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Fuma never thought much about being an only child.
It’s not the kind of thing one usually dwells on and he’s never felt particularly slighted by it. Not really.
But he'll admit, there had been a steep learning curve. No siblings to share with or play with or talk to. So in his youth, he can remember how awkward he’d been around other kids, teachers always feeling a little sorry for him, other adults taking pity. It had been difficult to make friends back then. He still finds it taxing even now.
There is a loneliness in it. Cognitive dissonance, between the desire to retreat inward and the appetency to master taking up space by yourself. He had his parents of course, he’d had friends. But at the end of the day, it had always just been him. He liked it that way. His threshold had always been lower.
A creature, inimitably solitary.
Then, after a lifetime of not knowing any different, in pursuit of a dream so colossal it had begun to fold in on itself, he'd been thrust into a communal reality with eight other people. Eight loud, bright, gorgeous, generous, mind numbingly wonderful people.
And now, after having realized that at some point, what you are becomes what you’re good at, it feels more and more like being eaten alive.
He has never known balance. Always believed that to be liked, to be loved by others was to give and give and give. Give gifts and praise on the playground, make friends. Give the right answers to the right people, fit in. Give yourself up, completely. Return anything you receive tenfold, because you alone cannot bear the weight of it.
Now that the group is more successful, promotions less grueling and “million seller” moniker achieved, the label has finally stopped hovering so much. These days, with the pressure eased just slightly, Fuma is inundated with so much more love than he knows what to do with.
From the fans it’s like nothing he’s ever felt before. It is something big and beautiful and precious to be loved at arms length. To be perceived. It's being handed the keys to a city you’ve never set foot in. Like standing in the sun. Searing at times, but always graciously warm in a way that never truly feels like you’ve earned it. He’s grateful. And most days it’s the only kind of love he thinks he can understand.
He has heard all his life that love is the greatest lesson. But there is still so much Fuma is trying to learn. Even at twenty seven, there are days he feels his legs give out beneath him as though he’s learning to walk again for the first time.
The growing pain is unbearable.
Maybe that’s why when things get too personal, he finds it hard to stomach.
If you had asked him ten years ago what he thought being in love would feel like, he would have said something dreamy, naive and idealistic, like sinking into the warmth of a blanket fresh from the dryer or coming home to your childhood bedroom after having been away.
What he knows now, is that being in love actually feels more like a punch to jaw.
Every time Yudai smiles at him. Every affirmation Euijoo whispers against the shell of his ear. Every centimeter of skin that burns when Nicholas touches him.
There’s a bite to it.
It brings with it a profound sense of discomfort that nestles itself in the space between each rib. That makes his clothes feel too tight and the ceilings feel too low, like he’s too big for every room. All the love he receives swells up like a balloon in his chest, leaving no room for his lungs to expand. There are days it only aches like a pulled muscle, but there are others that it suffocates him.
And he tries not to make a habit of it, but often enough, he’ll lie awake at night letting himself feel split open by it all. Heart bared to the darkness of the room, feeling like a bruise someone is pressing down on. Hard. He does not cry.
Fuma doesn’t really remember how they’d become what they are now. Maybe it had been Yudai that finally broke the dam. Maybe Nicholas, who has never been the kind of person that holds himself back. Or maybe it was Euijoo, practical to a fault, who had called a meeting wanting to talk about this thing simmering between the four of them. It doesn’t really matter. It had happened anyway.
One day they’d been group mates, friends, and the next they were something else.
But they love Fuma, so much it hurts and the feeling razes him from the inside out.
All he can do is love them back.
Gushed out in the searing openmouthed kisses he presses to the column of Yudai’s throat. His skin, soft and sweet under Fuma’s tongue. In the way he ghosts his fingers along Euijoo’s sternum, lithe and tanned and beautiful beneath him, hands scrambling for purchase at his waist. In the breaths he pants into Nicholas’ mouth, slack and pliant, sitting in Fuma’s lap, begging to be worshiped.
He loves them unflaggingly. In the virtue of their shared hotel rooms, beds pushed together. The four of them lying atop each other, all bare skin and love bites. In the chaste kisses hurriedly tapped to the insides of wrists and tops of spines in the darkness under the stage before an encore. In the hot, wet slide of four mouths taking turns, pulses racing, punctuated by punched out moans ricocheting off the padded walls of a vocal warm-up room Fuma can only hope is actually soundproofed.
He prays that pouring reverence back into the three of them will ease the strain. Will aid him in stomping out the embers that threaten to set ablaze something he doesn’t have a name for. Will grant him a modicum of placidity so that he can endure it all, one second longer.
Habitually, he yearns for his desires to go unreciprocated. What a privilege, he thinks, to be able to love them from a distance like the fans do. Fuma covets the latitude. In this uncharted territory so close to something, he craves to be alone. Because he knows how to be. Because he’s good at it. Because it’s easier.
But the others never waiver.
They love him anyway. Tenderness steeped in every action. Near pious devotion that manifests as Euijoo curls into Fuma’s side in the taxi on the way back to the dorm, swallowing down a particularly harsh piece of criticism. Their cross to bear as co-leaders. As Nicholas absentmindedly twists a few strands of Fuma’s hair between his forefinger and thumb, lulling himself to sleep as they hold each other on a twin sized bed. As Yudai’s cold fingertips linger on Fuma’s forearm, adjusting the angle to match the choreography, goosebumps raising across his skin.
And through this devotion, Fuma is forced to look at himself through their eyes. The burden, so heavy he can hardly stand it.
He wonders what they see in him.
On occasion, Fuma can tear himself far enough out of their orbit to ask if he can watch instead.
He will linger at the edge of the room. A voyeur, drinking them in. Thinking about how right they look together. Yudai steady and leading, perpetually fond of the younger two. Nicholas always looking at Euijoo first, but Yudai after, like he’s asking for permission. And Euijoo, sweet as anything, hands fidgeting in the sheets while being kissed, not touching anything, a fragment of the restraint he’s always carting around.
The three of them, known to each other far longer, though never quite as intimately as now with Fuma involved. He knows very well that their blossoming quartet, flowering now, had been rooted in the trinity of them. And yet, they had still welcomed him.
Wanted him too.
He never stays at the periphery very long. They never let him. They are always reaching to pull him in.
So he gulps the ache back down, because how could he possibly deny them anything?
There are hands touching him everywhere. The air in the room is thick and gloriously warm, four bodies swimming in it. There are lips on Fuma’s thighs, on his chest and against his neck.
His head feels full of cotton. He can’t even think straight. Can’t think at all.
Not about how tired he is or about how later he will feel like he’s taken too much. Nor after gorging himself on their devotion, how he will lay his soul at their feet, because he does not know what it means to exist without offering every ounce of himself up as collateral.
He can self flagellate when the dust settles. For now, for once, he takes.
He crushes his mouth against Nicholas', all teeth and tongue. A silk strand of saliva connecting them as they part for air. He yanks Euijoo up into his lap, hands flying to pull his hair, arching his neck back to expose his throat. Fuma mouths at it hungrily. Nicholas’ swollen mouth drops to Fuma’s shoulder to bite, sucking marks there. Yudai, crawling back up to meet them, reaching out to touch where they’re all aching.
Fuma keeps his eyes closed. He can’t see them, but he can feel them all floating around him. Taking turns. Hands roving. Kissing him to swallow his moans.
He loves them. They love him back and he can feel his chest tightening. There is no room for it. It’s all too much. There are three pairs of lips on his, soft and red and spit slicked. They taste like each other, taste like him.
Someone shifts and Fuma’s eyes flutter open. There are tears rolling down his cheeks. When had he stared crying?
Euijoo leans in to kiss away the salt at the same time Nicholas swipes a thumb across his jaw. Fuma blinks down between his thighs where a weight has settled. Yudai looks up to meet his eyes and smiles. Oh god—
A swell of pleasure surges up and crashes over him. It stills his hands and shocks him like a slap. Leaves him feeling raw, flayed open and bleeding. The others start to babble around him, saying something he can’t focus on. He hears fragmented pieces, catching only a few words at a time.
“That’s it”
“Perfect, just so perfect.”
“Just like that”
“Please, I love you, please”
He eventually comes back to himself, pulse beginning to slow. His breathing is still ragged and his eyes flutter closed again as he waits for that familiar hollow feeling to catch up to him.
It always does. Even here, in the presence of these heart achingly miraculous people.
Fuma wonders if he’ll ever learn his lesson. If he will ever be able to grasp how to receive without atoning afterwards. If it is even possible for him at all, because his threshold has always been lower. He alone, his own self fulfilling prophecy.