Title: Three
Pairing: Akira / Hikaru
Warnings: very mild shonen ai
Word Count: 3500
Summary: AU. Akira and Hikaru are both members of a band, and Hikaru is the rather stubborn lead singer. When Hikaru develops a nasty cold, Akira (nags) worries about him.
Note: Written for lanerose, for the LJ fifthmus comm exchange.

I:tutti

It figured, Akira thought, his teeth gritted as the boy with bleached-blond bangs in the center of stage hit a particularly abusive-sounding note, no doubt overtaxing his already strained vocal cords. The one time Akira was late for practice, they'd manage to break one of his Cardinal Rules. Not that he even had that many – he was perfectly reasonable. Akira had always been acutely aware that his words carried more weight because he was both the founder and the one with the most practical experience, so he had taken pains not to abuse that status. Whenever an important issue came up, the band usually reached a decision by vote.

"And you're the only oneeee"

The note wavered as Shindou's voice cracked under the strain of one of the singer's trademark yells, and Akira glowered at the stage with a look he'd been informed could punch holes through six-inch steel. Right now, he'd settle for punching holes through a particularly block-headed singer. The Cardinal Rules were not up for vote.

"Hey Touya, if you keep crushing that bag, you just might manage to break the adapter."

Akira glanced down at his hands, surprised to find that the small paper bag had indeed become rather rumpled. It would be somewhat ironic for him to accidentally destroy the adapter since it was the reason he was late for practice, after all. Ochi had texted Akira while he was in route to practice, asking him to pick up a replacement since there was a music store along his train line.

Akira cocked his hand back. "Catch."

The bag sailed up neatly to the sound booth on the second floor and Ochi ("Without The Soundman It All Sounds Like Crap") reached out and snagged it. His round glasses glinted as he inspected the part coolly, looking like a dispassionate, bespectacled god from his elevated position, surrounded by glowing monitors and soundboards. "It looks like it will do," Ochi finally sniffed in lieu of thanks, then his bowl-cut adorned head disappeared as he ducked down into the bowels of the booth to crawl around the mess of wires that Waya had affectionately dubbed "The Beast." (The redhead cheerfully swore that Ochi was training it to kill them all on that fateful day when they hit one too many wrong notes in a row.)

"But you aren't gonna, no, no! Aren't gonna tell me NOOO!!"

Forget Ochi. Akira was going to sacrifice Shindou to The Beast with his own two hands, Akira swore as he stalked down one of the auditorium's aisles. Any other singer would have the sense to take it easy if he were sick, but as usual Shindou seemed happily devoid of any speck of common sense. He'd probably hocked it to buy his tacky rhinestone-studded, ripped jeans.

Akira was about halfway to the stage when Waya noticed him, grinned, and started plucking out the theme to "Jaws" on his electric guitar.

"That's not how the song goes!" Shindou started to protest, but Waya rolled his eyes and jerked his chin towards Akira. Shindou's expression abruptly shifted from indignant to sheepish. "Um, hi Touya. We're just trying out a new song I wrote, so I thought I'd run them through it once." Shindou ran his fingers through his stiff bangs, his glittery bracelets jangling against his wrist.

"Shindou, I'm twenty minutes late! That's more than 'once' unless you're trying to convince me that you wrote a twenty minute piece! You sound hideous!"

"I do NOT." Shindou's green eyes flashed dangerously, and his grip on the microphone tightened.

Out of the corner of his eye, Akira saw Fuku duck behind his drums for cover and Isumi lick his lips nervously. Unfortunately, Akira couldn't say he blamed them. Shindou could be so unreasonable.

"Music is about expressing yourself, no matter what," Shindou snapped, his raspy, sandpapery voice somewhat undermining his argument.

Akira felt his face growing hot. "No one in this band is supposed to practice when they're as sick as you are!"

"Oh, gee, thanks for the public service announcement." Then Shindou shrugged dismissively with a devil-may-care smoothness and returned the mike to its stand. "Whatever, guys. I'm outta here." He turned to Isumi. "' 'Sumi, you've got it down by now, right? Why don't you take over from here?"

Isumi ran his fingers across his guitar's neck nervously. "I have the melody down, but I don't think I can hit those high notes." Isumi had a warm, earnest voice, but he was shy about his singing, preferring to only play his bass, although on occasion he had been coaxed into accompanying Shindou on the slower songs (Waya, on the other hand, was perfectly willing to match Shindou shriek for shriek on the fast songs).

Shindou flashed Isumi a sunny smile that reminded Touya why Shindou – despite all his infuriating lack of rationality – had been unanimously voted into the band as lead singer. He had a charisma that people and audiences just couldn't help but respond to. "Sorry about that," Shindou said. "Just skip all the yelling n' stuff."

Looking visibly relieved, Isumi nodded, and Shindou hopped down from the stage, intentionally landing too close to Akira.

Akira met Shindou's cheeky grin with a cool glare, crossed arms, and an admonishment. "Go home and rest. Don't sing until your throat is healed, or you'll damage your voice."

"Sure thing, Mom." Shindou sauntered out of the auditorium, tossing a wave over his shoulder when he reached the exit. "Later guys."

"Are you gonna accompany us on keys? I know you're pissed at Shindou, but it's still a pretty good song," Waya said, strumming the chorus on his guitar.

Fuku reemerged from behind his drum set, apparently convinced no electric projectiles were going to be thrown (at least for today). "You're just saying that because you like the guitar riffs."

Waya stuck out a studded tongue at the drummer. "Well, yes actually. Gotta show off my mad skills to my adoring fans."

"Don't you mean 'fan,' Waya? Your mom only counts as one, you know," Fuku said with an angelic smile.

"You did not just go there, Overall Boy."

Akira hoisted himself onto the stage while the two continued their friendly bickering. He took his place behind the keyboard. Several sheets of a sloppily written score were waiting for him on the keyboard's stand. Akira scanned the music rapidly, then looked up to meet Isumi's anxious eyes.

"What do you think? Shindou asked me to look over the music and lyrics. I think it's a solid piece, although I suggested the key change start a few measures earlier for emphasis."

Grudgingly, Akira nodded his agreement with Isumi's assessment. "It's good enough to include in the invitational, if we can get it down in practice. If Shindou hasn't managed to completely destroy his voice by then. Do you guys always have to give into him?"

Isumi tightened the knobs on his guitar. "You know how strong-willed Shindou is," he said quietly. "But I'm sure he'll be fine. He seems very resilient."

Shindou was. He was one of the strongest people Akira knew – Shindou had walked out of his own home at the tender age of fifteen when his strict, salaryman father had ordered him to give up music or get out. Somehow Akira knew he wouldn't have been able to do the same.

But Shindou was also curiously fragile. Not that Shindou had ever admitted as much, but sometimes when Shindou sang, Akira heard a distinct longing in his voice, a sadness that seemed too old for someone his age. Shindou knew what loss was.

Akira knew it wasn't really his place, but he couldn't help but worry about Shindou. Unlike the rest of them, Shindou didn't have anyone to look after him anymore. He'd given that up for the music.

II: solo

During the two years Shindou had been singing for the band, Akira had learned to predict Shindou's behavior with some degree of accuracy. So when practice finished, Akira did not bother going to Shindou's apartment where the singer ought to be resting in bed.

Shindou wasn't hard to find. There was a little park near his apartment that Akira knew he favored, and that was where Akira found him, his eyes closed as he sat against a sun-warmed tree, singing softly as he composed a song on the old acoustic guitar he refused to let anyone else touch. A few mothers were huddled together, whispering as they watched Shindou intently instead of watching their children scramble over the playground equipment. Akira felt his stomach give a funny little twitch when he noticed the shine in their eyes, but he supposed he could hardly blame the women with the way Shindou was dressed. He looked much older than a kid who would be in his last year of high school if he hadn't dropped out.

Akira brushed past the women and positioned himself directly in front of Shindou to block his sunlight. Akira could feel the women glaring daggers at his back, but he honestly didn't care. They could go ogle some other underage boy; he had an ill scatterbrain to look after.

With a theatrical sigh, Shindou stopped singing, although he clenched his eyes more firmly shut and kept playing the guitar.

Akira prodded Shindou's boot with his shoe. "Pretending I'm not here only works when you're three."

Shindou smiled lazily. "That's where you're wrong. Until I open my eyes, you both exist and do not exist. I prefer to leave both possibilities open. It's more fun that way."

"That's absurd, Shindou."

"Is not. Schrödinger's Cat says so," Shindou replied smugly (well, as smugly as a one could with a hoarse voice).

Quantum mechanics? Akira blinked. Shindou was just full of surprises. Akira still hadn't forgotten Shindou's impassioned and extremely knowledgeable defense of 80s rock when Waya had been criticizing power ballads. "Leave cats out of this," Akira said, before Shindou managed to shift the topic further. Shindou had perfected that technique to an art, and the only way to stop him was to be relentless. "This is about you being sick and stubborn, and you either walking back to your apartment with me, or you being dragged there by me."

Shindou opened his eyes and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Why Touya, I didn't know you had it in you. I like the way that sounds. Are you gonna walk back, or are you gonna be ...DRAGGED BACKK!!!"

"Damnit! Stop shrieking already, or I'm going to... I'm going to breathe all over your precious guitar!"

Shindou abruptly clutched the guitar tightly against his chest, slitting his green eyes angrily as he scrambled to his feet. "Don't even think about getting within ten feet of my guitar. I'm going already, I promise. You're such a nag."

"Only because you're such an idiot. I'm going back to my house to get some medicine from my mother, so you'd better be at your apartment when I come back. And DON'T sing. Watch TV or read that silly manga of yours, Nar—Narito or Narita or whatever."

"Naruto. God, you're such a dork," Shindou said with a huff, then he spun on his heel and strode out of the park.

But Akira had seen the tell-tale twitch of Shindou's lips and knew that Shindou had been trying to repress a smile. Shindou never had been able to stay angry for very long.

III: duet

Akira knocked on Shindou's apartment door about two hours later, feeling distinctly like a pack mule as he shifted uncomfortably under the weight of his duffel bag. When he'd asked his mother for some medicine, she'd probed him gently until she'd learned the full details of Shindou's illness along with the reason Akira was playing nursemaid. Upon learning that Shindou was estranged from his family, she'd placed a hand upon her cheek and declared Shindou to be a "poor child".

By the time Akira had managed to escape from his house, she'd loaded him down with an assortment of medicines, throat lozenges, and canisters full of honeyed tea and chicken ramen.

"My mother," Akira said simply as he dumped the contents of his duffel onto Shindou's scratched coffee table. Shindou stared at the assortment, gape-mouthed. "Also, she gave me a message for you: if you don't finish all this, she'll come here herself to make sure you do."

"Actually, I believe you. You must have gotten your craziness from somewhere." Shindou unscrewed the lid of one of the ramen canisters to take a tentative sip. "It's still hot," he said with a sigh of satisfaction. "And delicious. That was really nice of her. Please tell her thanks for me."

"She'll be happy to hear you enjoyed it," Akira said, choosing not to comment on how much worse Shindou sounded compared to earlier. His voice was barely a croak now. His face seemed rather flushed, too.

Shindou carelessly tossed some old issues of Shonen Jump out of an overstuffed chair, and waved at the chair. "Sit here. I don't think you wanna sit on the couch. I've been coughing all over it."

"Thanks for the consideration," Akira said dryly as he settled into the chair and glanced around the room. Shindou's furniture was obviously secondhand and old, and the tiny room was crammed with Shindou's possessions, but everything was organized neatly, which surprised Akira. He'd never actually been inside Shindou's apartment until today, but he'd imagined it would be as scattered and disorganized as the singer himself.

Shindou flopped down onto the couch and plopped his head onto a pillow dramatically.

"Aren't you going to finish the soup? You hardly had any."

"In a little bit. I'm kinda tired now. It's your fault, you know. Making me tired with all that yelling and crap," mumbled the singer.

Akira magnanimously chose to not mention that Shindou had brought it all upon himself. Instead he watched as the other boy drifted off into sleep, then he quietly walked over to the couch to place the back of his hand against Shindou's forehead. Shindou's skin was hot. When he woke up, Akira would definitely have to make him take some of the medicine.

Akira returned to the chair and tried to pass the time by reading the chapters of Naruto, but he couldn't quite puzzle out the plot since the chapters seemed to be in the middle of an involved story arc. Akira put the issues aside, wondering what the appeal of the series was for Shindou, besides the fact that the main character apparently shared Shindou's unhealthy obsession with ramen.

Then Akira spotted something far more interesting on the coffee table, poking out from under an issue of Shonen Jump. Akira carefully picked up the hand-scored music, and squinted as he tried to read Shindou's notations underneath the measures. The singer really did have atrocious handwriting, and sometimes he made stupid mistakes that revealed his inexperience and lack of proper training.

But his lyrics... his lyrics shone. No matter what song, his lyrics brimmed with emotion, raw and genuine. Maybe that's what people were responding to when Shindou sang. Akira smiled knowingly at himself then, and wondered if perhaps he was just as vulnerable to that pull. He was sitting in Shindou's apartment, after all, waiting for him to wake up.

The third score wasn't Shindou's handwriting at all. The handwriting was clean, each note formed sharply but elegantly. And the arrangement was much simpler than Shindou's usual full band set – it only called for two singers, piano or acoustic guitar accompaniment optional. Akira felt his pulse accelerate as he scanned the score: the music itself was deceptively simple, but layered like a beautiful weave. Akira could already hear the music swelling in his mind, and he knew that it was a piece that should be heard.

"It's great, isn't?" Shindou had opened his eyes to stare at Akira wearily, an air of faint defeat about his slumped shoulders.

"Shindou, it's more than great. It's brilliant. Who wrote it? I'm surprised this hasn't been published." There was no name on the score, and Akira didn't recognize the style as belonging to any musicians he knew. But there was something about it that reminded him of his father's talent, subtle yet powerful, the sort that could carry you away before you even realized you were under its spell - what Shindou's talent would be when it had fully matured.

Shindou rolled over on his side to face the couch back. "There was a time... no, it won't be published," he said very quietly.

A private piece. Something so personal that Shindou didn't want to share it. Or couldn't. A private piece between friends? A mentor and a student? Lovers? Akira knew somehow that this piece was connected to Shindou's decision to leave his family, and perhaps also his burning drive – his need – to keep singing even when he was sick. Akira wanted to ask Shindou very badly.

"May I sing it?" Akira asked instead.

There was a weighty pause. Then, "It's a duet."

"I know."

Shindou rolled over and sat up, staring at Akira so intensely that Akira could feel his skin heating up. Finally Shindou said, "Come here, then."

Akira walked across the room, the springs of the couch protesting as he sat down beside Shindou. "Which part shall I sing?"

"The lower part."

Akira took a deep breath to clear his mind before he started. He did not sing in public, although he practiced regularly in private, and had been told that he had a naturally gifted voice. Shindou had never even actually heard him sing, other than a few snatches here and there to explain a song to the band.

Akira took one final breath, then held up the music and began. The words flowed through his stomach and throat and mouth and lips, leaving Akira with a sensation like warmed honey, and his tension eased from his body.

A few measures later, Shindou joined him, his voice somehow still beautiful even though it was pained, the power of the lyrics not lessened. Akira wondered if it was because the part had been obviously written for Shindou, or if it was just Shindou's talent shining through. Then their voices blended together for the chorus, and Akira let his eyes shut and decided he didn't care.

When the last note had faded from the room, Akira opened his eyes to see that Shindou's face was damp. "Does your throat hurt? Do you want some aspirin?"

Shindou smiled sheepishly and swiped at his face with the back of his hand. "Nah, I'm okay. It's just this cold thingie."

"Or was my singing that bad?" Akira said wryly.

Shindou laughed softly, and his leg rubbed against Akira's then and Akira realized exactly how close he was sitting to Shindou and it really shouldn't have mattered because they were just bandmates. "I don't know why you don't sing with the band," Shindou said. "You sounded nice."

Akira felt a little thrill travel up his spine at the compliment, but he kept his face carefully neutral. "I have my reasons. Just like I suppose you have your reasons for not wanting to stop singing, even when you're ridiculously ill."

Shindou's only response was an enigmatic smile.

Akira held out a canister of tea and poured out some pills into his palm. "Well, I fully intend to take the band to the invitational, and you're going to be singing, so you'd better hurry up and get well."

"My pusher!" Shindou said, saluting Akira with the canister before he downed the pills. "This better be the good stuff."

"It is," Akira assured Shindou as the singer began to nod off even though he was still sitting up. Akira rolled his eyes and guided Shindou to a reclining position, arranging his head carefully on the pillow and brushing his sweaty bleached bangs off his forehead. Akira tried to ignore how his heart had decided to start irrationally hammering at the contact. Shindou was just a colleague. Shindou was also crazy. They weren't particularly good friends, as often as they fought. And Shindou had even insulted his impeccable fashion sense, saying that no one with half a brain would wear plaid in a rock band.

So Akira was surprised when he leaned down just far enough to brush his lips gently against Shindou's parted ones.

Surprised, but he didn't regret it.

Akira settled back into the overstuffed chair to wait for Shindou to wake up, and thought about the duets to come.

fin.

Author's Notes: I hope this piece was enjoyable for you. I had a bit of fun writing it, although perhaps I took creative liberties with the prompt "boy band"... I made them more punkish than pop (but don't deny that you liked seeing Waya with a tongue stud). Ahaha. Shindou also probably turned out more odd than he is in canon, but I think a career as a musician would exaggerate whatever unique tendencies and quirks he already possesses.

If Akira gets sick from kissing Hikaru, he will force Hikaru to be his nursemaid. He will not be a graceful patient.

Touya Sr. is a rockstar. That is all you need to know.