JE, Gackt-chan Goes on Tour

Title: Gackt-chan Goes on Tour [NEWS/KAT-TUN/Juniors]
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 because of Jin’s text messages.
Summary: NEWS and KAT-TUN go on simultaneous tours, and Gackt-chan has her summer debut.
AN: apparently I write Gackt-chan every year on the last day of school? Last year it was the subway fic, and this year, 6k of Gackt-chan on tour. ENJOY. Late Okaasanishi Day present.

Gackt-chan Goes on Tour

“No!” Jin said, crossing his arms and giving Yamapi his best, sternest Okaasanishi glare. “Absolutely not!”

“I don’t see what choice we have,” Yamapi said with a sigh.

They both looked down at Gackt-chan playing on the floor in between them. Sprawled out on her stomach, she had a pony in each hand and was positioning them in a way that looked disturbingly similar to Jin’s last Myojo shoot, which only intensified Jin’s glare when he looked back up at Yamapi.

“She definitely and for sure cannot go on tour,” he informed Yamapi.

“Tell me who can baby-sit,” Yamapi crossed his own arms. “Go on, tell me.”

“My mother can!” Jin said immediately. “She cooks half our meals anyway!”

“For six whole weeks?” Yamapi pressed, raising an eyebrow. “And they always end up adding shows to your tour, and you’re really going to leave our daughter with your mother and under the influence of your brother for a month and a half?”

“You have parents too,” Jin insisted, but his resolve was obviously weakening and he kept shooting glances at the floor.

“You can make it six whole weeks without seeing Gackt-chan even once?” Yamapi put the final nail in the coffin. “Six whooooole weeks? Forty-two days? One thousand and eight hours? Sixty thousand four hundred eighty min—”

Interrupting Yamapi with a distressed wail, Jin bent to scoop Gackt-chan off the floor and hugged her tight, ponies scattering in all directions. Gackt-chan was always amenable to ninja hugging, and flung her arms around Jin’s neck tight, giggling as Jin squeezed her until she squeaked breathlessly.

“You’re an ass,” Jin snarled at Yamapi over Gackt-chan’s shoulder. “And you totally had Shige teach you that just to torment me!”

“It took me three days to memorize it,” Yamapi admitted, reaching over to smooth down Gackt-chan’s hair and brushing Jin’s cheek with the backs of his fingers while he was at it. “But it’s for the greater good.”

“Okaasanishi?” Gackt-chan spoke up, twisting to give them both a serious look. “Ponies aren’t bendy enough.”

“I need to stop being in Myojo,” Jin growled.

“I disagree,” Yamapi chuckled, leaning in to brush his lips over Jin’s. It was meant to be a fleeting touch, an apology for purposely pushing Jin’s panic buttons, but Jin shifted Gackt-chan’s weight to one arm so that he could grab Yamapi’s shirt and hold him still, nibbling at Yamapi’s bottom lip in retribution.

Gackt-chan started squirming after a few seconds of not being the center of attention, and Jin broke away from Yamapi long enough to let Gackt-chan slip back down to the ground among the ponies (which seemed, to Jin’s parental eye, more than bendy enough). Yamapi tugged him close again by the belt loops and went back to saying he was sorry, kissing apologies against the hollow of Jin’s throat and breathing them over Jin’s collarbones until Jin’s fingers were so tight in Yamapi’s hair that his fingertips were tingling.

“Bedroom,” Yamapi pulled just far enough away to gasp, and then he pushed at Jin until Jin untangled himself and was pointed in the right direction. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Two minutes later, Jin was already sprawled naked on the bed and stroking himself when Yamapi stumbled in through the doorway, shirt half-undone. He paused when he caught sight of Jin, fingers freezing on the last button, and Jin clicked his tongue in annoyance.

“Come on, already!” he waved Yamapi over, snapping him out of his trance, and then made short work of Yamapi’s clothes as soon as he got within reach. “What did you put on?”

“KAT-TUN vs. Kanjani 8,” Yamapi replied, voice muffled against Jin’s stomach. “She’ll be out cold before anybody even gets on the wires.”

“Jackass!” Jin slapped the back of Yamapi’s head. “What the hell kind of apology is this?”

“This kind,” Yamapi said, and then he knocked Jin’s hand out of the way to show him exactly what kind with the wet heat of his mouth, and Jin forgot what he was even angry about in the first place.

Afterwards, they laid in a sticky tangle, old songs they both knew by heart drifting in lazily from the other room. Yamapi hummed along, eyes closed, and Jin rolled Yamapi’s hair into fat curls by twisting the damp strands of it around his fingers.

“She gets lost in Tokyo every three seconds,” Jin said at length. “Pi, what are we going to do with her on tour? In strange cities? On sets that have tunnels? Last year we lost Shintarou for all of Kyoto, and we only found him when we were packing up the Magical Box of Mysteries!”

“That’s because Shintarou is the size of a tangerine and some idiot let Koki and Nakamaru do a magic act. It’ll be fine,” Yamapi assured, full of post-coital confidence. “We just need a plan, that’s all.”

*****

Jin and Gackt-chan stood on the train platform, both of their arms crossed and giving Yamapi identical glares. Gackt-chan was wearing a pink harness, the pink lead line trailing to Yamapi’s wrist, where it was securely velcroed.

“This is your plan?” Jin wanted to know. “I’m calling my mother.” He started digging around in the thousand pockets his new tour pants had in search of his phone, and Gackt-chan wordlessly held hers up for Jin to take.

“Don’t you even start!” Yamapi warned, reaching over to snatch the phone out of Jin’s hand. “I’m just being practical! And anyway there’s no time to change plans because your train is going to get here in ten minutes, so repeat the plan back to me again!”

Jin huffed a sigh. “Your tour doesn’t start until tomorrow, so you’ll take Gackt-chan to Sendai. Then you’ll send her along with A.B.C. when they come to meet us in Fukuoka. I’ll keep her until they go to meet you in Yokohama.”

“You like Fumi-chan and Tsuka-chan, right?” Yamapi coaxed Gackt-chan, who merely glared at him some more. “Remember, give her to Goseki! He’s the only one who definitely won’t get distracted by senpai in sequined pants!”

“Hey!” Kawai snapped from the next knot of people over, but Goseki was nodding fervently and long-sufferingly. Tsukada and Totsuka weren’t even looking, busy jostling at each other for Nakamaru’s attention.

“Then we have her for Sapporo,” Jin continued, but his voice was starting to crack a little. “And you have her for Osaka, and we have her at the end…” Jin began sniffling. “…in Tokyo…”

“Aw, Jin,” Yamapi sighed, pulling Jin over to cry on his shoulder, and then Gackt-chan started up too, and wrapped her arms tight around Jin’s thigh like she was going to hold on until she died.

“Don’t leave me, Okaasanishi!” Gackt-chan sobbed, which of course made Jin cry even harder.

Across the platform, on the other side of A.B.C., Koki and Kamenashi were standing around, watching the electronic display of the train schedule. Yamapi looked pleading and managed to catch the eye of Koki, who elbowed Kame. Kame looked over and heaved a sigh before turning to come over.

“Having trouble with the juniors?” Nakamaru inquired with a smirk, but Kame just flipped him the middle finger on the way by.

“Okay,” Kamenashi said loudly, businesslike expression fixed firmly on his face. “Gackt-chan, look up here!”

Gackt-chan dutifully removed her face from Jin’s thigh and looked up to find Kame with his hands on his hips. She gave a questioning hiccup, and Kame’s expression ratcheted up a notch.

“What did we talk about?” Kame asked.

“Juniors don’t cry in public,” Gackt-chan sighed heavily, but her tears were drying, and Kame gave her an approving nod before turning to Jin.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, stop sniveling!” he snapped, and Jin lifted his face from Yamapi’s shoulder to give Kame a mutinous glare. “People are staring! You know as soon as the train gets here they’re going to want to film us for the backstage, so can you get yourself together, please?”

“You’re an insensitive jerk,” Jin grumbled, scrubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

Kame reached out for Gackt-chan’s hand and pulled her away with only a little tugging. “Pi, there’s a vending machine down at the end of the platform that nobody can see behind from here, you’ve got three minutes to take him away and do something that will make him look like an idol before the train comes, and I don’t care what exactly that something is so long as I don’t have to hear about it later. Come on, Gackt-chan, we’ll say goodbye to Koki and Nakamaru and Ueda and things.”

“Uebo!” Gackt-chan called gleefully, tugging Kame right through the middle of the knot of A.B.C. and scattering them in all directions, while Yamapi dragged Jin in the other direction.

By the time the train arrived, Gackt-chan had said goodbye to everybody twice and only had enough time for a quick hug and an “I love you” from Jin, which was best for everyone involved. Jin’s sunglasses were down and his hair was artfully tousled, and if his voice was a bit thick when he wished the staff good morning, everybody just assumed it was because it was still early morning.

“Don’t lose her!” Jin shouted at Yamapi out the window while he waved with the arm not holding Gackt-chan, but Yamapi obviously couldn’t hear him and made a heart shape with his and Gackt-chan’s hands as though he didn’t know exactly what Jin was saying. Gackt-chan kept waving too, pigtails drooping sadly but with her brave junior smile pasted on.

“She really is the youngest junior ever,” Ueda said, wrapping an arm around Jin’s shoulders as the train slid out of the station.

“Of course she is,” Kame put in from across the aisle, where he was sitting comfortably in his seat and helping out in a supervisory capacity as Koki and Nakamaru turned seats to face each other. “Who do you think taught her?”

“Hey,” Junno popped up in the seat in front of them to look over the back of his chair at Jin. “Is that why she’s coming on tour with us? She can be in Shintarou’s unit! If nobody does any magic acts this year, that is…”

“Oi! It’s called the Magical Box of Mysteries for a reason!” Koki shouted, and Jin buried his face in Ueda’s shoulder to sleep for the rest of the train ride, or maybe until Fukuoka.

*****

Week 1: NEWS in Sendai (Hothouse)

“This is never going to work,” Ryo said flatly when NEWS was all aboard their own Shinkansen car several days later, settled in their seats near the front of the car. There was some ruckus going on with the juniors behind them, but nobody looked, not even when Taiga screamed.

“Don’t be so negative!” Yamapi punched Ryo in the arm and grinned extra hard as if to make up for him. “We’ll all work hard, right?”

“Right!” Tegoshi and Gackt-chan said, snuggled together on the seat facing Yamapi and Ryo. Gackt-chan was wearing Tegoshi’s aviators, which looked more than a little like Jin’s, and Tegoshi had Gackt-chan’s pink, heart-shaped sunglasses perched on his head. They both gave Ryo syrupy smiles.

“God, I hate your spawn,” Ryo grumbled, sinking down into his seat. “It’s worse than back when you had the vermin.”

“Don’t talk about Masuda that way,” Koyama chastised from across the aisle, but very quietly because Shige had just finished a huge test the day before and was sleeping off his all-night cram sessions with his head in Koyama’s lap. “Besides, Ryo-chan isn’t fooling anybody.”

“You really aren’t,” Yamapi added, and Ryo gave a ‘che’ of disgust just before Gackt-chan got her feet under her to hop from Tegoshi’s seat to Ryo’s, landing in Ryo’s lap to snuggle with him instead.

“Aww,” Tegoshi said, stretching out over the two seats to curl on his side and give Ryo a sweet smile. “Just like her Pi-tousan!”

Ryo’s lip curled and he was opening his mouth to retort when Masuda trotted up from the back of the car and said, “Um, I think maybe somebody should…”

“Yamapi-senpai!” Akito whined, ducking under Masuda’s arm to loom over Yamapi with a pout. “Make Shintarou stop calling himself the leader of the juniors!”

Akito was trailed by a long-suffering Junta, who bobbed his head in a proper kouhai greeting to everyone as Masuda let him by.

“B.A.D.?” Ryo squinted. “Didn’t you debut yet?”

Yamapi slapped the back of Ryo’s head and called him a dick, while Tegoshi hopped back to sitting immediately and patted the seats on either side of himself. Akito flopped down and squished himself in against Tegoshi’s side, and grabbed Junta’s hand to drag him down too.

“That’s Taiga’s job,” Yamapi said, not even blinking when Taiga shrieked again. “Anyway, B.A.D. will definitely help keep an eye on Gackt-chan, right? Six members for sure isn’t enough.”

“Of course we will!” Junta said seriously, and Akito flung out his arms to get Gackt-chan to hop seats again, tickling her until she was kicking her little pink sneakers in glee. Tegoshi wrapped an arm each around Junta and Akito’s shoulders, then gave Ryo a wink.

“Okay, that’s it!” Ryo stood up. “I’m going back to join Shintarou’s unit before you freaks make me vomit!”

“Shintarou’ll still be leader!” Yamapi hollered after him as Ryo stomped towards the back of the train, and Masuda quickly stole Ryo’s seat.

“Not for long,” Gackt-chan informed them casually as she clamored over Tegoshi to get a hug from Junta.

Nobody argued.

*****

Yamapi had decided that the best thing they could do to get started right was to give Gackt-chan a tour of each venue very first thing, so that she would have at least half a chance of not being lost forever.

“Pi-tousan gets lost!” Gackt-chan insisted every time somebody brought it up within earshot, and Yamapi glared at his bandmates when nobody ever argued.

In between phone calls from Jin, that was.

“No! Stop calling me!” he finally snapped into the phone when Jin had interrupted the tour for the fourth time. “She’s right…um…”

Yamapi glanced around the backstage costume area, where he’d totally had Gackt-chan standing right next to him five seconds ago. Covering the mouthpiece of the phone, Yamapi hissed for Gackt-chan to come out right this second.

“I KNEW IT,” Jin roared into the phone, “I’M COMING THERE RIGHT—” was all he managed before a roar of a different kind overpowered his voice, tinny over the connection but obviously made of hundreds of voices.

“Are you calling me from the fucking stage?!” Yamapi demanded. Now that he was listening, he could definitely hear the other five members of KAT-TUN, and he slapped a hand to his forehead.

“It’s just Peak,” Jin said meekly, “I still don’t have any solo lines in it,” and then Yamapi informed Jin that he was hanging up on him, and did exactly that before shoving his phone into his pocket.

But he still didn’t see Gackt-chan, and he was just about to start shouting for real when he heard a cruel giggle come from behind the costume rack. Shoving costumes aside, Yamapi stuck his head through the middle of the rack and found Ookawa staring at him with an expression of frozen terror, and Gackt-chan wearing nothing but her pink sneakers and a pink, sparkly boa.

“I found her like that!” Ookawa squeaked, eyes huge. “I was just going to bring her back out!”

“I’m the senpai!” Gackt-chan said cheerfully.

*****

The hotel room and the room service were big hits with Gackt-chan, and even though it was way past her bedtime, Yamapi didn’t see any reason why she couldn’t stay up with Massu and her Pi-tousan to order ice cream sundaes.

All in all, it hadn’t been going poorly, Gackt-chan practicing the dances along with NEWS and playing with her ponies during vocal practice (“Ne,” Koyama had fretted, “Are you sure that’s normal?”), and even if various members had been passing her around a bit like Shoon-kun, it helped a lot that there were six people at once looking out for her.

“But what I’m really worried about,” Yamapi said through a mouthful of whipped cream and peanut butter, “is the concert itself. All of NEWS will be busy, and the juniors too, so there’s no single person we can leave in charge.”

“We should have a sign-out sheet!” Masuda suggested as he chewed his cherry, and then took the one Gackt-chan offered him as well. “People will have to write down their names when they check her back in, so we’ll know who has her.”

“Check her back in? She’s not a library book!” Ryo snapped groggily from the other bed, and it was only because of his voice that Yamapi could tell it wasn’t just a lump of blankets and pillows. “And also, will you freaks please go to bed because we have two concerts tomorrow?!”

“Ryo-tan is an awfully talkative pillow,” Tegoshi’s muffled voice came from the depths of the lump, and Ryo didn’t say anything else after that.

“We’ll just have to do our best,” Yamapi said, eating another bite of ice cream. “We’ll try and assign people to shifts or something.”

“Shige can make a chart!” Masuda said, and that actually was a good idea, so Yamapi leaned over to thank him by licking the streak of whipped cream across Masuda’s cheek. He missed, though, and ended up tasting the melon flavor ice cream on Masuda’s lips instead, which went pretty well with the peanut butter, Yamapi felt. Especially when Masuda encouraged him with a flickering tease of his tongue.

A loud click made them both turn to find Gackt-chan with her cell phone held up and a wide grin.

“Oh shit,” Yamapi cursed, making a grab for her, but she was too quick and hopped off the bed, phone in one hand and ice cream sundae in the other. As soon as her feet hit the floor, Gackt-chan ran through the dividing doorway to Koyama and Shige’s room, then slammed the door shut.

Masuda snickered and shoveled some more ice cream in his mouth, and Yamapi’s eyes narrowed.

“Well, so long as she’s spending the night in there,” Yamapi said, setting his ice cream aside, then he tackled Masuda down to the bed and got a much better taste of the melon ice cream, some from Masuda’s mouth, and the rest from various other parts of Masuda’s skin.

“Finally,” Ryo grumbled.

The next morning Yamapi had two messages from Jin, one of which was a text message which told him in no uncertain terms exactly what he could do with his ice cream sundae. The other was a media file of Jin and Koki jammed in a bathroom stall, and when the sound started to play, Yamapi shoved his phone back in his pocket as quickly as he could, face red, hoping that no one else had heard.

It wasn’t until Shige and Ryo were helping test out the venue’s video screens that Yamapi found out Jin had mailed it to all the other members as well.

*****

Week 2: KAT-TUN in Fukuoka (Marine Messe)

“OKAASANISHI!” Gackt-chan’s voice echoed through the main stage of the venue, and Jin immediately dropped the box of sparkly batons right on Kame’s foot before dashing out of the wings to the stage.

“Gackt-chan!” he called back, vaulting off the edge of the stage and ignoring Nakamaru’s shout to be careful because the drop was more than a couple feet, but Jin didn’t mind when he landed on his ass hard, because then he was at the perfect height for Gackt-chan to run into his arms, her pony stable whacking Jin in the side.

“Fumi-chan taught me Wish!” Gackt-chan reported, and Jin looked up to find Kawai shrugging sheepishly next to a white-faced Goseki.

“Call Yamapi, please?” Goseki begged. “He said he’d string me up on wires for the rest of the tour if she so much as lost a ponytail elastic.”

“I’ll do better than that and send him a picture,” Jin said, then his grin became sharp for a second, “since he seems to like that so much.”

He held the phone out in front and the two of them made Vs, and then Jin let Gackt-chan push all the buttons to send it to her Pi-tousan along with a text full of horse emojis.

“Oi,” Junno said, and Jin tilted his head back to see Junno and Koki leaning over the edge of the stage. “You better not be hurt, because you have to get back up here. We have dance practice!”

“I think I broke my ass,” Jin reported with a grin, still hugging Gackt-chan tightly.

“Well, fuck,” Koki sighed. “There goes the rest of this tour.”

*****

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Yamapi wanted to know. “How can you not know?! Do you need a chart, because I can have Shige mail you one!”

“No, I don’t want a chart,” Jin blew his bangs out of his eyes and earned a glare from the stylist. “NEWS is NEWS and KAT-TUN is KAT-TUN, and we do things differently.”

“See, because I didn’t lose her at all,” Yamapi said with heartfelt emphasis, and Jin clicked his tongue because really it was sad that Yamapi felt that he had to lie to his very best friend like that. “So when you say ‘differently’ then you must mean…”

“She’s not lost!” Jin cut him off. “Koki was taking her to Koki’s Boot Camp and then Nakamaru was going to get her a jumper so that she can be in the finale, and then Ueda—”

“IN THE FINALE,” Yamapi roared, but just then Kame stuck his head around the corner with a threatening stare and Jin said that he had to go and snapped the phone shut.

“Why do you always have to cut it so damned close,” Kame growled as Jin hopped up from the box he’d been sitting on for the stylist to reblow him (not in the fun way). He looked around automatically, as they’d all started doing. “And where’s Gackt-chan?”

“Whose turn is it?” Jin asked with a shrug.

“YOURS, you ass!” Kame reached up to massage his temples. “You always have her at the end of Koki’s solo, because Ueda’s is next and he needs all of Hasshi’s unit plus the responsible half of Kisumai to backdance!”

“Oops?” Jin offered sheepishly as they got to the platform that was supposed to rise up onto the stage with KAT-TUN on it for the next string of songs. “But I’m sure that somebody has…”

“Where’s Gackt-chan?” chorused Koki, Nakamaru, Junno, and Ueda.

“Oh no!” Jin’s eyes widened in panic. “Stop the concert! We have to—”

“Going up!” the stagehand warned, just before he threw the switch, and then the roar of the crowd and the opening lines to “Hadaka no HAT” drowned out the rest of Jin’s squawking.

“Shut up and dance,” Kame hissed just before the lights came up. “There’s fifty juniors back there, somebody’s got her!”

Halfway through the song, Jin’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he hurriedly fished it out and stuck it to his ear, mouthing “COVER ME” at Junno, whose eyes went wide because Jin had a whole freaking solo bridge in this song.

“Okaasanishi!” Gackt-chan’s voice was barely audible over the music. “I can see you!”

“What?!” Jin shouted into the phone, glancing frantically around at the wings and the space between security and the stage. “Where are you?!”

“Up!”

Everything going slow-motion, Jin tilted his head back to see Gackt-chan waving wildly from the scaffold that led up to the top of the set, where they dropped from in the very beginning.

He let out a perfectly pitched scream of horror, and Junno slumped against the nearest junior in relief because he could have never hit that high note in a million years.

*****

Week 3: NEWS in Yokohama (Yokohama Arena)

“Just whatever you do,” Yamapi hissed quietly as Goseki handed the napping Gackt-chan over, “don’t let her see the…”

“FERRIS WHEEL!” Gackt-chan gasped, waking up just enough from her doze to catch sight of the dreaded wheel, and Yamapi let loose a string of curses that made A.B.C. stare in awe, and then they all turned to Kawai to make sure he was going to remember all of that.

*****

“No,” Yamapi said on the phone with Jin late that night, feet propped up on the bed and a bag of ice on his head, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Koyama patted his shoulder soothingly. In the next bed over, Gackt-chan was sitting next to Shige with her legs crossed the same way, turning a page in her coloring book every time Shige turned one in his textbook, and using a marker the exact shame shade of orange as Shige’s highlighter.

“I’m sorry you had a bad day,” Jin said sincerely, slurred though his voice was from exhaustion. “So you’d better delete that media file I just sent you.”

*****

Week 4: KAT-TUN in Sapporo (Makomanai Open Stadium)

Yamapi was way too curious to delete any of Jin’s mail without looking, but he got his revenge by telling Gackt-chan all about hot springs before sending her off to meet Jin in Sapporo.

“She’s doing two tours at once!” Jin complained as Gackt-chan bounced on Jin’s bed and urged him to get ready faster. “How can she have this much energy?!”

“Why do you ask questions like that?” Nakamaru said from the other bed, in a limp heap and staring at the ceiling because he was too tired to even lift his head to ogle Jin’s bare ass. “Why are juniors tiny? Why is the ocean salty? Why are half of Gackt-chan’s ponies neon orange?”

“Shige-chan’s highlighter,” Gackt-chan said, and Jin shook his head at his daughter’s nonsense.

“Get up,” Jin ordered, kicking at Nakamaru’s leg. “You’re coming too! It’ll look good on the backstage.” Nakamaru moaned a little.

Just then there was a knock on the door, and Gackt-chan hopped off the bed to throw the door open, ignoring Jin’s call of “OI” as he threw his yukata over everything important. Senga, Fujigaya, Totsuka, and Sanada all leaned in.

“So we’re going to the hot spring, right?” Fujigaya asked, and just then Nikaido’s head popped up over Senga’s shoulder, wanting to know why Jin had his yukata on his head.

“You’re going too, aren’t you, sen~pa~i~?” Tottsu trotted in to lean over Nakamaru, who groaned again, but this time rolled over to sit up.

“You’re such a sucker for the juniors,” Jin laughed cruelly at Nakamaru’s pain, but he stopped laughing right about the time Gackt-chan thumped his thigh and demanded to be picked up.

The hot water did feel wonderful on his abused muscles, Jin had to admit once they were actually at the spring, and maybe if his back finally unkinked he could go back to sharing a room with Koki. Not that there was anything wrong with Nakamaru, but he was a bit vanilla.

“They did not write that song about me,” Nakamaru snapped when Jin voiced his opinion, and Tottsu and Fujigaya exchanged a grin before starting in on the chorus of the song. Everybody else got in on it too, half of them laughing at the way their voices echoed off the rocks, and the other half because Jin never did learn the words properly.

“Um,” somebody said, and Jin cracked an eye enough to look up and find Hasshi leaning over him, flanked as always by Sanada and Nozawa, but this time with Gackt-chan riding piggy-back. “Is this yours? She says she’s joining our unit.”

“Just add her initial in with yours,” Jin grumbled, letting his eyes slip shut again, but he held up his arms, grunting when Gackt-chan hopped into them and landed on his chest. “Nobody can pronounce your unit’s stupid name anyhow.”

“No way,” Sanada piped up. “She’d get all the solo lines.” The other two nodded in agreement, and Gackt-chan happily sang a pitch-perfect rendition of the opening lines of “Real Face.”

“I dunno why she likes you so much anyway,” Jin said, opening his eyes again to look Hasshi over. “Ever since you finished that last growth spurt, she’s been over the moon for you. I can’t figure it out.”

“Can’t you,” Nakamaru commented dryly, and Jin and Hasshi gave identical clicks of their tongue.

“Bye-bye, Okhasshi!” Gackt-chan called over Jin’s shoulder as Hasshi trotted off, and Jin’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

“You can’t kill him! We need him to backdance for our solos!” Nakamaru found himself hollering a few seconds later over the sounds of Jin’s limbs thrashing the water. Senga and Tottsu helped Nakamaru hold Jin down, while Nikaido commented that something about this seemed familiar. Fujigaya held Gackt-chan out of harm’s way and sighed nostalgically.

*****

Week 5: NEWS in Osaka (Osaka Dome)

“Here are the ground rules for the Dome,” Yamapi said at the hastily-called staff meeting. “Everybody operates on the buddy system and Gackt-chan is everybody’s buddy. Don’t let your buddy out of your sight!”

“Leader,” Tegoshi said earnestly, as the others gave him encouraging looks, “I think this plan may have a few flaws.” He tilted his head a little, just to make sure his point got across, and Yamapi blinked before letting his hands fall to his sides in defeat.

“Let’s just cancel the whole concert,” he sighed.

“Can I be in the finale again?” Gackt-chan wanted to know.

*****

Week 6: KAT-TUN in Tokyo (Tokyo Dome)

“I think,” Ueda said after a few minutes of silence had passed, during which Goseki’s long and winding story about Gackt-chan’s escapades in the Osaka Dome had all sunk in, “that we’re going about this all wrong.”

“Eh?” Jin asked from the director’s chair where he was slumped in a heap of utter exhaustion and misery and second-hand terror.

Ueda knelt down next to Gackt-chan, who looked up from her coloring book. “Hi, Uebo!”

“Gackt-chan, sweetie,” Ueda said calmly, “the Tokyo dome is very big and dangerous, so I’m going to give you a very important job, okay?”

“What job?” Gackt-chan wanted to know.

“Your job is to keep Okaasanishi from getting lost,” Ueda said. Jin let out an indignant shout, but Kame and Junno both slapped a hand over his mouth. “So you can’t let him out of your sight even for a minute, okay? You have to watch him the entire time we’re here, every single second. Okay?”

Gackt-chan thought about that with a head tilt that was all Tegoshi, and everyone held their breath.

“Okay,” she agreed.

*****

“Baby,” Jin shook his head, the feathers from the shoulders of his costume whacking him in his face, “you really, really can’t…”

Gackt-chan crossed her arms and planted her feet. “Uebo said every single second.”

“Twenty seconds!” the stagehand hissed, and Jin caved and dropped a sparkly baton into Gackt-chan’s hands so that she could run out with the other juniors.

It was all worth it though when Shintarou tried to steal the mic during the MC, and Gackt-chan whacked him in the shin with the baton.

*****

“Never again,” Jin mumbled desperately against Yamapi’s mouth, “never, ever, ever…” And if there was something weird about them discussing their daughter the entire way through their fumbling, quick, welcome home sex, that didn’t stop Yamapi from agreeing every time he managed to draw half a breath.

But after they laid there for a little while, breath slowing, Yamapi eventually said, “Well…”

“She did look really cute in the old NEWS jumper,” Jin admitted, voice muffled by his arms since he was on his stomach, Yamapi rubbing slow circles into his back.

“And she picked up all the dances faster than me,” Yamapi added. “She’s clearly a prodigy. What the hell did you do to your back?”

“Guess you didn’t get that last media file.” Jin sighed in bliss as Yamapi shifted his weight and Jin’s spine cracked. “You should have seen her with the baton.”

“You should have seen her on the wires,” Yamapi said, then yelped when Jin rolling over too fast nearly tumbled him from the bed.

“The WHAT?” Jin demanded, and Yamapi shut him up with a kiss because he hadn’t exactly meant to spill that story now, or maybe ever.

In the next room over, Gackt-chan slept soundly in her own bed, dreaming of her own debut tour with a pony clutched in one hand and her open cell phone in the other.

On the screen was a text from Tackey, asking how she felt about Enbujou.