fic: heroes, ando(/)hiro, pg.
I figured I've been writing this since January so about friggin' time I finished it and posted it.
untranslatables in between us
fandom: heroes
pairing: hiro(/)ando - more friendshippy or pre-slash than actual slash
rating: pg
word count: ~1,800
warning: includes hiro's thoughts on yaoi.
disclaimer: Tim Kring and all those awesome people own.
notes: Arigatou gosaimasu to kaeda for her Japanese help. This fic reflects my realization that while I have no problem enjoying Hiro/Ando slash, for me personally all I need is the frienship written, or in canon. Thus this fic bears the implication of more than friendship but doesn't necessarily include the hint of it going somewhere (so it's not necessarily pre-slash). Anyhow, these guys truly are hetero lifemates and it rocks. ♥ This fic is splintered vignettes, full of geekery and some cultural references that I will explain in the story notes at the bottom. All Japanese phrases from this book.
1. kao kara hi ga deru - blush (lit. fire is leaving face)
Ando Masahashi is not ashamed of the fact he isn't exactly one of the most high-level employees at the company he works for, but he doesn't enjoy being reminded of this. At times it's really quite sad, the pitiful tasks he and his co-worker/friend Hiro are assigned to, the kind that even a freshly graduated new employee could get through with no difficulty whatsoever.
This is one of those sad tasks, one of those lazy mornings, and he and Hiro are cleaning out the computer of an employee who got the boot last week. Hiro's backing up the company files while Ando cleans out the external hard drive. It's 30 minutes until lunch and Ando is nearly done. He idly clicks on the folder named “Faxes - Sent”, oddly enough filled with nearly one gigabyte worth of files and then peers closer at the appearing icons. Holy...
Not being able to resist his curiosity, he clicks on a file, and it opens in a picture viewer. A massive, though blurred penis fills the computer screen and suddenly Ando feels Hiro's breath on the back of his neck.
“Yaoi!” Hiro says quietly, sounding oddly amazed.
Normally Ando has no problem with Hiro breathing down his neck, he's gotten used to it now, but this time he feels somehow uncomfortable with the porn and Hiro's keenness and proximity. He quickly closes the file and deletes the folder just as quick. “What a perv,” he huffs and glances at Hiro's expression.
Hiro looks unfazed. “I didn't think Sakamoto-san was that weird until he came to work dressed up as Hard Gay,” he says thoughtfully.
“Without the shorts,” Ando adds and shudders at the memory.
*
Over lunch, after Hiro stops gushing about the latest issue of Spiderman, he finishes his bowl of noodles and says,
“The problem with yaoi is the lack of plot.”
Ando chokes on his soup. “You've read yaoi?!”
“I bought a bunch of doujinshis a while back. I stopped reading when I realized Spiderman wasn't going to fight Venom, though. It was kind of a waste, the art was pretty good, but what kind of a good superhero story can it tell if the villain drops his pants three pages in?”
Ando stares at Hiro and his disappointed expression, and tries to find the words. “Only girls read yaoi,” he finally says, even though it's self-evident and he doesn't wish to insult Hiro like that. It's not like Hiro really wanted to read about Peter Parker with his pants off - not the Hiro Ando knows, anyway.
“I suppose,” Hiro says and then a memory of something lights up his face. “Do you remember Yuki-chan from college?”
“The art major I liked?” Ando asks, glad of the sudden change of topic. “Of course.”
“I remember when she wanted us to kiss for a shonen ai piece she was working on.”
Ando feels a blush creep up his collar. “I suddenly remember why I stopped liking her,” he mutters.
“I figured you must've not liked her very much since we never did end up kissing,” Hiro says and then looks at his watch, sighing. “I wish I could stop time. Lunch hour always goes by too fast.”
Ando nods quietly, and is glad he doesn't have to say anything, that it's not that he didn't like Yuki enough, it's that he realized then that he liked Hiro a bit too much. Or maybe that wasn't it but either way, he didn't want to do anything to risk his friendship with Hiro. Girls would come and go, and though he did genuinely want for some of them to stuck around a bit longer, in the end of the day, if he had Hiro, he was fine. If he didn't - that was the scenario he didn't even want to think about.
2. geiinsuru - to drink like a whale / hiza o majieru - to discuss deeply personal things (lit. to get tangled in each other's knees)
Whenever they went drinking, it was really Ando who drank. The experiences of Hiro drinking were generally unpleasant. Typically he would be like a 10 year old version of himself, more hyper than usual and keen eating all the candy in Ando's cupboards. In the worst case scenario Ando would pass out and be woken up by Hiro, who was desperate to let Ando know his previous record on Yoshi Island had just been beaten.
“I'm better than SuperMario!” Hiro exclaimed as Ando drifted off to sleep again.
Thankfully the effect wore off as the alcohol did, and the next morning Hiro would be up before Ando, eating breakfast before the TV screen.
This was another one of such occasions and as Ando entered his tiny living-room, he saw Final Fantasy VII reflected from the TV onto Hiro's glasses.
“Why do you always stay at my place?” Ando asked him then.
“Our house is usually empty when I go home,” Hiro answered.
There was a silence over the sound of the video game, and Ando realized he only owned video games because Hiro played them, and he liked to play them with Hiro. In that moment, the silence and the sadness hanging in the air, he also realized what exactly that meant.
“Have you seen my Golden Chocobo?” Ando asked, sitting down on the couch next to Hiro. “I named her Kimiko.”
Hiro handed him the controller with a surprised look. “My sister's name is Kimiko.”
“Really? You never mentioned her name. So when do I get to meet her?” Ando asked, not even trying to cover the enthusiasm in his voice.
Hiro was quiet for a while. “She's very busy.” He then pointed at the bird on the screen. “My Golden Chocobo's also a girl, she's called Charlie.”
“That's a boy's name!” Ando laughed. He then saw Hiro's face falling, so he quickly added, “But also a girl's, I guess.”
Hiro showed him how fast Charlie could run, and their day continued as usual as ever. Ando didn't understand how girls could talk so much with their friends. He and Hiro talked, too, and not just about work or Hiro's fannish topics, but knowing each other for such a long time, they didn't need to let each other know whenever something was wrong. They didn't need to analyze it amongst themselves. There was silence in their comfort, non-verbal support.
3. hachimaki - a headband for men that helps one focus and strive mentally
Every hero needs a sidekick. But that's a cliché, though it's the kind of cliché Ando knows Hiro likes (Hiro likes it simple - the heroes, the villains, the innocent bystanders, the sidekicks, everybody fits somewhere and everybody has a purpose, in good or evil). Maybe the truth is that now that Hiro's special, Ando needs Hiro more than Hiro needs him. Hiro saves him, over and over again, and even if they sometimes fall apart, they always end up back together, like an elastic string always returning to its original form. Rubber band friendship - though admittedly analogies are not Ando's strong suit.
But one of the great things about Hiro is that he always makes sure Ando feels necessary to him, that Hiro can't go on without Ando, no matter how special or gifted he is, and no matter how Ando isn't.
4. ichigo-ichie - once-in-a-lifetime encounter
Hiro sat next to him during lunch at school and this was how they met. Just like that.
They must've been 8 or 9 and Ando thought it was weird, that this spectacled boy just sat there next to him out of nowhere. Not that he had any other people to sit with, but still.
Hiro introduced himself and began talking about the latest Nintendo game he had played over the summer holidays. Ando just listened, and then said something and the next day, Hiro sat next to him again.
Just like that.
*
They slept together once. Just slept. Studying late into the night as neither of them was particularly good or ambitious when it came to education, they ended up collapsing close to each other. Ando woke up with his Japanese History notes copied on one side of his face and while Hiro had managed to take his glasses off, he had accidentally kicked them in his sleep.
“Father won't like this,” he said examining the broken pair.
“This is perfect,” Ando replied from the bathroom, frustrated. “Other people can cheat off my face but I can't remember any of this stuff!”
Hiro walked to the bathroom and squinted at Ando. “I've never slept better.”
“You're nuts,” Ando told him, and couldn't admit that he too felt oddly well-rested.
*
They could've moved in together if it hadn't appeared suspicious to the rest of society.
“Why not?” Hiro asked him after Ando had refused.
“Guys don't live together,” Ando said but could read from Hiro's face the message had not exactly gotten through.
“Do you remember pink kryptonite?” Ando asked him to try to speak the language Hiro spoke.
“Of course, but what does that have to do with anything? Ando-kun's place doesn't have any kryptonite.” Hiro leaned closer. “You know kryptonite doesn't even exist, right?”
Ando sighed. “Pink kryptonite made Superman ...like Louis instead of Lois.”
“Oh,” Hiro said. Then his eyes widened. “Oh.”
“Yes.” Ando hoped to leave the topic at that. It's not that he didn't want to - he knew it'd make his life easier financially and it's not like he was likely to marry anytime soon, not with his kind of disastruous love life. But it didn't feel proper. It didn't feel wrong, either, though - their relationship was not anywhere that pink kryptonite area.
5. rainen no kono hi mo issho ni waratteiyoh - name of a Japanese dateline, trans. “this time next year let us laugh together”
The future would be uncertain if Ando couldn't travel there with Hiro to see what it was like.
Not that he wants to see. He wants to stay put and live the now, as uncertain as even the present seems sometimes.
It was different in Japan, when they had their work and their free time, and he had Hiro, always had Hiro there and Hiro wasn't going anywhere. There was a real sense of security back then, compared to now, but in the end he'd rather have this than regularity without his best friend, or the scary future with nobody by his side.
Adrenaline runs through his veins and he thinks he will die if they get into another dangerous situation from his heart beating so fast but it's good and it's new - it beats the numbing regularity. Even if it scares him to death what the future may bring (he doesn't want to travel there, not even with Hiro because the knowledge of it is scary enough), he figures they can make it through it, whatever it is.
It's just how they roll.
--
Cultural/geekery definitions..
yaoi - Male-on-male comics/books of the porny kind.
Hard Gay - A character of a Japanese comedian, who looks exactly like the name sounds like. ;)
doujinshi - Fan-made comics, sort of like fanfics in comic-form. Often plotless/smutty, but poor Hiro probably wasn't aware of that when he bought some.
shounen ai - "Boys love", it's like yaoi but less porny, more kissy/cutesy.
Chocobo - A creature in the Final Fantasy video games. Hiro's love for the games is "canon" if Hiro's blog is considered canon. Anyhoo, in Final Fantasy 7, you have a Chocobo racing mini-game (a game within a game, basically) and you can also breed Chocobos so you'll have the ULTIMATE Chocobo, which is the Golden Chocobo. [/geek]
Pink Kryptonite - For reals.
I think that's it, though feel free to ask stuff/critisize/compliment.
untranslatables in between us
fandom: heroes
pairing: hiro(/)ando - more friendshippy or pre-slash than actual slash
rating: pg
word count: ~1,800
warning: includes hiro's thoughts on yaoi.
disclaimer: Tim Kring and all those awesome people own.
notes: Arigatou gosaimasu to kaeda for her Japanese help. This fic reflects my realization that while I have no problem enjoying Hiro/Ando slash, for me personally all I need is the frienship written, or in canon. Thus this fic bears the implication of more than friendship but doesn't necessarily include the hint of it going somewhere (so it's not necessarily pre-slash). Anyhow, these guys truly are hetero lifemates and it rocks. ♥ This fic is splintered vignettes, full of geekery and some cultural references that I will explain in the story notes at the bottom. All Japanese phrases from this book.
1. kao kara hi ga deru - blush (lit. fire is leaving face)
Ando Masahashi is not ashamed of the fact he isn't exactly one of the most high-level employees at the company he works for, but he doesn't enjoy being reminded of this. At times it's really quite sad, the pitiful tasks he and his co-worker/friend Hiro are assigned to, the kind that even a freshly graduated new employee could get through with no difficulty whatsoever.
This is one of those sad tasks, one of those lazy mornings, and he and Hiro are cleaning out the computer of an employee who got the boot last week. Hiro's backing up the company files while Ando cleans out the external hard drive. It's 30 minutes until lunch and Ando is nearly done. He idly clicks on the folder named “Faxes - Sent”, oddly enough filled with nearly one gigabyte worth of files and then peers closer at the appearing icons. Holy...
Not being able to resist his curiosity, he clicks on a file, and it opens in a picture viewer. A massive, though blurred penis fills the computer screen and suddenly Ando feels Hiro's breath on the back of his neck.
“Yaoi!” Hiro says quietly, sounding oddly amazed.
Normally Ando has no problem with Hiro breathing down his neck, he's gotten used to it now, but this time he feels somehow uncomfortable with the porn and Hiro's keenness and proximity. He quickly closes the file and deletes the folder just as quick. “What a perv,” he huffs and glances at Hiro's expression.
Hiro looks unfazed. “I didn't think Sakamoto-san was that weird until he came to work dressed up as Hard Gay,” he says thoughtfully.
“Without the shorts,” Ando adds and shudders at the memory.
*
Over lunch, after Hiro stops gushing about the latest issue of Spiderman, he finishes his bowl of noodles and says,
“The problem with yaoi is the lack of plot.”
Ando chokes on his soup. “You've read yaoi?!”
“I bought a bunch of doujinshis a while back. I stopped reading when I realized Spiderman wasn't going to fight Venom, though. It was kind of a waste, the art was pretty good, but what kind of a good superhero story can it tell if the villain drops his pants three pages in?”
Ando stares at Hiro and his disappointed expression, and tries to find the words. “Only girls read yaoi,” he finally says, even though it's self-evident and he doesn't wish to insult Hiro like that. It's not like Hiro really wanted to read about Peter Parker with his pants off - not the Hiro Ando knows, anyway.
“I suppose,” Hiro says and then a memory of something lights up his face. “Do you remember Yuki-chan from college?”
“The art major I liked?” Ando asks, glad of the sudden change of topic. “Of course.”
“I remember when she wanted us to kiss for a shonen ai piece she was working on.”
Ando feels a blush creep up his collar. “I suddenly remember why I stopped liking her,” he mutters.
“I figured you must've not liked her very much since we never did end up kissing,” Hiro says and then looks at his watch, sighing. “I wish I could stop time. Lunch hour always goes by too fast.”
Ando nods quietly, and is glad he doesn't have to say anything, that it's not that he didn't like Yuki enough, it's that he realized then that he liked Hiro a bit too much. Or maybe that wasn't it but either way, he didn't want to do anything to risk his friendship with Hiro. Girls would come and go, and though he did genuinely want for some of them to stuck around a bit longer, in the end of the day, if he had Hiro, he was fine. If he didn't - that was the scenario he didn't even want to think about.
2. geiinsuru - to drink like a whale / hiza o majieru - to discuss deeply personal things (lit. to get tangled in each other's knees)
Whenever they went drinking, it was really Ando who drank. The experiences of Hiro drinking were generally unpleasant. Typically he would be like a 10 year old version of himself, more hyper than usual and keen eating all the candy in Ando's cupboards. In the worst case scenario Ando would pass out and be woken up by Hiro, who was desperate to let Ando know his previous record on Yoshi Island had just been beaten.
“I'm better than SuperMario!” Hiro exclaimed as Ando drifted off to sleep again.
Thankfully the effect wore off as the alcohol did, and the next morning Hiro would be up before Ando, eating breakfast before the TV screen.
This was another one of such occasions and as Ando entered his tiny living-room, he saw Final Fantasy VII reflected from the TV onto Hiro's glasses.
“Why do you always stay at my place?” Ando asked him then.
“Our house is usually empty when I go home,” Hiro answered.
There was a silence over the sound of the video game, and Ando realized he only owned video games because Hiro played them, and he liked to play them with Hiro. In that moment, the silence and the sadness hanging in the air, he also realized what exactly that meant.
“Have you seen my Golden Chocobo?” Ando asked, sitting down on the couch next to Hiro. “I named her Kimiko.”
Hiro handed him the controller with a surprised look. “My sister's name is Kimiko.”
“Really? You never mentioned her name. So when do I get to meet her?” Ando asked, not even trying to cover the enthusiasm in his voice.
Hiro was quiet for a while. “She's very busy.” He then pointed at the bird on the screen. “My Golden Chocobo's also a girl, she's called Charlie.”
“That's a boy's name!” Ando laughed. He then saw Hiro's face falling, so he quickly added, “But also a girl's, I guess.”
Hiro showed him how fast Charlie could run, and their day continued as usual as ever. Ando didn't understand how girls could talk so much with their friends. He and Hiro talked, too, and not just about work or Hiro's fannish topics, but knowing each other for such a long time, they didn't need to let each other know whenever something was wrong. They didn't need to analyze it amongst themselves. There was silence in their comfort, non-verbal support.
3. hachimaki - a headband for men that helps one focus and strive mentally
Every hero needs a sidekick. But that's a cliché, though it's the kind of cliché Ando knows Hiro likes (Hiro likes it simple - the heroes, the villains, the innocent bystanders, the sidekicks, everybody fits somewhere and everybody has a purpose, in good or evil). Maybe the truth is that now that Hiro's special, Ando needs Hiro more than Hiro needs him. Hiro saves him, over and over again, and even if they sometimes fall apart, they always end up back together, like an elastic string always returning to its original form. Rubber band friendship - though admittedly analogies are not Ando's strong suit.
But one of the great things about Hiro is that he always makes sure Ando feels necessary to him, that Hiro can't go on without Ando, no matter how special or gifted he is, and no matter how Ando isn't.
4. ichigo-ichie - once-in-a-lifetime encounter
Hiro sat next to him during lunch at school and this was how they met. Just like that.
They must've been 8 or 9 and Ando thought it was weird, that this spectacled boy just sat there next to him out of nowhere. Not that he had any other people to sit with, but still.
Hiro introduced himself and began talking about the latest Nintendo game he had played over the summer holidays. Ando just listened, and then said something and the next day, Hiro sat next to him again.
Just like that.
*
They slept together once. Just slept. Studying late into the night as neither of them was particularly good or ambitious when it came to education, they ended up collapsing close to each other. Ando woke up with his Japanese History notes copied on one side of his face and while Hiro had managed to take his glasses off, he had accidentally kicked them in his sleep.
“Father won't like this,” he said examining the broken pair.
“This is perfect,” Ando replied from the bathroom, frustrated. “Other people can cheat off my face but I can't remember any of this stuff!”
Hiro walked to the bathroom and squinted at Ando. “I've never slept better.”
“You're nuts,” Ando told him, and couldn't admit that he too felt oddly well-rested.
*
They could've moved in together if it hadn't appeared suspicious to the rest of society.
“Why not?” Hiro asked him after Ando had refused.
“Guys don't live together,” Ando said but could read from Hiro's face the message had not exactly gotten through.
“Do you remember pink kryptonite?” Ando asked him to try to speak the language Hiro spoke.
“Of course, but what does that have to do with anything? Ando-kun's place doesn't have any kryptonite.” Hiro leaned closer. “You know kryptonite doesn't even exist, right?”
Ando sighed. “Pink kryptonite made Superman ...like Louis instead of Lois.”
“Oh,” Hiro said. Then his eyes widened. “Oh.”
“Yes.” Ando hoped to leave the topic at that. It's not that he didn't want to - he knew it'd make his life easier financially and it's not like he was likely to marry anytime soon, not with his kind of disastruous love life. But it didn't feel proper. It didn't feel wrong, either, though - their relationship was not anywhere that pink kryptonite area.
5. rainen no kono hi mo issho ni waratteiyoh - name of a Japanese dateline, trans. “this time next year let us laugh together”
The future would be uncertain if Ando couldn't travel there with Hiro to see what it was like.
Not that he wants to see. He wants to stay put and live the now, as uncertain as even the present seems sometimes.
It was different in Japan, when they had their work and their free time, and he had Hiro, always had Hiro there and Hiro wasn't going anywhere. There was a real sense of security back then, compared to now, but in the end he'd rather have this than regularity without his best friend, or the scary future with nobody by his side.
Adrenaline runs through his veins and he thinks he will die if they get into another dangerous situation from his heart beating so fast but it's good and it's new - it beats the numbing regularity. Even if it scares him to death what the future may bring (he doesn't want to travel there, not even with Hiro because the knowledge of it is scary enough), he figures they can make it through it, whatever it is.
It's just how they roll.
--
Cultural/geekery definitions..
yaoi - Male-on-male comics/books of the porny kind.
Hard Gay - A character of a Japanese comedian, who looks exactly like the name sounds like. ;)
doujinshi - Fan-made comics, sort of like fanfics in comic-form. Often plotless/smutty, but poor Hiro probably wasn't aware of that when he bought some.
shounen ai - "Boys love", it's like yaoi but less porny, more kissy/cutesy.
Chocobo - A creature in the Final Fantasy video games. Hiro's love for the games is "canon" if Hiro's blog is considered canon. Anyhoo, in Final Fantasy 7, you have a Chocobo racing mini-game (a game within a game, basically) and you can also breed Chocobos so you'll have the ULTIMATE Chocobo, which is the Golden Chocobo. [/geek]
Pink Kryptonite - For reals.
I think that's it, though feel free to ask stuff/critisize/compliment.