN: Is this an AU? Rachel and Fiona came up with this idea where Tamamori can see auras like the ghost guy in HanaKimi, and then jointly pressured me into writing it. Frankly, i think this would explain a lot about how Tamamori is always watching the others so intently during the MCs, but then is all “Wha?” when somebody asks him an actual question.

The Color of Happiness’s Rainbow

Tamamori had always been able to see the colors. When he was small, it came as a surprise to him that not everybody could when his mother had to sit him down and tell him that he probably ought to keep the colors to himself.

“Why can’t they see?” Tamamori had asked, frowning because his mother’s colors, usually the gold of perfectly-baked sugar cookies, were butterscotch with worry, burnt around the edges.

“I don’t know, Yuu-chan, but they don’t,” was as much as his mother could explain. “So it’ll be a secret between us, okay? Try not to talk about it with other people.”

So Tamamori kept it to himself, because he’d promised and his mother would see if he lied about it, even when his classmates complained that Tamamori was the only one who never got beat up. Tamamori shrugged it off; if they could see the colors, they’d know who to avoid each day too. Just like he could tell which girl his friends liked and who hadn’t done their homework when the teacher called on them. The colors could tell him a lot of stuff about people, even people he didn’t know, and more than once his mother had to tug him out of the street by the hand when he got distracted by the occasional flash of somebody’s bright colors in between the dull ones that most people carried around on them, work and stress and exhaustion making theirs dark and muted.

It wasn’t any wonder why Tamamori loved Johnny’s then, where everyone’s colors were bright, flashier even than the costumes they were forced to wear. It was a constant distraction at first, one that Tamamori often got scolded for by choreographers and unitmates who thought Tamamori was just spacing out. But how could he keep from getting distracted when Takizawa-senpai’s reds all crackled with sparks like when you pulled staticky blankets apart, and when Yamashita-senpai’s pinks and Jin-senpai’s purples got all tangled together when they wrestled?

But his mother had made him promise not to tell, so Tamamori said sorry a lot, in those first years, and tried not to watch so obviously. He could even tell, sometimes, who would stay and who would leave, whose colors had a steady, strong glow, and whose were starting to flicker out at the end of a concert series.

It made backing for KAT-TUN hard, their colors angry and clashing as a tour dragged on and they started working each other’s last nerves. Tamamori much preferred working with NEWS, even if it made him a bit sad when they blinked with flashes of the missing colors during certain songs, or Kanjani8, even though after too much time with them their joyous riot of rainbow gave him headaches from the strobe of it. Tamamori’s favorite was Arashi, their colors solid and strong, and merged so often that they were blended permanently, Ohno’s peaceful ocean blue never without an overlay of teal from Nino’s yellow-green. He even watched the news every now and again just to see the silly yellows and pinks dart through Sho’s solid, respectable red.

Over time it was less distracting, or maybe Tamamori was just more used to the dazzle of it, and anyway, he was always surrounded by familiar colors these days. Not that he didn’t find them just as beautiful, Senga’s bright blue like the summer sky and Nikaido’s cool green like the shadowed woods where he caught his stag beetles, Yokoo’s soothing burnt orange that flared bright when he was angry or excited, Kitayama’s deep reds that turned almost chocolate when he was asleep and saturated to crimson in annoyance when somebody woke him up suddenly. And sometimes even now Tamamori stumbled over his feet on stage when Fujigaya’s rich fuchsia flashed through with gold like lightning.

But the person whose colors intrigued him the most was, surprisingly, Miyata.

“What are you even staring at him like that for?” Nikaido demanded in the dressing room, eyeing Tamamori’s hands limp on his half-tied shoelace. “He’s not much to look at, honestly.”

Caught, Tamamori turned back to his shoelace and finished tying it roughly, calling Nikaido a moron. When he looked back up, Miyata was looking back, apparently having overheard, his wide grin making heat creep up the back of Tamamori’s neck.

The thing was that, if you couldn’t see the colors, Tamamori supposed that Miyata wouldn’t have been that much to look at. He wasn’t a troll or anything, he was cute enough for what they did, although he’d never be, say, a Takizawa-senpai or even a Kitayama. But Miyata’s colors were…well…

They were pink. Really pink, a pink so deep that it was practically purple. And the thing was, they hadn’t started that way. Miyata’s colors had been a soothing, dark blue, somewhere between a royal and a denim, one that Tamamori had always privately enjoyed, but over time the pink had taken it over almost fully.

On the one hand, it wasn’t that strange for somebody’s colors to change over time, even drastically, especially during the painful stretch of puberty that half the juniors were suffering at any given time. Yamashita Shoon, for instance, had been surrounded by a sulky, bruised purple when Tamamori had first met him, but he’d grown out of it and now was a perfectly pleasant green, vibrant like ripening tea leaves.

But on the other hand…pink? Tamamori just didn’t get it. It was pretty, beautiful even, and Tamamori liked it, more than he could really say why, but he didn’t get it.

“Here you go, Tama-chan,” Miyata said, handing Tamamori a bottle of water and sitting down next to him, close enough that his pink was brushing Tamamori’s arm. It made Tamamori feel good, maybe a little pink himself, and he didn’t bother trying to keep the answering smile off his face.

“Thanks, Miyacchi,” he replied, and he nearly choked on his first sip of water when Miyata’s pink suddenly dialed up, like somebody had tweaked his saturation.

Eventually, Tamamori decided maybe it didn’t matter if he didn’t get it, since the pink was pretty, and nobody who was that pink could be anything but irrepressibly cheerful. It suited Miyata even, Tamamori came to think, so much so that he almost didn’t recognize Miyata when they bumped into each other on a random off-day in Akihabara.

Or really, Tamamori bumped into Miyata, while Miyata didn’t even notice. Both of them bundled up against the cold and the fangirls, Miyata was focused on something in the window of a shop with his back to Tamamori, and the only reason Tamamori recognized him at all was because he was wearing the heinously plaid scarf Senga had given him as a Christmas present.

It took Tamamori a moment to realize why else he’d barely recognized Miyata: Miyata’s blue was back. There were still tinges of pink around the edges, like the edging on their coats, but most of his aura was the blue, the denim of it deeper than Tamamori remembered with Miyata’s new self-confidence and happiness, like a perfectly-broken-in pair of favorite jeans, soft and warm from the dryer.

Before he realized he was doing it, Tamamori reached out to touch Miyata’s shoulder. “Miyacchi?”

Miyata started and turned, and when he realized who it was, a wide grin made his eyes scrunch up. “Hi, Tama-chan!” he greeted, but Tamamori barely even heard it, breath caught in his throat as he watched the pink at the edges of Miyata’s blue flare through the rest of it, swirling into the blue like cream into coffee, and there, there was the deep purple-pink Tamamori saw everyday.

“Oh,” Tamamori breathed, finally getting it. “Miyacchi, you…” Tamamori trailed off, cheeks heating scarlet at his realization. “Me?”

Miyata just chuckled, cheeks a little pink himself, but evidently he could read Tamamori well enough to understand his epiphany. “Well, yeah,” he said, giving a little shrug. “What took you so long to notice?”

“No wonder you’re so pink all the time,” Tamamori murmured, forgetting his promise entirely and reaching up to trail fingers through one of the patches where the blue and pink were still mixing.

“Pink?” Miyata shivered as though Tamamori were touching him. He tilted his head, and Tamamori yanked his hand down, realizing what he’d just said and done. “What do you mean?”

Well…maybe if it was just Miyacchi. Tamamori took a deep breath. “Don’t laugh, okay?”

“Okay,” Miyata promised immediately, and Tamamori started when Miyata’s gloved hand slipped into his mittened one, squeezing it, and it was like Tamamori could feel the spill of Miyata’s colors into his own, trailing warmth and happiness up his arm from their joined hands.

Drunk on all the pink, Tamamori spilled the whole story to Miyata over coffee at the nearest family restaurant with barely a second thought. When he finished, he fell silent and waited, but Miyata didn’t say anything at first, stirring his spoon idly in his coffee mug.

“Well?” he finally demanded, antsy for a response and starting to get nervous. “Say something!”

“What color are you?” Miyata asked, making Tamamori blink.

“Me? I…” Tamamori felt suddenly selfconscious. “I can’t see myself, ne. But…my mom usually says I’m yellow.”

“Oh yeah,” Miyata agreed right away, making Tamamori’s cheeks heat up once again. “Like fuzzy baby ducks!”

“Like sunshine,” Tamamori retorted, scandalized at the idea that his colors were like tiny baby anythings, “you ass.”

“Like super saiyan Goku,” Miyata amended, sliding his fingers back through Tamamori’s under the table, and Tamamori let that one go because Miyata obviously meant it as a deep compliment.

Or at least the dark curl of blue through his pink meant he was pretty satisfied with himself.

Omake

“They look good, right?” Fujigaya wants to know when he shows them the designs for their tracksuits, their new costumes, and they really really do, good enough that not even Nikaido says anything to be a complete jerk. “I just need colors for everybody, for the stripes and the tanks underneath, and maybe the hoods.”

“Colors?” Senga groans, cause half of them like black best. “What is this, one of those stupid photoshoots? Just pick whatever, Taipi.”

“You’ll be stuck with these, though,” Yokoo cautions. “If we get costumes like this,” he stops himself just short of saying one of those things they probably shouldn’t say, his orange going bright for a heartbeat before settling back down, “well, the fans’ll get into it, right? They’ll be our colors, so we should do it thoughtfully.”

Miyata looks at Tamamori, his expression one that Tamamori can’t exactly read but doesn’t like the look of really, before he leans forward on the table and announces, “Tama-chan knows all our colors!”

“Miyacchi!” Tamamori splutters, but after a second realizes that Miyata is just grinning at him expectantly, not really forcing him to tell his whole secret if he doesn’t want to. The self-satisfied blue is back, as it often is these days, tingeing his usual pink dark.

He turns back to find the others staring at him as well, dark swirls of interest winding through Senga’s sky blue and Nika’s forest green, Yokoo’s orange and Kitayama’s red and Fujigaya’s pink, shot through with threads of gold pride for his design.

“Well,” Tamamori takes a deep breath, and figures if it’s for Kisumai, then it’s fine, “for starters, Miyacchi is definitely purple…”