173. (fic) arashibana, pt.2
title: arashibana
rating/genre: r; au (historical), drama, romance
pairing(s): ohmiya
words: ~15,000
summary: Nino is the most popular and most skilled onnagata in the Arashibana-za Theater, and he has earned the right to be difficult.
disclaimer: FICTION.
notes: oh jeez, what did i do 8D;; well, i wrote arashi in edo period Japan as the cast and staff at a kabuki theater, that's what!
( Part 1)
On most of the visits after this, Nino meets Ohno out of costume, without even the nod to femininity he usually maintains in public-a lady’s kimono and simple wig, at the least-and it takes some getting used to. At first, Ohno stares endlessly, delighted by Nino as a boy, by his short hair and unpainted face, by his higher propensity for vulgarity and sarcasm out of costume. No amount of Nino complaining can dissuade him, and for a time it becomes a game-how long can Ohno go without looking, and how long can Nino go without looking to see if Ohno is looking?
One evening, to up the challenge, they sit back to back while Ohno helps Nino practice his lines. Despite being unable to see Ohno’s face-or maybe just for that reason-Nino feels even more aware of him, the way he moves as he breathes and the faint sounds he makes, and the smell of the camellia oil in his hair.
“Let’s go somewhere,” Ohno says suddenly, making it sound reckless and dramatic when he interrupts Nino’s monologue for his proposal.
“What? Now?” Nino asks, frozen in the middle of an exaggerated illustrative gesture.
“No,” Ohno amends. “I just mean…sometime. But, soon. When do you have an afternoon free?”
“Two days after tomorrow.” Nino eyes Ohno suspiciously. “Where do you plan to take me?”
“Somewhere special,” Ohno replies with a secretive grin.
Three days later, it turns out Ohno’s special somewhere is the broad river behind his estate that he had told Nino about so many months ago. They take a pair of fishing rods, their lunch wrapped up in a wide square cloth, and spend the day doing nothing more exciting than sitting on the riverbank dangling their lines in the water and talking.
“Lord Matsumoto is married?” Ohno says incredulously, after an offhanded remark from Nino.
“Well of course he is,” Nino laughs. He pulls his line in and casts it again distractedly. “He’s the son of a well-known, wealthy household, he can hardly help but be married. It was his duty, you know, to marry and produce heirs. But the great irony is this: while he did it out of obligation, with plans to only see his wife when he had to bed her, he ended up falling madly in love with her instead.”
Ohno is a captive audience. “Really?”
“Really and truly. He spent weeks pining and wooing her, writing her poetry and buying her expensive gifts-and this was after they had already been wed!”
Ohno laughs aloud, and Nino cannot help smiling at the way Ohno’s eyes slit with amusement and make little wrinkles at the corners. Nino carries on with his story about Jun, but is only half paying attention to what he says. He is distracted-again, always-by Ohno next to him, shoulder to shoulder and so warm from the afternoon sun. He suddenly feels worlds away from his own life, from the clamor of the city, from the Arashibana-za and silk kimonos and gold-painted hair ornaments. The only sounds here are the rushing water, and the birds, and the breeze through the grass. The only people here are himself and Ohno, disguised for the moment in happi coats, short cotton pants, and round straw hats. To anyone looking, they would not appear to be anything more than a couple peasants lazing away an afternoon. Nino wonders what it would be like, to be that person.
“Nino,” Ohno says sometime later, when the sun is lower and the air is growing colder. “Will you get married?”
“I imagine I will, eventually,” Nino says after a pause. “And surely you…?”
“I suppose,” Ohno mutters. He stares out at the water, suddenly pensive. “But I would not mind so much, if I did not.”
Ohno looks back to Nino, then, and just watches him for a moment. There is the tiniest furrow in his brow, and a pucker of concentration on his lips, and Nino thinks I could kiss him, here, we could lay down in this grass and no one would see, no one would come. The cold wind blows again, Nino shivers, and Ohno takes a breath. For no reason that he can name, Nino’s own breath catches in his throat, and his heart leaps up to meet it. But Ohno does not speak, and his unspoken words ride away on an exhale, caught up in the wind.
“Oh,” Nino says inanely, tugging on his empty line. “Well. Yes.”
Another moment, and Ohno pulls his line in as well. Picking up the net of fish he had been suspending in the water, he turns back towards the house and does not look at Nino when he says:
“Shall we go back?”
*
Nino is surprised when, some days later, he is called to Jun’s office upstairs after the show. The page who summons him has no explanation for why Jun wants to see him, so Nino takes his time changing into a less ornate wig and cap, and donning a simple pale pink kimono decorated with blue flowers. He compliments this with an ornate obi of burnt orange, and he gives Yuri a conspiratorial wink as the boy hands him his fan and they begin a somber procession upstairs.
Yuri goes in first, kneeling by the door and announcing Nino’s presence. He sweeps in, only to stop abruptly at the scene that greets him.
Jun is sitting by his desk, but not alone-Ohno is there, as well as an older couple who, Nino realizes in an instant, must be Ohno’s parents. Jun motions for Nino to come sit by him, and Nino moves across the room, suddenly self-conscious of the swishing slide of his tabi and kimono over the tatami. He shoots a curious glance at Jun but the other man just gives a little shake of his head.
“And here is Master Ninomiya,” Jun says, “who has been petitioning me quite doggedly for your son’s admission to our troop.”
Ohno looks surprised and delighted at that, and Nino bows to avoid meeting his eyes. “It is only that I admire his natural talent,” Nino murmurs.
“Well, I should think so!” says a sudden voice, and Nino looks up, startled, to find Ohno’s father beaming at him. “And I am so glad that he has finally met someone who recognizes it.”
Nino can only blink in surprise, and when Ohno’s mother speaks up, Nino realizes he must have missed the beginning of the conversation.
“Now, we are more than happy to let Satoshi come to your theater, Lord Matsumoto, and delighted that he will finally have a chance to put his talent to use, but I do hope we can expect to see him in some worthy roles before long…?”
“Mother!” Ohno protests, looking mortally embarrassed. “It is honor enough just to act on the-”
“Come, come,” Lady Ohno says jovially. “They have already praised your natural talent, and now you will be properly trained-and surely Lord Matsumoto has not forgotten our generous donations?”
“Mother!” Ohno says again. “Please, you are too blunt.”
“No offense has been made, my lord,” Jun reassures him. “And of course I intend to prepare you for starring roles in the future.”
“Oh,” Ohno says faintly, with a dazed expression. “Oh. Starring roles?”
“Excellent!” Lady Ohno chirps, and then launches immediately into negotiations with Jun about Ohno’s salary, living arrangements closer to the theater, which pieces of his own clothing may be suitable for future costumes, and a whole host of other things Nino is barely paying attention to. While he has been scheming to get Ohno into the theater almost since the first day, he has not prepared himself for his vague plans to become a reality.
He finally looks up and meets Ohno’s eyes across the room. Ohno looks just as rattled as Nino feels, but after a moment he manages a smile-and why, Nino wonders, does his chest tighten?-and mouths a silent “thank you”.
*
There are only a few weeks left to prepare Ohno for the final show that will be performed just before the New Year’s holidays, so he is in rehearsals with Shintarou and the other apprentices for nearly every hour of daylight. At night he retires with them to the dormitory house Jun keeps near the theater, where he can practice music and dance with the elderly couple who own the building and make a living training young actors.
Strangely, now that he is so much closer, Nino barely sees Ohno at all. Sometimes he drops in on rehearsals, occasionally doing some of his own training with the apprentice onnagata-Yuri is among these, and still stares at Ohno starry-eyed when he thinks no one is looking. They cross paths backstage when Ohno is given small, one-line parts in the current show, and exchange smiles and a few words, but beyond that there just isn’t time. The leisurely evenings Nino had been spending with Ohno are instead spent at home, or in the pleasure district to keep up appearances. But, though he is still able to fill the hours, Nino finds himself feeling lonely.
He does not fool himself-he knows he is preoccupied with Ohno, but it is a problem he must put behind him. Love affairs with men for business, and dallying with younger apprentices, are one thing, but this infatuation has no place in an adult lifestyle. Honestly, it is embarrassing, mooning over Ohno like a lovesick teenager. Ohno is his friend, and Nino would not think of starting an affair that could only come to a bad end when one or both of them inevitably marry.
Still, he thinks to himself one night, absently writing out song lyrics by lamplight in his bedroom, still it would be nice to have even a little more time-
His solitude is suddenly interrupted when footsteps come scurrying up the hallway outside his room. A servant, one of only a few Nino keeps, calls from beyond the door.
“Master Ninomiya, the prop-master is here with young Lord Ohno, he insists on seeing you, I could not-”
“Move, please” comes Aiba’s impatient voice, and then the door rattles roughly open to admit Aiba, who is half-carrying a sagging, bloody Ohno.
Nino is on his feet and across the room in an instant, rushing to prop Ohno up from the other side. “What happened?” he demands, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.
“The other apprentices,” Aiba begins, then whirls back to the door-almost dropping Ohno-to the servant who is still crouched there uncertainly. “Hot water and a cloth, if you please! And bandages. Quickly! Please!” The servant scurries away again.
“The apprentices,” Aiba continues, eyes wide and panicky. “Shintarou’s apprentices. They were waiting for him after rehearsal, they attacked him-”
“I can see that,” Nino snaps. He takes Ohno’s other arm and begins to lead the pair across the room. “But why?”
“They’ve been stewing for a while-they can’t stand that a newcomer with no training gets more praise from their master than they do.”
They try to lay Ohno down in Nino’s own futon, but he remains valiantly upright. Aiba places a hand on his back when he wobbles. Now that Nino can see him better, he realizes most of the blood is from a shallow cut near Ohno’s hairline, and the rest of his wounds seem minor, though there are some fantastic bruises forming on his cheek and jaw.
“They drew swords?” Nino asks, fingering the cut and making Ohno wince.
“Just a knife,” Aiba says. He plucks at Ohno’s clothes, rearranging his collar to no purpose. “But…”
“They wanted to mark my face,” Ohno says, finally speaking, but faintly. “Leave a scar. I think one of them was trying to break my nose.”
Nino feels ice fill his veins, replaced almost immediately with a burning rage, a violent need to break the nose of every one of Shintarou’s apprentices himself, right now. He stands, begins pacing, a half-formed plan in his head to go to Jun, have all of them thrown out in the street, to-
“It’s all right. We took care of it,” Aiba reassures him, catching Nino’s wrist as he stalks past. “Ohno had them pretty well in hand by the time I got there, but it was three against one…”
Before Nino can say anything else, the servant returns with water and bandages, so Nino redirects his energy to cleaning Ohno up-he pushes away both Ohno and Aiba’s hands when they try to help-and to dressing the wound on Ohno’s head. Ohno accepts these ministrations silently, and Aiba eventually excuses himself to go report the incident to Jun and Sho, throwing a worried look over his shoulder as he leaves.
When Nino is finished, he puts the water and soiled cloth outside the door before walking back to the futon to stand in front of Ohno. The other man is sitting with shoulders slumped, staring at his hands in his lap. It is only now that the full realization hits Nino that Ohno is in his home-in his bed-and the room feels smaller and stuffier despite the nighttime chill.
“Well,” Nino begins uncertainly. “Shall I-shall I have a carriage take you…” Where? Not back to the dormitory, no. Home, maybe?
But, before any ending can be made to Nino’s sentence, Ohno reaches up to catch the edge of Nino’s sleeve.
“I…May I just stay here, for a while?”
Ohno looks up, and his eyes are wet in the flickering lamp light. Nino is not aware of making a decision to act, but suddenly he is kneeling and wrapping his arms around Ohno’s neck, pulling Ohno tight against him.
“Of course you can, you can stay as long as you like. You needn’t go back to the dormitory at all, I can teach you singing and dancing just as well as-”
Nino’s words are cut off when Ohno’s arms come up around Nino’s back, tight and trembling. For a time they simply hold each other as Ohno shakes with silent tears and Nino murmurs soothing nonsense and rubs Ohno’s back. It can only be a cruel trick of fate or karma that has granted Nino the time he was wishing for in this way, but he would not turn Ohno away even if he had not arrived bloody and beaten on Nino’s doorstep. Nino imagines there are very few reasons he would ever turn Ohno away.
Eventually Ohno’s shaking stops, but he does not let go of Nino. They breathe softly, almost in time, until Nino breaks the silence.
“You must be tired. You can take my bed, I’ll-”
“Stay,” Ohno says hoarsely. “Please.”
Nino opens his mouth to tell Ohno he was just going to get a spare futon, but Ohno makes it clear he wants Nino even closer than that when he pulls Nino down onto the mattress with him and tugs the thick blanket up around them, cocooning them in warmth and darkness.
Nino’s heart is beating fast as hummingbird wings, but Ohno just curls into his chest with a long, slow exhale. The lamp, Nino thinks vaguely, is still on.
“I am sorry,” Ohno whispers, “if this-if I am overstepping my bounds, but I have…I have missed you.”
The ache in Ohno’s words is like a blow, and if they were not already tangled together from shoulders to ankles, Nino would pull him closer.
“I missed you, too,” Nino says into Ohno’s hair. “I did not think it would be like this, your training. If it is too hard…”
Ohno just shakes his head, a tiny rustling motion. “I love the performing, still. And it is only Master Shintarou’s other apprentices who wish me ill. I just-”
Ohno pauses here, thoughtfully still but for the careful slide of his palms up over Nino’s shoulder blades. Nino tries to hide the falter in his breath, and his eyes flutter shut of their own accord. This feels dangerous somehow, Nino does not know how to react when he has suddenly gone from only seeing Ohno in passing every few days, to having Ohno lying in his arms. It is foolishness to let Ohno this close, to try and share a bed with him as if they were children hiding from monsters. One of Ohno’s knees is wedged between Nino’s own, and it won’t be long before Ohno notices the way Nino’s body is reacting to his nearness.
But when Ohno speaks again, his breathing has evened out, his voice is a half-awake whisper.
“…just let me stay. A little longer.”
And then he is asleep.
*
“You have my word they will be severely punished,” Jun says, and Nino can tell he is serious by the very precise way he turns his teacup before sipping his tea.
“Oh, that-that won’t be necessary,” Ohno replies softly. Nino watches as he runs a finger idly over the fabric of the zabuton Jun has provided. Like everything in Jun’s manor, it is of the finest quality, done in a careful geometric pattern of subtle autumn hues. “I don’t want to give them another reason to hate me.”
Jun watches Ohno critically for a moment, and then shrugs. “Well, whether I would or no, Master Shintarou is sure to give them a verbal lashing they will not soon forget. And if they should find themselves with extra chores for the next month, it will do none of them any lasting harm.”
“The least they deserve!” Lady Matsumoto speaks up from her seat next to her husband. “They are lucky they are not in my employ-they would see nothing but the inside of a privy pot for a year!” She is tiny, barely clearing Jun’s shoulder when they stand side by side, but her displeasure radiates from her for several feet in every direction. Her comment puts a little smile on Ohno’s face, and causes Jun to gaze at her adoringly.
“Regardless,” Nino cuts in, “Lord Ohno cannot stay in the dormitory any longer.”
“Certainly not,” Jun agrees, pulling his eyes away from Lady Matsumoto with a visible effort. “There is, of course, plenty of room here in my manor, and you are welcome to use my carriage to-”
“If it’s all the same,” Ohno interrupts. “I do not mind staying with-with Master Ninomiya.”
“Ah,” Jun blinks. “I see.” He turns to Nino with a carefully neutral expression. “And would that suit, Master Ninomiya?”
Nino pulls his own startled gaze away from Ohno. “It is no trouble to me, should Lord Ohno wish to stay,” Nino replies, meeting Jun’s stare determinedly. “And I am happy to continue his song and dance training myself.”
“I see,” Jun says again, and Nino feels a new weight to the words this time. “I see.”
*
After Ohno is properly settled in Nino’s manor, they fall easily into a routine, going home together after Ohno’s rehearsals are over, and usually eating supper together in Nino’s quarters. Nino is happy for the chance to see how Ohno has improved since he began training, and Nino could not want for a better student during their song and dance lessons. It is not so different from the evenings they spent in Nino’s dressing room, and yet.
And yet there is something different-it is there in Ohno’s touches and glances, how they linger warmly on Nino’s face and hands. It does nothing to help Nino overcome his infatuation, and he feels his resistance to it stretching him, pulling him taut like the skin over a drumhead. It is wearing, more so even than the performances Nino puts on every day, and it shows as the weeks go by. They are coming closer and closer to the last show before the holidays and Sho and Jun both notice Nino’s fatigue and comment on it. Jun even goes as far as to suggest that Nino take the next season off, but Nino staunchly refuses.
Towards the end of the tenth month, Nino and Ohno take a walk out in the garden behind Nino’s manor. It is not much-a grassy expanse a few dozen yards wide, with a rock garden and some stone lanterns for decoration-but there are a number of maple trees with their last autumn leaves about to fall.
It has been a rare day of rest, and Nino is hoping some time in the garden will be relaxing and let him take his mind off his predicament, though this is not easy when his predicament is walking just a few steps ahead of him, bathed in the pink-orange light through the leaves. Nino rubs his chest where it is tight and sighs. Ohno is in profile now, with a firework-bright display of yellow and red leaves behind him. He looks softened somehow, like a painting where the ink has been over-watered. Nino just watches him, as if watching long enough will eventually make him clear, will make everything clear-Ohno and his touches, and how Nino cannot stop thinking about him.
Nino blinks slowly, breathes out, and when he opens his eyes he knows that what he is not admitting is that he is in love.
When Ohno turns to look back at him, Nino knows he should look away, or smile and say something about the scenery, but he doesn’t. He just keeps staring, and Ohno must see it, the way Nino is looking at him and in love with him. When Ohno turns, his mouth is open as if to speak, but when he sees Nino he pauses, searches Nino’s face curiously for a moment and then-Then something happens in his eyes, something surprised, but also hopeful, wild and elated. He opens his mouth to speak again, soft and strangely breathless.
“Nino, I-”
“I am cold,” Nino interrupts, turning away abruptly. He registers the shock, the disappointment on Ohno’s face, but cannot bring himself to look back.
He walks back into the house without another word.
*
Why did I do that?
Nino asks himself this as he tosses in his futon that night. Keeps asking himself through the next day, during rehearsals, and as he sneaks around the theater in a very concentrated effort to avoid Ohno. He’s not even entirely sure why he’s avoiding Ohno, except that for some reason, he does not want to give Ohno a chance to finish whatever it was he was about to say yesterday.
It cannot last, though, this avoidance, and Nino knows it. They come face to face abruptly, when Nino opens the door to his dressing room with the vague hope that he might leave before Ohno’s rehearsals are over.
“Hello,” Ohno says, after a startled jump. He is still dressed for rehearsal, in a short kimono tucked into plain, sturdy hakama.
“Hello,” Nino says with as much composure as he can muster. “Heading home?”
“Master Shintarou told me I could leave early,” Ohno says. His eyes are intent on Nino, carefully taking in his every expression. “He said I seemed distracted. It was affecting my performance.”
“Oh,” Nino replies. “That’s…a shame. Well, shall we-”
“Nino,” Ohno says suddenly, catching Nino by the wrist, and making Nino’s breath catch in his throat. Before Ohno can say anything more, Nino snatches his arm away again, and steps around Ohno into the hallway.
Why did I do that? Nino asks himself again. But he knows why, suddenly.
“Nino,” Ohno says, and then, echoing Nino’s own question to himself: “Why…?”
“I-” Nino does not look at Ohno as he speaks, though he can see him just at the corner of his vision. He feels again the tightness in his chest, so overwhelming, all for Ohno. “I would that you were not so familiar,” he says faintly.
“But,” Ohno begins, and Nino cuts him off.
“It is not seemly, now that you are sharing my house,” Nino says. He feels his tone flatten and leech of emotion. Because whatever Ohno feels, it cannot be the same, it cannot be to the intensity and depth that Nino feels, surely. It will end in a mess for Nino, when it becomes clear Ohno is only infatuated, and a mess for Ohno when he realizes Nino is looking for so much more. “We would not want people getting the wrong idea.”
“We…we wouldn’t?”
“No.”
“Oh.” Ohno goes still and quiet and stays that way for so long that Nino eventually looks up at him. The look on Ohno’s face sends a piercing chill straight through Nino’s heart: there is something there so hurt, and…yes, angry, too. Ohno is angry. And it is Nino’s fault.
Ohno makes a stiff bow, and says, “Then I must honor my lord’s wishes.”
And just as Nino did in the garden, Ohno walks away without another word.
*
For a week, Nino barely sees Ohno. The other man leaves the manor before Nino has risen, and returns long after the streets have gone dark and quiet. Despite knowing that he brought this on himself, Nino cannot stand the silence in the empty house and spends most of his evenings out.
On the morning of the eighth day of his estrangement with Ohno, Nino is awakened by a surprise visitor. One of the bamboo blinds that hang all around his room goes up with a rattle, followed by the clatter of the shoji in the track. It is still early: when Nino cracks an eyelid, he can see through the newly opened door that the sun is slanting into the garden at a sharp angle, making the frost on the leaves glitter and spark. He can also see Sho crossing back over the tatami floor from where he has just finished sliding open the last door. Nino sighs, and his breath comes out in a puff of white.
“Sousuke,” Sho says, and there is a stirring in the futon, at Nino’s back, a groggy murmur. The blankets shift, letting in some of the cold air, and Nino pulls the covers more tightly around himself.
“I believe there is breakfast waiting for you in the kitchen,” Sho continues, and the boy sharing Nino’s bed recognizes a dismissal when he hears one.
Sho lets Sousuke get dressed and excuse himself, then lights the charcoal brazier under the sunken kotatsu in the center of the room. He lays out Nino’s clothes and hands him a thick, padded kimono in the meantime. Nino pulls it on, and a pair of long pants, before joining Sho at the kotatsu where he sees there is a breakfast of warm porridge and tea laid out for him. After a few minutes of letting Nino eat in sleepy silence, Sho finally speaks.
“I do wish you would at least make a pretense of being interested in women…” Sho sighs, glancing towards the door Sousuke so recently left from.
“I make a fine pretense,” Nino replies. “I was at Gion three nights last week.”
“And came home with one of your own pages or apprentices each time.”
“And what of it?” Nino huffs. “It is hardly unusual for someone in my occupation to prefer the company of men in the bedroom.”
“But it is the wealthy women in the balcony seats that pay your wages,” Sho points out. Nino merely grumbles in response, and Sho allows him a few more moments of peace.
“You are not yourself lately,” Sho says quietly, after a pause. “Nor is Lord Ohno. Something happened between you?”
Sho says it so directly, with so little preamble, that Nino has no time to do anything but look sullen, which is really the fastest way to give Sho his answer.
“Will you tell me, or must I guess?” Sho asks, sounding more weary than annoyed.
“Nothing happened,” Nino snaps. “And that is precisely the problem.”
Sho raises an eyebrow. “He refused you?”
“No!” Nino feels his face grow hot, and hopes it does not show through the chill already pinking his cheeks. “I made no advances. He was-I do not know, he was about to say something, a pointless confession I suppose, but I…stopped him.”
“To what end?” Sho says, exasperated. “It is only driving you both to distraction.”
“I have no desire to pursue a meaningless affair with Ohno,” Nino mutters into his porridge.
“Why do you think all he desires is a meaningless affair?” Sho asks pointedly.
“It could come to nothing more,” Nino stubbornly insists. “We are neither of us in a position to-he is the son of a merchant, and I am…” Nino falters, stabs at the remains of his food. “I am just a peasant who was sold to the theater. What can I offer him besides sport?”
“You are a hard-headed fool,” Sho says flatly. “Ohno gave up any pretentions of title when he joined the theater, as you well know.”
“It doesn’t matter!” Nino shoves his bowl away. He knows he is being petulant, childish even, but he ignores that realization in favor of the chance to release some of his frustration on Sho. “It is-surely it is simple infatuation! He sees in me the onnagata he knows from the stage. It will only be a disappointment, were I to bring him to my bed and disabuse him of that notion.”
“Nino,” Sho begins, but Nino does not let him continue.
“It has happened too many times before,” Nino says to the table, “and I cannot do it again. Not with Ohno.”
For a long moment, Sho does not speak. Then, he picks up Nino’s discarded dishes, stands and walks to the door, turning to fix Nino with a hard stare before he leaves.
“If you are determined to deny yourself this, I cannot stop you,” he says softly. “But for your own sake, I beg you: speak to Ohno. Know his heart, before throwing away one of the few chances you may have at real happiness.”
*
Sho makes it sound so easy-just speak to Ohno, know his heart-but how to do it when Ohno is so studiously avoiding him? How to do it without coming right out and declaring that he is in love with Ohno which will surely only alienate them further? Without a plan and without the fortitude to carry it though even if he had one, Nino simply spends his time brooding and, loathe as he is to admit it, pining after Ohno even more acutely than before.
Only two days before the final show of the year-the kaomise where all the new members of the troop and those apprentices who have come far enough in their training will perform, something like a preview for the upcoming season-Nino finds himself and his own apprentices working with Master Shintarou and his apprentices on a love scene, of all things. The play is a version of The Greengrocer’s Daughter that the theater’s current playwright, Mizushima-sensei, has put together, and the scene is a secret meeting between the lovers. Kichisaburo, a monk, has stolen into his lover Oshichi’s room-the pair have been separated since Oshichi and her family left Kichisaburo’s temple, where they had taken shelter after a fire burned down their home and it is, to say the least, a passionate reunion.
Each of Shintarou’s apprentices, and each of Nino’s, are given a chance at the exchange, but the only performance Shintarou is pleased with is Ohno’s. The onnagata apprentices are all lacking today, it seems. Nino tries to tell himself that his own displeasure with his apprentices’ work has nothing to do with the fact that they are the focus of Ohno’s attention instead of Nino. Eventually, Shintarou’s patience comes to an end.
“Master Ninomiya,” he calls gruffly, after dismissing Yuri with a short wave. “Show us how the scene is properly performed, if you would be so kind.”
For a moment, Nino thinks Shintarou will come and partner him for the scene, but the older performer stays firmly planted on his padded stool. For the first time in what seems like lifetimes, Nino catches Ohno’s eyes. He sees the tightness in Ohno’s jaw, but something else in his expression, too. Something almost…hopeful.
Nino kneels down center stage, relaxing into an elegant half-sprawl. He adjusts his kimono, dressed today in a simpler version of his usual onnagata finery, as Ohno comes to rest on one knee beside him. Shintarou gives them the signal to begin, and Nino meets Ohno’s eyes determinedly. They exchange a few lines-what are you doing here, how did you get in-before they reach the crux of the scene.
“Too many nights have I seen you in my dreams,” Ohno whispers, “and awoken to empty arms.”
Though his voice is soft, and though he has run the scene a dozen times already, such is his skill that there is no other sound in the theater. Even the painters and carpenters have paused in their work on the set.
“Kichi-sama,” Nino croons low. “I too, I too! But you should not have come!”
“I could not stay away!” Ohno says, with feeling. “I forsake my prayers and think on you daily, as my body withers!” Ohno’s eyes burn, his gaze fast and unwavering. “Can you know such longing, Oshichi, as I do?”
Nino raises one hand, graceful, holding his fingers just so as if to cup Ohno’s face, but never quite touching.
“Too well do I know it, my lord, and grow weak with it. I would see all this great city burn again, if only it meant that I might be with you.”
Nino does not intend the desperation to come so naturally, and wants to claim brilliant acting as the cause of the waver in his voice, but he knows better. Again, he is transparent, Ohno sees through him, he must-he grabs Nino’s hand suddenly in both of his.
But before anything else can happen there is a crash from the other end of the stage. Nino and Ohno-and the rest of the rehearsal group-jump and turn to the source of the commotion. One of the carpenters has dropped a bucket of nails, sending the little metal bits rolling all across the stage, and Shintarou is already on his feet bellowing and cursing. The apprentices, desperate as always for entertainment, flock over for a better view of the commotion.
Nino means to take the opportunity to slip away, but he is barely back on his feet before Ohno has caught him by the arm and begun dragging him off. He pulls Nino into the wings, then off the stage and out into the auditorium, through an open sliding door and into one of the first floor private boxes that line the walls. Nino just has time to notice and appreciate that there is a folding screen obscuring most of the box from the stage before Ohno pushes him up against the wall.
“Why?” Ohno says, moving in close, hands at Nino’s shoulders. His grip is not tight, but it is firm. “Why did you stop me?”
“I don’t understand you,” Nino complains. “It was the carpenter who interrupted the rehearsal, not me.” His heart is hammering in his chest thanks to Ohno’s proximity, and he has his face turned away, but then Ohno is turning him back with a gentle hand on his cheek.
“Not that. The other day, in the garden,” Ohno continues, fixing Nino with a determined stare. “You knew what I would say. Why did you stop me when I tried to tell you that I-”
“Don’t,” Nino begins, a last desperate attempt, but Ohno talks right over him.
“-love you? Nino,” Ohno says his name, and Nino feels that old tightness twisting in his chest, something clawing for freedom. “I love you.” And again: “I love you.”
“You can’t,” Nino whispers, voice failing. “You don’t.” He pushes with no real conviction at Ohno’s chest, his shoulders, trying for some distance. “We can’t, it isn’t done-you are a lord, and I am just-”
“I am no more a lord now than you are,” Ohno says. “We are actors, we are freer than anyone to live as we please and you know it. Why did you stop me?” he asks again.
Nino wants to look away, to remove himself from the intensity of Ohno’s gaze that now, like always, seems to force the truth from his mouth.
“You can’t,” Nino says again. “Whatever fleeting desire has possessed you, you cannot feel this,” and Nino presses a hand to his chest, to the ache there. “You cannot love me as I-”
Nino chokes on the words, stops them, but Ohno’s eyes are alive with the realization of what Nino was about to say. Ohno leans closer still and Nino closes his eyes against him, his nearness.
“Please, Nino, I love you, I do. I-I would see the city burn for you, I would do anything, please, just tell me-”
Nino’s hands fist in the front of Ohno’s kimono and a sound escapes him, broken and wordless, as all that he has been holding in finally overwhelms him, the tautness finally snaps and tears and everything comes pouring out-how can he hope to stop it with Ohno so close, talking like this, telling him these things?
“Yes,” he says on a shuddering whisper. He is shaking, practically panting as if he has just run down a mountain, and his eyes come open. “I love you.”
The words are barely out before Ohno kisses him.
Nino has always known that love and tragedy go hand in hand. It is in all the stories, all the plays he acts out day after day, how love comes with suffering and pain-the lovers die, the kingdom falls, Oshichi does try to burn the city down, and Kichisaburo watches her put to death for arson. To love is to feel sorrow. So, Nino wonders, how can this feel so good?
Ohno presses into him, and Nino winds his arms around Ohno’s shoulders to pull him closer. Ohno’s mouth moves against Nino’s, slick and seeking, and Nino parts his lips to let in Ohno’s tongue. The taste of him sends flames burning all along Nino’s veins.
They part on a gasp, as Ohno’s hands find Nino’s backside and he pulls their hips firmly together. They are both of them beginning to get hard, and the little groan that Ohno lets out only adds to the clenching arousal in Nino’s gut.
“Wait, wait,” Nino cautions, though his voice is breathy and his eyes heavy-lidded with desire. “You have to go back, you-” But then he blinks, gets a proper look at Ohno’s face, and has to stifle a bout of giddy laughter.
“Hmm?” Ohno looks dazed, and searches Nino’s face for a moment. “Oh, Nino, your make-up…”
“Is all over your face,” Nino finishes for him. He fishes a handkerchief out of the front of his kimono and makes a few swipes at Ohno’s lipstick-smeared mouth to little effect. After a moment, Ohno pushes Nino’s hand away and leans in to kiss him again, which can only be making the situation worse. But Nino finds he does not care, if it means he can keep Ohno close like this for a little longer. Their hands clasp around the handkerchief, and somehow that touch seems more intimate than any they have shared thus far.
They are interrupted when the tone of Shintarou’s shouting back on stage changes pitch-he is looking for them.
“Go,” Nino says, pulling himself away with some difficulty. “Go clean yourself up, first. I’ll follow in a moment.”
Ohno looks torn, stepping back, but without releasing his grip on Nino’s hand. Despite the make-up smudged across his face and the mess Nino has made of his hair, he seems so dear, so precious in this moment that Nino’s heart feels as if it might burst.
“When I come home tonight,” Ohno says finally, “will you be there?”
Nino squeezes his hand. “I will be waiting for you.”
Ohno smiles. “Good.”
*
Shintarou gives up on the rest of the rehearsal in disgust, but the apprentices are made to stay and practice the song and dance numbers that will be in the show until well after dark. Nino has no excuse not to go home, and after pacing his room distractedly for almost an hour, he decides to take a bath.
As the water in the large wooden tub heats, Nino sits on a low stool on the tile floor and scrubs himself down. When he ladles water over his head, he feels the remains of his make-up, the sweat and grime of the day, all wash away and he shivers in the steamy air. He looks down at his naked limbs, pale and skinny, the soft roundness of his belly, and the patch of wiry hair between his legs where his cock rests, limp yet, though thoughts of what is sure to happen after Ohno comes home would have it stirring.
And though Ohno has seen Nino with a naked face and out of costume, what will he think of this? Will the love he professes to feel last to bared skin, or after, when his desires have been sated? Will this end like all the others, with Ohno married off to carry on the family name and Nino only a memory? It does not bear thinking of-he has already told Ohno he loves him, there is no going back now. At least they will have tonight.
Nino rinses the last of the soap from his body, then climbs into the tub and lets himself sink up to his neck in the nearly scalding water.
When he comes back to his room later, wrapped loosely in a yukata, he finds Ohno there.
Ohno is seated on the floor by the softly burning brazier, flipping through one of the books of print illustrations Nino had left lying around. He looks up when Nino enters, face golden in the lamplight. His eyes find Nino’s after a slow, appreciative journey over the rest of his body, and he smiles, then stands and crosses to where Nino has paused by the door.
It is so quiet, and Nino is so aware of every sound Ohno makes: the slide of his stocking feet over the tatami, the breath he takes through his nose when he is close enough to Nino to reach out and touch him. His little sigh, when his fingertips come to rest lightly on Nino’s cheek.
“Is the water still warm?” Ohno asks, and for a moment Nino has no idea what he is talking about-he has forgotten everything except Ohno, here, touching him, with only a few thin layers of cotton separating them-but then he realizes: the bath.
“Yes,” he stammers. “Go ahead.”
Ohno smiles again and, after another long moment, steps around Nino toward the bathing room.
Alone again, Nino slips his legs under the kotatsu to wait. He picks up the print booklet Ohno was looking at, but cannot concentrate on it. In an effort to calm his nerves, he puts his head down on the table and closes his eyes. Outside, a light rain has begun to fall-Nino can hear it against the roof, dripping from the eaves-and though he had thought himself wound too tightly to relax very far, the sound of the rain, or the warmth of the kotatsu, something must lull him to sleep. Suddenly Ohno is shaking him gently by the shoulder as Nino blinks back to wakefulness.
“Oh,” Nino mumbles, mouth still thick with sleep, “you’re back.”
“Yes,” Ohno agrees on a grin. “Are you tired? Would you like to sleep?”
“Oh, no!” Nino protests immediately. He sits up too fast, makes himself dizzy, but Ohno catches him with an arm at his shoulders. “No, I-I can sleep…later.”
“You’re sure?” Ohno asks, a trace of concern in his features, and Nino loves him a little more because he is sure Ohno would go straight to bed with no protest, if that was what Nino wished.
“I am sure,” Nino says. Ohno’s expression brightens, and Nino takes the hand Ohno offers him and is pulled to his feet. Ohno begins to walk them backwards, towards the futon, but his eyes are roving hungrily over Nino’s face, his body, and before they are even halfway across the room, Ohno slows, and then stops, completely distracted.
“I,” Ohno begins, and his hands alight on the knot of Nino’s obi. “May I look at you?”
Nino feels himself flush, and can only nod silently in response. Ohno begins to work the obi loose, but before it can fall away, Nino reaches forward and takes Ohno’s face in his hands, kisses him again just…just in case. Ohno returns the kiss tenderly, carefully, but he is determined-the obi comes undone and drops to the floor with a soft sound. Then Ohno’s hands are sliding over Nino’s chest under the yukata, up over his shoulders, and Nino lowers his arms and lets the garment fall.
Ohno lingers on the kiss for another moment, moves his hands down Nino’s arms until their fingers intertwine, then steps back to look at him. Ohno’s eyes wander all over Nino’s body, across his shoulders and arms, down his chest, ribs, stomach, his hips and his half-hard cock, down along his thighs all the way to his ankles and toes. Ohno seems intent on memorizing every inch of Nino’s skin, and somehow, rather than feeling exposed and embarrassed, Nino feels something more like relief. This is all of him, shed of the last of his finery, and Ohno has seen it and looks nothing but pleased.
“Ohno,” Nino murmurs, pulling the other man’s gaze back up to his face. As soon as their eyes meet, Ohno is leaning back in, one hand coming up to cup the back of Nino’s head, but he pauses with their lips just brushing.
“Will you call me ‘Satoshi’, now?” he whispers. “Surely we are past all formality.”
“I-” Nino fights to keep his eyes open, to meet Ohno’s stare. “If you-”
“I do,” Ohno says immediately, an echo of the first time he answered that question.
“Then-Satoshi,” Nino says on a sigh, and the rest is lost into Ohno’s mouth.
Ohno’s kisses now are more like the first time-fiercer, more insistent-and his hands are everywhere. When Ohno’s mouth moves to Nino’s neck, his jaw, Ohno’s hands smooth over his chest, palms flat and a little rough across Nino’s nipples. Ohno’s fingers count Nino’s ribs, trace their shape around to his spine and trail down, down, nails scraping over his hips and the soft flesh of his backside. Nino shivers and whines, writhes under Ohno’s touch and feels himself become fully hard faster than he has since he was a teenager. He is weak in the knees, already, and needs something to hold onto.
Ohno’s hair is still a little wet from the bath, but soft when Nino buries his fingers in it, and still thick with the scent of camellia oil. Nino fists his hands in it as he has wanted to do for so long, and is rewarded with a low moan from Ohno, voiced right against his collarbone. But Ohno seems to get distracted again, this time by the dip of Nino’s lower back, the hollows of his hips, touching everything but what Nino wants touched most.
“Please,” Nino hears himself say, needier than he would like to sound by half.
“Hmm?” Ohno says against Nino’s shoulder. “Ah. Yes.”
And then, in one graceful movement Ohno is dropping to his knees. His hands come around to splay against Nino’s hipbones, and he looks up at Nino-cheeks flushed, mouth wet and pink, wetter when his tongue darts out to lick his lips. Nino can only give a vague “oh” of surprise and his hands, still tangled in Ohno’s hair, clench. Ohno’s mouth falls open a little farther, his head goes back, pulling the muscles in his neck taut, and he lets out the most beautiful sound of arousal Nino has ever heard.
“Oh,” Nino says again, and then Ohno’s mouth is on him.
It is clear that Ohno has not had much practice in this, but what he lacks in experience he makes up for in enthusiasm. He tastes Nino slowly at first, adjusting, finding a rhythm. Soon he is moving faster, taking Nino deeper with each bob of his head, and Nino can only try to stay on his feet and not come right away. Without meaning to, he tightens his hands again in Ohno’s hair, and this time when Ohno moans Nino can feel it all up and down his cock, and it is too much.
“Ah-” He does not have time for words, time to give Ohno any other warning, but Ohno does not seem to mind, and just holds Nino steady as stars explode behind his eyelids.
When he his spent, Nino kneels down with Ohno-drops like a sack, more like-and after a moment of fumbling, finds Ohno’s lips for another kiss. It is a shock of the most pleasant kind to taste himself on Ohno’s tongue.
“I’m sorry,” Ohno says when Nino lets him up for air.
“You’re sorry?” Nino replies incredulously. “Whatever for?”
“I was impatient,” Ohno says, although he is grinning in such a way that Nino begins to think his apology was not very sincere. Then one of his hands drifts to Nino’s softening cock. “But…are you spent for the night, do you think?”
Nino is very sure that, with a little more attention from Ohno, he could be roused quite easily for another attempt, but he is confused. “Why…?”
Ohno searches Nino’s face, and breathes out a slow breath. “I want you to take me, Nino.”
Nino feels his head spin, and the blood already pooling in his groin again. He had not expected this, had always assumed that Ohno would be like all the other men who came to him after hours at the theater-but then, Ohno has always undone all of Nino’s expectations.
Nino leans in for another kiss, a little harder, a little rougher, and when he pulls back he says, “Kazunari.”
Ohno only blinks in confusion.
“My real name,” Nino clarifies. “It’s Kazunari.”
A slow smile spreads over Ohno’s face then, and when he says Nino’s name it is like a prayer, like a promise, “Kazunari.”
They finally make their way to the futon, then, and Nino takes his time removing Ohno’s yukata. The skin beneath is fair, changes from gold to peach in sharp lines where the sun has not managed to leave its mark. Nino tastes the different shades of Ohno’s skin, runs his hands over it appreciatively as Ohno’s robe falls away completely. Nino feels another sharp spike of arousal in his gut to see how hard Ohno is already.
“Have you ever been with a man?” Nino asks, laying Ohno back on the futon.
“When I was younger,” Ohno says, eyes rapt on Nino. Not surprising, but Nino feels a small pang of disappointment that he will not be Ohno’s first.
Lifetimes ago, it seems, Nino had placed a little jar of oil by the bed, and he uncorks it now and spreads a generous amount over his fingers. He lays down next to Ohno and sees how the other man is breathing in short, anxious pants. After a lingering kiss, Nino situates himself between Ohno’s legs-and oh, they fall open so easily, so eagerly-and leans down to take Ohno in his mouth and return some of the favor Ohno did him earlier.
Ohno’s reaction is immediate, and noisy, though he tries to muffle his cries behind his hand. Nino slides his slick fingers down the inside of Ohno’s thigh while he works, then down between his legs and gently against the tight ring of muscle he finds there. The pitch of Ohno’s moans changes just a little, needy, and Nino slips a finger inside him.
It takes a little time, a little patience, but before long Ohno is pushing back against Nino’s fingers-two, then three moving slowly to stretch him-and whimpering a low litany of “please, please, please”. Nino is already fully hard again, and after slicking himself with the oil, Nino positions himself at Ohno’s entrance. He does not even have time to ask Ohno if he is ready before Ohno is wrapping his legs high and tight around Nino’s waist and pulling him forward.
Nino means to go slow, he means to be careful and make it last, but Ohno is as hot as a furnace and is making such wonderful, beautiful noises. And then, when they have reached a frantic pitch, when Nino is at the edge and searching desperately for his second release, Ohno brings his mouth close to Nino’s ear. His voice is a breaking, breathless whisper.
“I love you, Kazunari,” he says.
And Nino falls.
*
The rain starts to come harder as the coals in the brazier burn low. Nino is tangled around Ohno under the heavy futon blanket, and even in the downpour he can hear each breath Ohno takes.
“Why were you so afraid of this?” Ohno asks. His eyes are closed, his voice a sleepy murmur, and still Nino can only answer him with the truth.
“Not of this,” he says quietly. “Of the afterwards. So we are lovers now, and so we may be for a time. But how long can we keep it? How can I know you will not be taken from me by obligation, by another fancy, by…”
Nino runs out of words, but Ohno does not answer right away. Nino wonders if he has fallen asleep. But then his brows furrow and his eyes open slowly-Nino can just see the glimmer of them in the darkness.
“I would not promise you a lifetime when I have no means of guaranteeing that promise.” Ohno’s hands, on Nino’s back, move up and down thoughtfully. “If I loved a woman, if I were married, it would be no different-there is always a chance of good times, and a chance of them ending. But I love you now. And that is all. It is enough, for me.”
Nino feels himself smile, though there is a certain ache in his chest.
“Then it shall be enough for me, too,” Nino says, and presses the smile into Ohno’s skin.
Ohno gives a low laugh and curls into Nino’s chest. Nino falls asleep, content.
*
The final show of the season is a rousing success. It plays three times before the winter light is too weak to carry on, though the crowd bellows for an encore, another song, another scene. The ratings books are filled with rave reviews of the Arashibana’s new cast members, most especially Ohno, and bursting with predictions of what there is to look forward to after the New Year’s holidays are over.
When the year turns and the bells toll all across the city-at Gion, at Yasaka Shrine, at Kinkakuji-Nino stands with Ohno on the veranda by the garden. Outside the walls, the sounds of celebration echo in the streets, but everything within the house lies quiet. Snow has fallen, and the ground and the trees are blanketed in crystalline white, casting everything in sharp shadows like a woodblock print before the ink has been set.
Ohno’s hand is warm in Nino’s, though their breath rises in white clouds. It is the last time they will be alone until the holidays are over-tomorrow will begin days spent with family, visiting shrines, and making the rounds at all the lavish parties and dinners the theater’s members and patrons will be holding. It is the last time, but strangely Nino feels no desperation, no need to rush or fall immediately to love-making. This stillness, too, is precious.
After a time, they go back inside. Nino lights a brazier and sets it near the bed while Ohno closes the up the room against the chill. When they crawl into the futon, Nino throws their kimonos over top of them like lovers used to do, and they laugh together as they drift to sleep.
The next morning, Nino wakes with the dawn bell. Ohno is there next to him, his eyes just coming open on a soft smile.
And it is enough.
Footnotes!
- kabuki: the wiki article! this article will also tell you what a hanamichi is.
- onnagata: the wiki article; Bando Tamasaburo’s website - check this out for a lovely gallery. Tamasaburo is currently one of the leading onnagata in kabuki.
- seiza: the name for the way Japanese people traditional sit on the floor, with their legs folded under them.
- tonsure: in Japanese, chonmage - aka, that same sexy haircut that nino had in Ooku.
- Jun’s role: as a side note which may be interesting to no one but me, as the owner of the theater, Jun would have been something like the producer, with a hand not just in the organization of the plays themselves, but the advertising, funding, and everything else that went into putting on a performance.
- the “-za”: this is a suffix almost every theater in Japan has on its name, written with the kanji 座, “to sit”.
- iroko: literally a “sexy boy”, aka a young male prostitute. many kabuki performers began their careers this way, especially onnagata.
- karuta: wiki - a really hard card game that involves matching lines of famous poetry.
- shamisen: a three-stringed instrument not unlike a guitar or banjo. whoever wrote this wiki article was really dedicated.
- shoji doors: sliding doors covered in (often) rice paper.
- dates: in the edo period, Japan was still on the lunar calendar, so the months mentioned in this story are actually about a month earlier than the ones we use - e.g. the “seventh month” is closer to June than July.
- the onnagata’s cap: since it was illegal in the edo period for men not to shave the tops of their heads, onnagata who wanted to look more feminine would wear little bits of cloth-usually purple or dark blue-over their bald spot.
- happi coats: there is a wiki article, but something it fails to mention is that very simple versions of these were also commonly worn by peasants back in the day.
- zabuton: a useful pillow for sitting on :D
- hakama: wikipedia’s lettin’ me down - there aren’t any good pictures of men’s hakama in that article at all.
- kotatsu: i think we probably all know what a kotatsu is, but they have had these in Japan forever - the older versions had, as many nice restaurants still do, a depression in the floor under the table where the heater was and where one could place their feet.
- The Greengrocer’s Daughter: is a real play! the dialogue in the fic, however, is complete fiction ;p
OMG all the footnotes. all the coding @_@ GOODNIGHT EVERYBODY!
rating/genre: r; au (historical), drama, romance
pairing(s): ohmiya
words: ~15,000
summary: Nino is the most popular and most skilled onnagata in the Arashibana-za Theater, and he has earned the right to be difficult.
disclaimer: FICTION.
notes: oh jeez, what did i do 8D;; well, i wrote arashi in edo period Japan as the cast and staff at a kabuki theater, that's what!
( Part 1)
On most of the visits after this, Nino meets Ohno out of costume, without even the nod to femininity he usually maintains in public-a lady’s kimono and simple wig, at the least-and it takes some getting used to. At first, Ohno stares endlessly, delighted by Nino as a boy, by his short hair and unpainted face, by his higher propensity for vulgarity and sarcasm out of costume. No amount of Nino complaining can dissuade him, and for a time it becomes a game-how long can Ohno go without looking, and how long can Nino go without looking to see if Ohno is looking?
One evening, to up the challenge, they sit back to back while Ohno helps Nino practice his lines. Despite being unable to see Ohno’s face-or maybe just for that reason-Nino feels even more aware of him, the way he moves as he breathes and the faint sounds he makes, and the smell of the camellia oil in his hair.
“Let’s go somewhere,” Ohno says suddenly, making it sound reckless and dramatic when he interrupts Nino’s monologue for his proposal.
“What? Now?” Nino asks, frozen in the middle of an exaggerated illustrative gesture.
“No,” Ohno amends. “I just mean…sometime. But, soon. When do you have an afternoon free?”
“Two days after tomorrow.” Nino eyes Ohno suspiciously. “Where do you plan to take me?”
“Somewhere special,” Ohno replies with a secretive grin.
Three days later, it turns out Ohno’s special somewhere is the broad river behind his estate that he had told Nino about so many months ago. They take a pair of fishing rods, their lunch wrapped up in a wide square cloth, and spend the day doing nothing more exciting than sitting on the riverbank dangling their lines in the water and talking.
“Lord Matsumoto is married?” Ohno says incredulously, after an offhanded remark from Nino.
“Well of course he is,” Nino laughs. He pulls his line in and casts it again distractedly. “He’s the son of a well-known, wealthy household, he can hardly help but be married. It was his duty, you know, to marry and produce heirs. But the great irony is this: while he did it out of obligation, with plans to only see his wife when he had to bed her, he ended up falling madly in love with her instead.”
Ohno is a captive audience. “Really?”
“Really and truly. He spent weeks pining and wooing her, writing her poetry and buying her expensive gifts-and this was after they had already been wed!”
Ohno laughs aloud, and Nino cannot help smiling at the way Ohno’s eyes slit with amusement and make little wrinkles at the corners. Nino carries on with his story about Jun, but is only half paying attention to what he says. He is distracted-again, always-by Ohno next to him, shoulder to shoulder and so warm from the afternoon sun. He suddenly feels worlds away from his own life, from the clamor of the city, from the Arashibana-za and silk kimonos and gold-painted hair ornaments. The only sounds here are the rushing water, and the birds, and the breeze through the grass. The only people here are himself and Ohno, disguised for the moment in happi coats, short cotton pants, and round straw hats. To anyone looking, they would not appear to be anything more than a couple peasants lazing away an afternoon. Nino wonders what it would be like, to be that person.
“Nino,” Ohno says sometime later, when the sun is lower and the air is growing colder. “Will you get married?”
“I imagine I will, eventually,” Nino says after a pause. “And surely you…?”
“I suppose,” Ohno mutters. He stares out at the water, suddenly pensive. “But I would not mind so much, if I did not.”
Ohno looks back to Nino, then, and just watches him for a moment. There is the tiniest furrow in his brow, and a pucker of concentration on his lips, and Nino thinks I could kiss him, here, we could lay down in this grass and no one would see, no one would come. The cold wind blows again, Nino shivers, and Ohno takes a breath. For no reason that he can name, Nino’s own breath catches in his throat, and his heart leaps up to meet it. But Ohno does not speak, and his unspoken words ride away on an exhale, caught up in the wind.
“Oh,” Nino says inanely, tugging on his empty line. “Well. Yes.”
Another moment, and Ohno pulls his line in as well. Picking up the net of fish he had been suspending in the water, he turns back towards the house and does not look at Nino when he says:
“Shall we go back?”
*
Nino is surprised when, some days later, he is called to Jun’s office upstairs after the show. The page who summons him has no explanation for why Jun wants to see him, so Nino takes his time changing into a less ornate wig and cap, and donning a simple pale pink kimono decorated with blue flowers. He compliments this with an ornate obi of burnt orange, and he gives Yuri a conspiratorial wink as the boy hands him his fan and they begin a somber procession upstairs.
Yuri goes in first, kneeling by the door and announcing Nino’s presence. He sweeps in, only to stop abruptly at the scene that greets him.
Jun is sitting by his desk, but not alone-Ohno is there, as well as an older couple who, Nino realizes in an instant, must be Ohno’s parents. Jun motions for Nino to come sit by him, and Nino moves across the room, suddenly self-conscious of the swishing slide of his tabi and kimono over the tatami. He shoots a curious glance at Jun but the other man just gives a little shake of his head.
“And here is Master Ninomiya,” Jun says, “who has been petitioning me quite doggedly for your son’s admission to our troop.”
Ohno looks surprised and delighted at that, and Nino bows to avoid meeting his eyes. “It is only that I admire his natural talent,” Nino murmurs.
“Well, I should think so!” says a sudden voice, and Nino looks up, startled, to find Ohno’s father beaming at him. “And I am so glad that he has finally met someone who recognizes it.”
Nino can only blink in surprise, and when Ohno’s mother speaks up, Nino realizes he must have missed the beginning of the conversation.
“Now, we are more than happy to let Satoshi come to your theater, Lord Matsumoto, and delighted that he will finally have a chance to put his talent to use, but I do hope we can expect to see him in some worthy roles before long…?”
“Mother!” Ohno protests, looking mortally embarrassed. “It is honor enough just to act on the-”
“Come, come,” Lady Ohno says jovially. “They have already praised your natural talent, and now you will be properly trained-and surely Lord Matsumoto has not forgotten our generous donations?”
“Mother!” Ohno says again. “Please, you are too blunt.”
“No offense has been made, my lord,” Jun reassures him. “And of course I intend to prepare you for starring roles in the future.”
“Oh,” Ohno says faintly, with a dazed expression. “Oh. Starring roles?”
“Excellent!” Lady Ohno chirps, and then launches immediately into negotiations with Jun about Ohno’s salary, living arrangements closer to the theater, which pieces of his own clothing may be suitable for future costumes, and a whole host of other things Nino is barely paying attention to. While he has been scheming to get Ohno into the theater almost since the first day, he has not prepared himself for his vague plans to become a reality.
He finally looks up and meets Ohno’s eyes across the room. Ohno looks just as rattled as Nino feels, but after a moment he manages a smile-and why, Nino wonders, does his chest tighten?-and mouths a silent “thank you”.
*
There are only a few weeks left to prepare Ohno for the final show that will be performed just before the New Year’s holidays, so he is in rehearsals with Shintarou and the other apprentices for nearly every hour of daylight. At night he retires with them to the dormitory house Jun keeps near the theater, where he can practice music and dance with the elderly couple who own the building and make a living training young actors.
Strangely, now that he is so much closer, Nino barely sees Ohno at all. Sometimes he drops in on rehearsals, occasionally doing some of his own training with the apprentice onnagata-Yuri is among these, and still stares at Ohno starry-eyed when he thinks no one is looking. They cross paths backstage when Ohno is given small, one-line parts in the current show, and exchange smiles and a few words, but beyond that there just isn’t time. The leisurely evenings Nino had been spending with Ohno are instead spent at home, or in the pleasure district to keep up appearances. But, though he is still able to fill the hours, Nino finds himself feeling lonely.
He does not fool himself-he knows he is preoccupied with Ohno, but it is a problem he must put behind him. Love affairs with men for business, and dallying with younger apprentices, are one thing, but this infatuation has no place in an adult lifestyle. Honestly, it is embarrassing, mooning over Ohno like a lovesick teenager. Ohno is his friend, and Nino would not think of starting an affair that could only come to a bad end when one or both of them inevitably marry.
Still, he thinks to himself one night, absently writing out song lyrics by lamplight in his bedroom, still it would be nice to have even a little more time-
His solitude is suddenly interrupted when footsteps come scurrying up the hallway outside his room. A servant, one of only a few Nino keeps, calls from beyond the door.
“Master Ninomiya, the prop-master is here with young Lord Ohno, he insists on seeing you, I could not-”
“Move, please” comes Aiba’s impatient voice, and then the door rattles roughly open to admit Aiba, who is half-carrying a sagging, bloody Ohno.
Nino is on his feet and across the room in an instant, rushing to prop Ohno up from the other side. “What happened?” he demands, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.
“The other apprentices,” Aiba begins, then whirls back to the door-almost dropping Ohno-to the servant who is still crouched there uncertainly. “Hot water and a cloth, if you please! And bandages. Quickly! Please!” The servant scurries away again.
“The apprentices,” Aiba continues, eyes wide and panicky. “Shintarou’s apprentices. They were waiting for him after rehearsal, they attacked him-”
“I can see that,” Nino snaps. He takes Ohno’s other arm and begins to lead the pair across the room. “But why?”
“They’ve been stewing for a while-they can’t stand that a newcomer with no training gets more praise from their master than they do.”
They try to lay Ohno down in Nino’s own futon, but he remains valiantly upright. Aiba places a hand on his back when he wobbles. Now that Nino can see him better, he realizes most of the blood is from a shallow cut near Ohno’s hairline, and the rest of his wounds seem minor, though there are some fantastic bruises forming on his cheek and jaw.
“They drew swords?” Nino asks, fingering the cut and making Ohno wince.
“Just a knife,” Aiba says. He plucks at Ohno’s clothes, rearranging his collar to no purpose. “But…”
“They wanted to mark my face,” Ohno says, finally speaking, but faintly. “Leave a scar. I think one of them was trying to break my nose.”
Nino feels ice fill his veins, replaced almost immediately with a burning rage, a violent need to break the nose of every one of Shintarou’s apprentices himself, right now. He stands, begins pacing, a half-formed plan in his head to go to Jun, have all of them thrown out in the street, to-
“It’s all right. We took care of it,” Aiba reassures him, catching Nino’s wrist as he stalks past. “Ohno had them pretty well in hand by the time I got there, but it was three against one…”
Before Nino can say anything else, the servant returns with water and bandages, so Nino redirects his energy to cleaning Ohno up-he pushes away both Ohno and Aiba’s hands when they try to help-and to dressing the wound on Ohno’s head. Ohno accepts these ministrations silently, and Aiba eventually excuses himself to go report the incident to Jun and Sho, throwing a worried look over his shoulder as he leaves.
When Nino is finished, he puts the water and soiled cloth outside the door before walking back to the futon to stand in front of Ohno. The other man is sitting with shoulders slumped, staring at his hands in his lap. It is only now that the full realization hits Nino that Ohno is in his home-in his bed-and the room feels smaller and stuffier despite the nighttime chill.
“Well,” Nino begins uncertainly. “Shall I-shall I have a carriage take you…” Where? Not back to the dormitory, no. Home, maybe?
But, before any ending can be made to Nino’s sentence, Ohno reaches up to catch the edge of Nino’s sleeve.
“I…May I just stay here, for a while?”
Ohno looks up, and his eyes are wet in the flickering lamp light. Nino is not aware of making a decision to act, but suddenly he is kneeling and wrapping his arms around Ohno’s neck, pulling Ohno tight against him.
“Of course you can, you can stay as long as you like. You needn’t go back to the dormitory at all, I can teach you singing and dancing just as well as-”
Nino’s words are cut off when Ohno’s arms come up around Nino’s back, tight and trembling. For a time they simply hold each other as Ohno shakes with silent tears and Nino murmurs soothing nonsense and rubs Ohno’s back. It can only be a cruel trick of fate or karma that has granted Nino the time he was wishing for in this way, but he would not turn Ohno away even if he had not arrived bloody and beaten on Nino’s doorstep. Nino imagines there are very few reasons he would ever turn Ohno away.
Eventually Ohno’s shaking stops, but he does not let go of Nino. They breathe softly, almost in time, until Nino breaks the silence.
“You must be tired. You can take my bed, I’ll-”
“Stay,” Ohno says hoarsely. “Please.”
Nino opens his mouth to tell Ohno he was just going to get a spare futon, but Ohno makes it clear he wants Nino even closer than that when he pulls Nino down onto the mattress with him and tugs the thick blanket up around them, cocooning them in warmth and darkness.
Nino’s heart is beating fast as hummingbird wings, but Ohno just curls into his chest with a long, slow exhale. The lamp, Nino thinks vaguely, is still on.
“I am sorry,” Ohno whispers, “if this-if I am overstepping my bounds, but I have…I have missed you.”
The ache in Ohno’s words is like a blow, and if they were not already tangled together from shoulders to ankles, Nino would pull him closer.
“I missed you, too,” Nino says into Ohno’s hair. “I did not think it would be like this, your training. If it is too hard…”
Ohno just shakes his head, a tiny rustling motion. “I love the performing, still. And it is only Master Shintarou’s other apprentices who wish me ill. I just-”
Ohno pauses here, thoughtfully still but for the careful slide of his palms up over Nino’s shoulder blades. Nino tries to hide the falter in his breath, and his eyes flutter shut of their own accord. This feels dangerous somehow, Nino does not know how to react when he has suddenly gone from only seeing Ohno in passing every few days, to having Ohno lying in his arms. It is foolishness to let Ohno this close, to try and share a bed with him as if they were children hiding from monsters. One of Ohno’s knees is wedged between Nino’s own, and it won’t be long before Ohno notices the way Nino’s body is reacting to his nearness.
But when Ohno speaks again, his breathing has evened out, his voice is a half-awake whisper.
“…just let me stay. A little longer.”
And then he is asleep.
*
“You have my word they will be severely punished,” Jun says, and Nino can tell he is serious by the very precise way he turns his teacup before sipping his tea.
“Oh, that-that won’t be necessary,” Ohno replies softly. Nino watches as he runs a finger idly over the fabric of the zabuton Jun has provided. Like everything in Jun’s manor, it is of the finest quality, done in a careful geometric pattern of subtle autumn hues. “I don’t want to give them another reason to hate me.”
Jun watches Ohno critically for a moment, and then shrugs. “Well, whether I would or no, Master Shintarou is sure to give them a verbal lashing they will not soon forget. And if they should find themselves with extra chores for the next month, it will do none of them any lasting harm.”
“The least they deserve!” Lady Matsumoto speaks up from her seat next to her husband. “They are lucky they are not in my employ-they would see nothing but the inside of a privy pot for a year!” She is tiny, barely clearing Jun’s shoulder when they stand side by side, but her displeasure radiates from her for several feet in every direction. Her comment puts a little smile on Ohno’s face, and causes Jun to gaze at her adoringly.
“Regardless,” Nino cuts in, “Lord Ohno cannot stay in the dormitory any longer.”
“Certainly not,” Jun agrees, pulling his eyes away from Lady Matsumoto with a visible effort. “There is, of course, plenty of room here in my manor, and you are welcome to use my carriage to-”
“If it’s all the same,” Ohno interrupts. “I do not mind staying with-with Master Ninomiya.”
“Ah,” Jun blinks. “I see.” He turns to Nino with a carefully neutral expression. “And would that suit, Master Ninomiya?”
Nino pulls his own startled gaze away from Ohno. “It is no trouble to me, should Lord Ohno wish to stay,” Nino replies, meeting Jun’s stare determinedly. “And I am happy to continue his song and dance training myself.”
“I see,” Jun says again, and Nino feels a new weight to the words this time. “I see.”
*
After Ohno is properly settled in Nino’s manor, they fall easily into a routine, going home together after Ohno’s rehearsals are over, and usually eating supper together in Nino’s quarters. Nino is happy for the chance to see how Ohno has improved since he began training, and Nino could not want for a better student during their song and dance lessons. It is not so different from the evenings they spent in Nino’s dressing room, and yet.
And yet there is something different-it is there in Ohno’s touches and glances, how they linger warmly on Nino’s face and hands. It does nothing to help Nino overcome his infatuation, and he feels his resistance to it stretching him, pulling him taut like the skin over a drumhead. It is wearing, more so even than the performances Nino puts on every day, and it shows as the weeks go by. They are coming closer and closer to the last show before the holidays and Sho and Jun both notice Nino’s fatigue and comment on it. Jun even goes as far as to suggest that Nino take the next season off, but Nino staunchly refuses.
Towards the end of the tenth month, Nino and Ohno take a walk out in the garden behind Nino’s manor. It is not much-a grassy expanse a few dozen yards wide, with a rock garden and some stone lanterns for decoration-but there are a number of maple trees with their last autumn leaves about to fall.
It has been a rare day of rest, and Nino is hoping some time in the garden will be relaxing and let him take his mind off his predicament, though this is not easy when his predicament is walking just a few steps ahead of him, bathed in the pink-orange light through the leaves. Nino rubs his chest where it is tight and sighs. Ohno is in profile now, with a firework-bright display of yellow and red leaves behind him. He looks softened somehow, like a painting where the ink has been over-watered. Nino just watches him, as if watching long enough will eventually make him clear, will make everything clear-Ohno and his touches, and how Nino cannot stop thinking about him.
Nino blinks slowly, breathes out, and when he opens his eyes he knows that what he is not admitting is that he is in love.
When Ohno turns to look back at him, Nino knows he should look away, or smile and say something about the scenery, but he doesn’t. He just keeps staring, and Ohno must see it, the way Nino is looking at him and in love with him. When Ohno turns, his mouth is open as if to speak, but when he sees Nino he pauses, searches Nino’s face curiously for a moment and then-Then something happens in his eyes, something surprised, but also hopeful, wild and elated. He opens his mouth to speak again, soft and strangely breathless.
“Nino, I-”
“I am cold,” Nino interrupts, turning away abruptly. He registers the shock, the disappointment on Ohno’s face, but cannot bring himself to look back.
He walks back into the house without another word.
*
Why did I do that?
Nino asks himself this as he tosses in his futon that night. Keeps asking himself through the next day, during rehearsals, and as he sneaks around the theater in a very concentrated effort to avoid Ohno. He’s not even entirely sure why he’s avoiding Ohno, except that for some reason, he does not want to give Ohno a chance to finish whatever it was he was about to say yesterday.
It cannot last, though, this avoidance, and Nino knows it. They come face to face abruptly, when Nino opens the door to his dressing room with the vague hope that he might leave before Ohno’s rehearsals are over.
“Hello,” Ohno says, after a startled jump. He is still dressed for rehearsal, in a short kimono tucked into plain, sturdy hakama.
“Hello,” Nino says with as much composure as he can muster. “Heading home?”
“Master Shintarou told me I could leave early,” Ohno says. His eyes are intent on Nino, carefully taking in his every expression. “He said I seemed distracted. It was affecting my performance.”
“Oh,” Nino replies. “That’s…a shame. Well, shall we-”
“Nino,” Ohno says suddenly, catching Nino by the wrist, and making Nino’s breath catch in his throat. Before Ohno can say anything more, Nino snatches his arm away again, and steps around Ohno into the hallway.
Why did I do that? Nino asks himself again. But he knows why, suddenly.
“Nino,” Ohno says, and then, echoing Nino’s own question to himself: “Why…?”
“I-” Nino does not look at Ohno as he speaks, though he can see him just at the corner of his vision. He feels again the tightness in his chest, so overwhelming, all for Ohno. “I would that you were not so familiar,” he says faintly.
“But,” Ohno begins, and Nino cuts him off.
“It is not seemly, now that you are sharing my house,” Nino says. He feels his tone flatten and leech of emotion. Because whatever Ohno feels, it cannot be the same, it cannot be to the intensity and depth that Nino feels, surely. It will end in a mess for Nino, when it becomes clear Ohno is only infatuated, and a mess for Ohno when he realizes Nino is looking for so much more. “We would not want people getting the wrong idea.”
“We…we wouldn’t?”
“No.”
“Oh.” Ohno goes still and quiet and stays that way for so long that Nino eventually looks up at him. The look on Ohno’s face sends a piercing chill straight through Nino’s heart: there is something there so hurt, and…yes, angry, too. Ohno is angry. And it is Nino’s fault.
Ohno makes a stiff bow, and says, “Then I must honor my lord’s wishes.”
And just as Nino did in the garden, Ohno walks away without another word.
*
For a week, Nino barely sees Ohno. The other man leaves the manor before Nino has risen, and returns long after the streets have gone dark and quiet. Despite knowing that he brought this on himself, Nino cannot stand the silence in the empty house and spends most of his evenings out.
On the morning of the eighth day of his estrangement with Ohno, Nino is awakened by a surprise visitor. One of the bamboo blinds that hang all around his room goes up with a rattle, followed by the clatter of the shoji in the track. It is still early: when Nino cracks an eyelid, he can see through the newly opened door that the sun is slanting into the garden at a sharp angle, making the frost on the leaves glitter and spark. He can also see Sho crossing back over the tatami floor from where he has just finished sliding open the last door. Nino sighs, and his breath comes out in a puff of white.
“Sousuke,” Sho says, and there is a stirring in the futon, at Nino’s back, a groggy murmur. The blankets shift, letting in some of the cold air, and Nino pulls the covers more tightly around himself.
“I believe there is breakfast waiting for you in the kitchen,” Sho continues, and the boy sharing Nino’s bed recognizes a dismissal when he hears one.
Sho lets Sousuke get dressed and excuse himself, then lights the charcoal brazier under the sunken kotatsu in the center of the room. He lays out Nino’s clothes and hands him a thick, padded kimono in the meantime. Nino pulls it on, and a pair of long pants, before joining Sho at the kotatsu where he sees there is a breakfast of warm porridge and tea laid out for him. After a few minutes of letting Nino eat in sleepy silence, Sho finally speaks.
“I do wish you would at least make a pretense of being interested in women…” Sho sighs, glancing towards the door Sousuke so recently left from.
“I make a fine pretense,” Nino replies. “I was at Gion three nights last week.”
“And came home with one of your own pages or apprentices each time.”
“And what of it?” Nino huffs. “It is hardly unusual for someone in my occupation to prefer the company of men in the bedroom.”
“But it is the wealthy women in the balcony seats that pay your wages,” Sho points out. Nino merely grumbles in response, and Sho allows him a few more moments of peace.
“You are not yourself lately,” Sho says quietly, after a pause. “Nor is Lord Ohno. Something happened between you?”
Sho says it so directly, with so little preamble, that Nino has no time to do anything but look sullen, which is really the fastest way to give Sho his answer.
“Will you tell me, or must I guess?” Sho asks, sounding more weary than annoyed.
“Nothing happened,” Nino snaps. “And that is precisely the problem.”
Sho raises an eyebrow. “He refused you?”
“No!” Nino feels his face grow hot, and hopes it does not show through the chill already pinking his cheeks. “I made no advances. He was-I do not know, he was about to say something, a pointless confession I suppose, but I…stopped him.”
“To what end?” Sho says, exasperated. “It is only driving you both to distraction.”
“I have no desire to pursue a meaningless affair with Ohno,” Nino mutters into his porridge.
“Why do you think all he desires is a meaningless affair?” Sho asks pointedly.
“It could come to nothing more,” Nino stubbornly insists. “We are neither of us in a position to-he is the son of a merchant, and I am…” Nino falters, stabs at the remains of his food. “I am just a peasant who was sold to the theater. What can I offer him besides sport?”
“You are a hard-headed fool,” Sho says flatly. “Ohno gave up any pretentions of title when he joined the theater, as you well know.”
“It doesn’t matter!” Nino shoves his bowl away. He knows he is being petulant, childish even, but he ignores that realization in favor of the chance to release some of his frustration on Sho. “It is-surely it is simple infatuation! He sees in me the onnagata he knows from the stage. It will only be a disappointment, were I to bring him to my bed and disabuse him of that notion.”
“Nino,” Sho begins, but Nino does not let him continue.
“It has happened too many times before,” Nino says to the table, “and I cannot do it again. Not with Ohno.”
For a long moment, Sho does not speak. Then, he picks up Nino’s discarded dishes, stands and walks to the door, turning to fix Nino with a hard stare before he leaves.
“If you are determined to deny yourself this, I cannot stop you,” he says softly. “But for your own sake, I beg you: speak to Ohno. Know his heart, before throwing away one of the few chances you may have at real happiness.”
*
Sho makes it sound so easy-just speak to Ohno, know his heart-but how to do it when Ohno is so studiously avoiding him? How to do it without coming right out and declaring that he is in love with Ohno which will surely only alienate them further? Without a plan and without the fortitude to carry it though even if he had one, Nino simply spends his time brooding and, loathe as he is to admit it, pining after Ohno even more acutely than before.
Only two days before the final show of the year-the kaomise where all the new members of the troop and those apprentices who have come far enough in their training will perform, something like a preview for the upcoming season-Nino finds himself and his own apprentices working with Master Shintarou and his apprentices on a love scene, of all things. The play is a version of The Greengrocer’s Daughter that the theater’s current playwright, Mizushima-sensei, has put together, and the scene is a secret meeting between the lovers. Kichisaburo, a monk, has stolen into his lover Oshichi’s room-the pair have been separated since Oshichi and her family left Kichisaburo’s temple, where they had taken shelter after a fire burned down their home and it is, to say the least, a passionate reunion.
Each of Shintarou’s apprentices, and each of Nino’s, are given a chance at the exchange, but the only performance Shintarou is pleased with is Ohno’s. The onnagata apprentices are all lacking today, it seems. Nino tries to tell himself that his own displeasure with his apprentices’ work has nothing to do with the fact that they are the focus of Ohno’s attention instead of Nino. Eventually, Shintarou’s patience comes to an end.
“Master Ninomiya,” he calls gruffly, after dismissing Yuri with a short wave. “Show us how the scene is properly performed, if you would be so kind.”
For a moment, Nino thinks Shintarou will come and partner him for the scene, but the older performer stays firmly planted on his padded stool. For the first time in what seems like lifetimes, Nino catches Ohno’s eyes. He sees the tightness in Ohno’s jaw, but something else in his expression, too. Something almost…hopeful.
Nino kneels down center stage, relaxing into an elegant half-sprawl. He adjusts his kimono, dressed today in a simpler version of his usual onnagata finery, as Ohno comes to rest on one knee beside him. Shintarou gives them the signal to begin, and Nino meets Ohno’s eyes determinedly. They exchange a few lines-what are you doing here, how did you get in-before they reach the crux of the scene.
“Too many nights have I seen you in my dreams,” Ohno whispers, “and awoken to empty arms.”
Though his voice is soft, and though he has run the scene a dozen times already, such is his skill that there is no other sound in the theater. Even the painters and carpenters have paused in their work on the set.
“Kichi-sama,” Nino croons low. “I too, I too! But you should not have come!”
“I could not stay away!” Ohno says, with feeling. “I forsake my prayers and think on you daily, as my body withers!” Ohno’s eyes burn, his gaze fast and unwavering. “Can you know such longing, Oshichi, as I do?”
Nino raises one hand, graceful, holding his fingers just so as if to cup Ohno’s face, but never quite touching.
“Too well do I know it, my lord, and grow weak with it. I would see all this great city burn again, if only it meant that I might be with you.”
Nino does not intend the desperation to come so naturally, and wants to claim brilliant acting as the cause of the waver in his voice, but he knows better. Again, he is transparent, Ohno sees through him, he must-he grabs Nino’s hand suddenly in both of his.
But before anything else can happen there is a crash from the other end of the stage. Nino and Ohno-and the rest of the rehearsal group-jump and turn to the source of the commotion. One of the carpenters has dropped a bucket of nails, sending the little metal bits rolling all across the stage, and Shintarou is already on his feet bellowing and cursing. The apprentices, desperate as always for entertainment, flock over for a better view of the commotion.
Nino means to take the opportunity to slip away, but he is barely back on his feet before Ohno has caught him by the arm and begun dragging him off. He pulls Nino into the wings, then off the stage and out into the auditorium, through an open sliding door and into one of the first floor private boxes that line the walls. Nino just has time to notice and appreciate that there is a folding screen obscuring most of the box from the stage before Ohno pushes him up against the wall.
“Why?” Ohno says, moving in close, hands at Nino’s shoulders. His grip is not tight, but it is firm. “Why did you stop me?”
“I don’t understand you,” Nino complains. “It was the carpenter who interrupted the rehearsal, not me.” His heart is hammering in his chest thanks to Ohno’s proximity, and he has his face turned away, but then Ohno is turning him back with a gentle hand on his cheek.
“Not that. The other day, in the garden,” Ohno continues, fixing Nino with a determined stare. “You knew what I would say. Why did you stop me when I tried to tell you that I-”
“Don’t,” Nino begins, a last desperate attempt, but Ohno talks right over him.
“-love you? Nino,” Ohno says his name, and Nino feels that old tightness twisting in his chest, something clawing for freedom. “I love you.” And again: “I love you.”
“You can’t,” Nino whispers, voice failing. “You don’t.” He pushes with no real conviction at Ohno’s chest, his shoulders, trying for some distance. “We can’t, it isn’t done-you are a lord, and I am just-”
“I am no more a lord now than you are,” Ohno says. “We are actors, we are freer than anyone to live as we please and you know it. Why did you stop me?” he asks again.
Nino wants to look away, to remove himself from the intensity of Ohno’s gaze that now, like always, seems to force the truth from his mouth.
“You can’t,” Nino says again. “Whatever fleeting desire has possessed you, you cannot feel this,” and Nino presses a hand to his chest, to the ache there. “You cannot love me as I-”
Nino chokes on the words, stops them, but Ohno’s eyes are alive with the realization of what Nino was about to say. Ohno leans closer still and Nino closes his eyes against him, his nearness.
“Please, Nino, I love you, I do. I-I would see the city burn for you, I would do anything, please, just tell me-”
Nino’s hands fist in the front of Ohno’s kimono and a sound escapes him, broken and wordless, as all that he has been holding in finally overwhelms him, the tautness finally snaps and tears and everything comes pouring out-how can he hope to stop it with Ohno so close, talking like this, telling him these things?
“Yes,” he says on a shuddering whisper. He is shaking, practically panting as if he has just run down a mountain, and his eyes come open. “I love you.”
The words are barely out before Ohno kisses him.
Nino has always known that love and tragedy go hand in hand. It is in all the stories, all the plays he acts out day after day, how love comes with suffering and pain-the lovers die, the kingdom falls, Oshichi does try to burn the city down, and Kichisaburo watches her put to death for arson. To love is to feel sorrow. So, Nino wonders, how can this feel so good?
Ohno presses into him, and Nino winds his arms around Ohno’s shoulders to pull him closer. Ohno’s mouth moves against Nino’s, slick and seeking, and Nino parts his lips to let in Ohno’s tongue. The taste of him sends flames burning all along Nino’s veins.
They part on a gasp, as Ohno’s hands find Nino’s backside and he pulls their hips firmly together. They are both of them beginning to get hard, and the little groan that Ohno lets out only adds to the clenching arousal in Nino’s gut.
“Wait, wait,” Nino cautions, though his voice is breathy and his eyes heavy-lidded with desire. “You have to go back, you-” But then he blinks, gets a proper look at Ohno’s face, and has to stifle a bout of giddy laughter.
“Hmm?” Ohno looks dazed, and searches Nino’s face for a moment. “Oh, Nino, your make-up…”
“Is all over your face,” Nino finishes for him. He fishes a handkerchief out of the front of his kimono and makes a few swipes at Ohno’s lipstick-smeared mouth to little effect. After a moment, Ohno pushes Nino’s hand away and leans in to kiss him again, which can only be making the situation worse. But Nino finds he does not care, if it means he can keep Ohno close like this for a little longer. Their hands clasp around the handkerchief, and somehow that touch seems more intimate than any they have shared thus far.
They are interrupted when the tone of Shintarou’s shouting back on stage changes pitch-he is looking for them.
“Go,” Nino says, pulling himself away with some difficulty. “Go clean yourself up, first. I’ll follow in a moment.”
Ohno looks torn, stepping back, but without releasing his grip on Nino’s hand. Despite the make-up smudged across his face and the mess Nino has made of his hair, he seems so dear, so precious in this moment that Nino’s heart feels as if it might burst.
“When I come home tonight,” Ohno says finally, “will you be there?”
Nino squeezes his hand. “I will be waiting for you.”
Ohno smiles. “Good.”
*
Shintarou gives up on the rest of the rehearsal in disgust, but the apprentices are made to stay and practice the song and dance numbers that will be in the show until well after dark. Nino has no excuse not to go home, and after pacing his room distractedly for almost an hour, he decides to take a bath.
As the water in the large wooden tub heats, Nino sits on a low stool on the tile floor and scrubs himself down. When he ladles water over his head, he feels the remains of his make-up, the sweat and grime of the day, all wash away and he shivers in the steamy air. He looks down at his naked limbs, pale and skinny, the soft roundness of his belly, and the patch of wiry hair between his legs where his cock rests, limp yet, though thoughts of what is sure to happen after Ohno comes home would have it stirring.
And though Ohno has seen Nino with a naked face and out of costume, what will he think of this? Will the love he professes to feel last to bared skin, or after, when his desires have been sated? Will this end like all the others, with Ohno married off to carry on the family name and Nino only a memory? It does not bear thinking of-he has already told Ohno he loves him, there is no going back now. At least they will have tonight.
Nino rinses the last of the soap from his body, then climbs into the tub and lets himself sink up to his neck in the nearly scalding water.
When he comes back to his room later, wrapped loosely in a yukata, he finds Ohno there.
Ohno is seated on the floor by the softly burning brazier, flipping through one of the books of print illustrations Nino had left lying around. He looks up when Nino enters, face golden in the lamplight. His eyes find Nino’s after a slow, appreciative journey over the rest of his body, and he smiles, then stands and crosses to where Nino has paused by the door.
It is so quiet, and Nino is so aware of every sound Ohno makes: the slide of his stocking feet over the tatami, the breath he takes through his nose when he is close enough to Nino to reach out and touch him. His little sigh, when his fingertips come to rest lightly on Nino’s cheek.
“Is the water still warm?” Ohno asks, and for a moment Nino has no idea what he is talking about-he has forgotten everything except Ohno, here, touching him, with only a few thin layers of cotton separating them-but then he realizes: the bath.
“Yes,” he stammers. “Go ahead.”
Ohno smiles again and, after another long moment, steps around Nino toward the bathing room.
Alone again, Nino slips his legs under the kotatsu to wait. He picks up the print booklet Ohno was looking at, but cannot concentrate on it. In an effort to calm his nerves, he puts his head down on the table and closes his eyes. Outside, a light rain has begun to fall-Nino can hear it against the roof, dripping from the eaves-and though he had thought himself wound too tightly to relax very far, the sound of the rain, or the warmth of the kotatsu, something must lull him to sleep. Suddenly Ohno is shaking him gently by the shoulder as Nino blinks back to wakefulness.
“Oh,” Nino mumbles, mouth still thick with sleep, “you’re back.”
“Yes,” Ohno agrees on a grin. “Are you tired? Would you like to sleep?”
“Oh, no!” Nino protests immediately. He sits up too fast, makes himself dizzy, but Ohno catches him with an arm at his shoulders. “No, I-I can sleep…later.”
“You’re sure?” Ohno asks, a trace of concern in his features, and Nino loves him a little more because he is sure Ohno would go straight to bed with no protest, if that was what Nino wished.
“I am sure,” Nino says. Ohno’s expression brightens, and Nino takes the hand Ohno offers him and is pulled to his feet. Ohno begins to walk them backwards, towards the futon, but his eyes are roving hungrily over Nino’s face, his body, and before they are even halfway across the room, Ohno slows, and then stops, completely distracted.
“I,” Ohno begins, and his hands alight on the knot of Nino’s obi. “May I look at you?”
Nino feels himself flush, and can only nod silently in response. Ohno begins to work the obi loose, but before it can fall away, Nino reaches forward and takes Ohno’s face in his hands, kisses him again just…just in case. Ohno returns the kiss tenderly, carefully, but he is determined-the obi comes undone and drops to the floor with a soft sound. Then Ohno’s hands are sliding over Nino’s chest under the yukata, up over his shoulders, and Nino lowers his arms and lets the garment fall.
Ohno lingers on the kiss for another moment, moves his hands down Nino’s arms until their fingers intertwine, then steps back to look at him. Ohno’s eyes wander all over Nino’s body, across his shoulders and arms, down his chest, ribs, stomach, his hips and his half-hard cock, down along his thighs all the way to his ankles and toes. Ohno seems intent on memorizing every inch of Nino’s skin, and somehow, rather than feeling exposed and embarrassed, Nino feels something more like relief. This is all of him, shed of the last of his finery, and Ohno has seen it and looks nothing but pleased.
“Ohno,” Nino murmurs, pulling the other man’s gaze back up to his face. As soon as their eyes meet, Ohno is leaning back in, one hand coming up to cup the back of Nino’s head, but he pauses with their lips just brushing.
“Will you call me ‘Satoshi’, now?” he whispers. “Surely we are past all formality.”
“I-” Nino fights to keep his eyes open, to meet Ohno’s stare. “If you-”
“I do,” Ohno says immediately, an echo of the first time he answered that question.
“Then-Satoshi,” Nino says on a sigh, and the rest is lost into Ohno’s mouth.
Ohno’s kisses now are more like the first time-fiercer, more insistent-and his hands are everywhere. When Ohno’s mouth moves to Nino’s neck, his jaw, Ohno’s hands smooth over his chest, palms flat and a little rough across Nino’s nipples. Ohno’s fingers count Nino’s ribs, trace their shape around to his spine and trail down, down, nails scraping over his hips and the soft flesh of his backside. Nino shivers and whines, writhes under Ohno’s touch and feels himself become fully hard faster than he has since he was a teenager. He is weak in the knees, already, and needs something to hold onto.
Ohno’s hair is still a little wet from the bath, but soft when Nino buries his fingers in it, and still thick with the scent of camellia oil. Nino fists his hands in it as he has wanted to do for so long, and is rewarded with a low moan from Ohno, voiced right against his collarbone. But Ohno seems to get distracted again, this time by the dip of Nino’s lower back, the hollows of his hips, touching everything but what Nino wants touched most.
“Please,” Nino hears himself say, needier than he would like to sound by half.
“Hmm?” Ohno says against Nino’s shoulder. “Ah. Yes.”
And then, in one graceful movement Ohno is dropping to his knees. His hands come around to splay against Nino’s hipbones, and he looks up at Nino-cheeks flushed, mouth wet and pink, wetter when his tongue darts out to lick his lips. Nino can only give a vague “oh” of surprise and his hands, still tangled in Ohno’s hair, clench. Ohno’s mouth falls open a little farther, his head goes back, pulling the muscles in his neck taut, and he lets out the most beautiful sound of arousal Nino has ever heard.
“Oh,” Nino says again, and then Ohno’s mouth is on him.
It is clear that Ohno has not had much practice in this, but what he lacks in experience he makes up for in enthusiasm. He tastes Nino slowly at first, adjusting, finding a rhythm. Soon he is moving faster, taking Nino deeper with each bob of his head, and Nino can only try to stay on his feet and not come right away. Without meaning to, he tightens his hands again in Ohno’s hair, and this time when Ohno moans Nino can feel it all up and down his cock, and it is too much.
“Ah-” He does not have time for words, time to give Ohno any other warning, but Ohno does not seem to mind, and just holds Nino steady as stars explode behind his eyelids.
When he his spent, Nino kneels down with Ohno-drops like a sack, more like-and after a moment of fumbling, finds Ohno’s lips for another kiss. It is a shock of the most pleasant kind to taste himself on Ohno’s tongue.
“I’m sorry,” Ohno says when Nino lets him up for air.
“You’re sorry?” Nino replies incredulously. “Whatever for?”
“I was impatient,” Ohno says, although he is grinning in such a way that Nino begins to think his apology was not very sincere. Then one of his hands drifts to Nino’s softening cock. “But…are you spent for the night, do you think?”
Nino is very sure that, with a little more attention from Ohno, he could be roused quite easily for another attempt, but he is confused. “Why…?”
Ohno searches Nino’s face, and breathes out a slow breath. “I want you to take me, Nino.”
Nino feels his head spin, and the blood already pooling in his groin again. He had not expected this, had always assumed that Ohno would be like all the other men who came to him after hours at the theater-but then, Ohno has always undone all of Nino’s expectations.
Nino leans in for another kiss, a little harder, a little rougher, and when he pulls back he says, “Kazunari.”
Ohno only blinks in confusion.
“My real name,” Nino clarifies. “It’s Kazunari.”
A slow smile spreads over Ohno’s face then, and when he says Nino’s name it is like a prayer, like a promise, “Kazunari.”
They finally make their way to the futon, then, and Nino takes his time removing Ohno’s yukata. The skin beneath is fair, changes from gold to peach in sharp lines where the sun has not managed to leave its mark. Nino tastes the different shades of Ohno’s skin, runs his hands over it appreciatively as Ohno’s robe falls away completely. Nino feels another sharp spike of arousal in his gut to see how hard Ohno is already.
“Have you ever been with a man?” Nino asks, laying Ohno back on the futon.
“When I was younger,” Ohno says, eyes rapt on Nino. Not surprising, but Nino feels a small pang of disappointment that he will not be Ohno’s first.
Lifetimes ago, it seems, Nino had placed a little jar of oil by the bed, and he uncorks it now and spreads a generous amount over his fingers. He lays down next to Ohno and sees how the other man is breathing in short, anxious pants. After a lingering kiss, Nino situates himself between Ohno’s legs-and oh, they fall open so easily, so eagerly-and leans down to take Ohno in his mouth and return some of the favor Ohno did him earlier.
Ohno’s reaction is immediate, and noisy, though he tries to muffle his cries behind his hand. Nino slides his slick fingers down the inside of Ohno’s thigh while he works, then down between his legs and gently against the tight ring of muscle he finds there. The pitch of Ohno’s moans changes just a little, needy, and Nino slips a finger inside him.
It takes a little time, a little patience, but before long Ohno is pushing back against Nino’s fingers-two, then three moving slowly to stretch him-and whimpering a low litany of “please, please, please”. Nino is already fully hard again, and after slicking himself with the oil, Nino positions himself at Ohno’s entrance. He does not even have time to ask Ohno if he is ready before Ohno is wrapping his legs high and tight around Nino’s waist and pulling him forward.
Nino means to go slow, he means to be careful and make it last, but Ohno is as hot as a furnace and is making such wonderful, beautiful noises. And then, when they have reached a frantic pitch, when Nino is at the edge and searching desperately for his second release, Ohno brings his mouth close to Nino’s ear. His voice is a breaking, breathless whisper.
“I love you, Kazunari,” he says.
And Nino falls.
*
The rain starts to come harder as the coals in the brazier burn low. Nino is tangled around Ohno under the heavy futon blanket, and even in the downpour he can hear each breath Ohno takes.
“Why were you so afraid of this?” Ohno asks. His eyes are closed, his voice a sleepy murmur, and still Nino can only answer him with the truth.
“Not of this,” he says quietly. “Of the afterwards. So we are lovers now, and so we may be for a time. But how long can we keep it? How can I know you will not be taken from me by obligation, by another fancy, by…”
Nino runs out of words, but Ohno does not answer right away. Nino wonders if he has fallen asleep. But then his brows furrow and his eyes open slowly-Nino can just see the glimmer of them in the darkness.
“I would not promise you a lifetime when I have no means of guaranteeing that promise.” Ohno’s hands, on Nino’s back, move up and down thoughtfully. “If I loved a woman, if I were married, it would be no different-there is always a chance of good times, and a chance of them ending. But I love you now. And that is all. It is enough, for me.”
Nino feels himself smile, though there is a certain ache in his chest.
“Then it shall be enough for me, too,” Nino says, and presses the smile into Ohno’s skin.
Ohno gives a low laugh and curls into Nino’s chest. Nino falls asleep, content.
*
The final show of the season is a rousing success. It plays three times before the winter light is too weak to carry on, though the crowd bellows for an encore, another song, another scene. The ratings books are filled with rave reviews of the Arashibana’s new cast members, most especially Ohno, and bursting with predictions of what there is to look forward to after the New Year’s holidays are over.
When the year turns and the bells toll all across the city-at Gion, at Yasaka Shrine, at Kinkakuji-Nino stands with Ohno on the veranda by the garden. Outside the walls, the sounds of celebration echo in the streets, but everything within the house lies quiet. Snow has fallen, and the ground and the trees are blanketed in crystalline white, casting everything in sharp shadows like a woodblock print before the ink has been set.
Ohno’s hand is warm in Nino’s, though their breath rises in white clouds. It is the last time they will be alone until the holidays are over-tomorrow will begin days spent with family, visiting shrines, and making the rounds at all the lavish parties and dinners the theater’s members and patrons will be holding. It is the last time, but strangely Nino feels no desperation, no need to rush or fall immediately to love-making. This stillness, too, is precious.
After a time, they go back inside. Nino lights a brazier and sets it near the bed while Ohno closes the up the room against the chill. When they crawl into the futon, Nino throws their kimonos over top of them like lovers used to do, and they laugh together as they drift to sleep.
The next morning, Nino wakes with the dawn bell. Ohno is there next to him, his eyes just coming open on a soft smile.
And it is enough.
Footnotes!
- kabuki: the wiki article! this article will also tell you what a hanamichi is.
- onnagata: the wiki article; Bando Tamasaburo’s website - check this out for a lovely gallery. Tamasaburo is currently one of the leading onnagata in kabuki.
- seiza: the name for the way Japanese people traditional sit on the floor, with their legs folded under them.
- tonsure: in Japanese, chonmage - aka, that same sexy haircut that nino had in Ooku.
- Jun’s role: as a side note which may be interesting to no one but me, as the owner of the theater, Jun would have been something like the producer, with a hand not just in the organization of the plays themselves, but the advertising, funding, and everything else that went into putting on a performance.
- the “-za”: this is a suffix almost every theater in Japan has on its name, written with the kanji 座, “to sit”.
- iroko: literally a “sexy boy”, aka a young male prostitute. many kabuki performers began their careers this way, especially onnagata.
- karuta: wiki - a really hard card game that involves matching lines of famous poetry.
- shamisen: a three-stringed instrument not unlike a guitar or banjo. whoever wrote this wiki article was really dedicated.
- shoji doors: sliding doors covered in (often) rice paper.
- dates: in the edo period, Japan was still on the lunar calendar, so the months mentioned in this story are actually about a month earlier than the ones we use - e.g. the “seventh month” is closer to June than July.
- the onnagata’s cap: since it was illegal in the edo period for men not to shave the tops of their heads, onnagata who wanted to look more feminine would wear little bits of cloth-usually purple or dark blue-over their bald spot.
- happi coats: there is a wiki article, but something it fails to mention is that very simple versions of these were also commonly worn by peasants back in the day.
- zabuton: a useful pillow for sitting on :D
- hakama: wikipedia’s lettin’ me down - there aren’t any good pictures of men’s hakama in that article at all.
- kotatsu: i think we probably all know what a kotatsu is, but they have had these in Japan forever - the older versions had, as many nice restaurants still do, a depression in the floor under the table where the heater was and where one could place their feet.
- The Greengrocer’s Daughter: is a real play! the dialogue in the fic, however, is complete fiction ;p
OMG all the footnotes. all the coding @_@ GOODNIGHT EVERYBODY!