SERIES: In the Dark (2.)
Title: In the Dark
Pair: Ohmiya (Juntoshi, Ohba, Ohno/strangers, implied Nino/strangers)
Genre: Slice of life/drama/high school au
Rated: PG-13
Warnings for: Stalking behavior. Consensual casual physical exchanges between strangers. Questionable morals in general.
Summary: On assignment for the school paper, an apathetic photographer follows a delinquent baseball player and gets caught.
The door of room 2-B opened and Ohno found himself face to face with an outrageously handsome kid with thick eyebrows and a roguish white streak in his hair near his ear. Ohno couldn’t help but be drawn into his deep, soulful eyes.
“You must be new.” The handsome boy murmured in a sultry low voice over an amused half smirk.
It was undoubtedly the right place. Ohno could even hear Nino’s voice coming from inside. But the kid with the white streak wouldn’t move. He just stood there, a hand on either side of the door frame, as if waiting for something.
“Uhh…”
“Can’t get in without the password.”
Ohno swallowed hard. Nino didn’t say anything about a password. “Uh…”
“Who is it, Matsujun?”
“A new member I guess?” Matsujun leaned on the door frame, cooly tilting his head without ever looking away from Ohno.
“Oh-chan?” Nino called, unseen from inside.
“Yes.” Ohno said, relieved he hadn’t been forgotten, and strangely pleased he’d been given a nickname.
“I taught you the password, remember?”
Ohno remembered. Ohno remembered that Nino never taught him anything like a password, or even anything like a secret handshake. The only thing Nino taught him was-
Matsujun smirked at him, looking him over. Waiting.
Ohno cleared his throat. He tried not to blush. He licked his lips. Rubbed his nose. Scratched the hair behind his ear. All the while Matsujun’s smirk grew bigger.
“Aren’t you out of my league?” Ohno asked, with a half panicked, half nervous smile.
“Don’t worry, we’re all the same here. It’s not like I’m from some bourgeoisie family across the river.” Matsujun laughed, and so did a few of the nearby people inside. Ohno’s smile stiffened. He didn’t know if his family was bourgeoisie or not, but it didn’t sound like a good thing.
“Since you’re new, I’ll go easy on you.” The smirk softened into a smile. One of the ringed hands that had been holding the doorframe moved to Ohno’s chin. It was exactly what Nino had done, except very different. Matujun’s hand was bigger, and his hold was firmer. The kiss that followed was entirely different also. Just a brief press of lips rather than a tongue tango. But even from just the brief touch of his lips, Ohno could tell Matsujun must be an excellent kisser. Maybe not the kind that made people see stars for days like Nino, but the perfect, beautiful ones you see on tv dramas.
“You are way out of my league.” Ohno said, matter-of-factly.
“I’m not.” He grinned good-naturedly, “But he is. Take my advice: Stop yourself now before you fall too hard.”
“It’s enough for me just to be in his fanclub.” Ohno said. He had decided on the way over that it would be better to pretend he was actually Nino’s fan. He didn’t really have a reason for coming anyway, other than personal curiosity.
“He does like the humble worshipers.” Matsujun chuckled, and finally stepped aside, wrapping an arm around Ohno’s shoulder to lead him inside. “I swear this club gets more cult-like every day.”
There were more fanclub members than Ohno had expected. At least twenty. There weren’t enough seats for everyone in the small apartment. People were talking and mingling in a fashion more like that of a party than a fanclub meeting.
He spotted Nino immediately. Nino was lying on the couch, but not exactly. He was sprawled over the laps of three different people who were actually the ones sitting on the couch, and he was in the middle of telling some exciting baseball story. While he was talking, he caught Ohno’s eye and waved, and then continued the story.
Matsujun took it upon himself to begin introducing Ohno to people, but Ohno didn’t really pay attention. He wasn’t good with names anyway. No one seemed particularly interested in him either, and he was never asked which school he was from, for which he was grateful. Everyone seemed distracted by something. Ohno was pretty sure that something was Nino.
To Ohno’s great surprise he didn’t see a trace of alcohol anywhere. He’d never been to a dry party before. He didn’t know they were possible. No one was smoking anything either, legal substance or otherwise. Although, he had to remind himself, this wasn’t a party but a fanclub meeting.
“We took vows.” Matsujun said, as if reading his mind. “No one does anything remotely illegal until the tournament is over. I won’t even allow club members near cough syrup. The last thing any of us want is to get Nino kicked off the team. If someone slipped up and took a picture of us doing something stupid with their cell phone or something, it would be over. You’re under those rules too now, so take care you don’t break them.”
Matsujun gave the warning easily but with a subtle hint that the person breaking the rules would be answerable to him. Ohno silently thanked every god of every religion he could think of that he hadn’t brought his camera just in case it was against the rules too.
“Then…This isn’t…all that we’re going to do tonight…is it?” Ohno asked Matsujun, who was still hanging on his shoulder.
There was a knock on the door and Matsujun left to answer it instead. Ohno stood awkwardly where he was left in the middle of the room, alternating between staring at Nino and watching as Matsujun opened the door.
“Aiba! You’re late. Again.”
“Sorry, part time job and all that. Has it started yet?” Hastily the recently arrived Aiba leaned forward and gave Matsujun a kiss. Ohno was struck by how normal it was for them, with Aiba slipping inside and Jun shutting the door as if nothing special had happened. Now he felt embarrassed for making such a big scene.
“Not yet, but we’re about to. Come meet the new kid.” Matsujun led Aiba to Ohno. In the background, someone was turning music up. It was the kind of music with a boom-boom beat that Sho always played in the newspaper club room, to pump up the staff when really he only pumped up himself and annoyed everyone else.
“This is the one Nino calls Oh-chan.” Matsujun was smirking again.
“Oh-chan! We’ve heard so much about you! Is it true you stalked him for three hours without realizing that he knew you were following him?”
“Um.” Ohno didn’t think it had been three hours. He didn’t even think it had been thirty minutes.
“You don’t beat Jun’s record though. When he was stalking Nino, he ended up riding the Yamanote loop three times before realizing Nino was leading him around.”
“Would you shut up? It’s about to start.” Matsujun slapped Aiba upside the head, “And it was only once.”
Ohno wondered if Nino’s fanclub consisted entirely of friendly stalkers. If so it was officially the weirdest club he had ever been in. And Ohno had been in ‘Bruce Lee Films Re-enactors’ club for three years in junior high.
Then the lights went out.
It was pitch black except for the light coming in from under the door that led outside, and a couple of ‘power on’ lights belonging to electronics here and there.
“You know what this is, right?” Matsujun murmured in his ear. Much, much closer than Ohno remembered him standing a minute ago. All around them came the wet, slurpy sounds of people making out.
“The weirdest fanclub I’ve ever been in.” Ohno replied.
“Not scared, are you?” Matsujun’s hand found his arm, and blindly but skillfully worked its way up to Ohno’s neck.
Ohno thought about it. He should be scared. He was in a dark room full of people from a high school with a bad reputation, in the middle of a make-out party. And somewhere in the blackness of the room was Nino.
Ohno still remembered the kiss at the gate from a week ago. If he could find Nino again, if he could kiss him again…. “I’m not scared.”
“Good.”
Matsujun kissed him. Just as Ohno predicted, he was excellent and experienced. But it wasn’t as hot as he had thought it was going to be. Instead, it was the most precise kiss Ohno had ever experienced, with just enough attention to all of the good spots in his mouth. Except it was so methodological it bordered boring.
They ran out of air and broke. Three seconds later someone else was kissing him. Aiba, Ohno guessed, just because of the direction of the first touch of his hands came from where he remembered Aiba standing before the lights went out. Aiba’s kiss was the exact opposite of Jun’s. Where there had been a measured, careful attention, Aiba was all over the place all at once. It was like having the tail of a live fish flapping around in his mouth. Not bad by any means, but just not to Ohno’s liking.
They broke, and it was someone else. Not Matsujun or Aiba, but someone else who tasted of cinnamon breath mints. And then there was someone else who like to bite. And someone else who favored pecks over deep kisses.
Curiously there seemed to be an unspoken, universal rule that hands remain above the waist. Even when someone brushed his leg or back side the touch never lingered or else moved quickly to find safer ground. Ohno didn’t understand it, but he followed suit anyway. He had a feeling Matsujun was the enforcer of that rule also.
After a while Ohno didn’t know where he was in the room anymore. At some point he was against a wall, and then another he was sitting on something, though if it was a chair or a table, he had no clue. He couldn’t really feel his lips or his tongue anymore, but he felt loose and good.
And then he found Nino.
He knew it was Nino immediately, but only because of his small, squishy but baseball-calloused hands that were finding their way up Ohno’s arm to his shoulder. To his neck. His chin.
Ohno inhaled sharply.
Nino kissed him.
It wasn’t the same kiss as the one Nino gave him against the school gate.
It was a thousand, ten thousand times better.
Maybe it was because he’d just made out so many times with less talented kissers that it just seemed better. But it was like Nino could read his mind. Every little incline of the head, or turn of the tongue was simultaneously matched. It was smooth and controlled but every so often, before Ohno could get bored, Nino would change his pattern and do something new. With the first kiss Ohno thought he had seen stars, but this. This was like seeing galaxies. The universe. Beyond the universe.
It was a kiss Ohno wanted to live every day for the rest of his life. If they could just keep going on forever, and then after forever.
Nino suddenly stopped, and shouted, “Lights!” before Ohno’s senses had time to crash back to earth.
Someone found the light switch, and everyone groaned as their eyes readjusted to the sudden brightness.
When they did, everyone stared at Nino. And at Ohno who was with Nino.
Ohno stared at Nino, blushing but pleased it was Nino as he had expected.
“Are you kidding?” Someone said.
“The new guy?” Someone else added.
“Oh-chan, huh.” Nino said, rubbing his chin with his whole palm, thinking.
Looking around nervously, Ohno swallowed, aware of and uncomfortable with the attention. Everyone was staring at him alone now. Even Nino.
“Oh-chan, huh.” Nino said again, now sliding his arm around Ohno’s shoulders, and walking him towards the door. People parted, making room as they walked by. Matsujun opened the door, then stood aside.
“I’m getting kicked out?” Ohno asked, with difficulty. He’d been making out for so long it felt weird to use his mouth for speech instead.
“Come back tomorrow. 6 am.” Nino said.
“…I don’t really do early mornings….”
Nino laughed. “Ok, pick me up after practice tomorrow afternoon.”
“Um. Ok.”
“See you then.” Nino smiled again, and kissed him on the cheek before going back inside.
“Why?”Ohno asked, his palm hugging where Nino’s lips had graced his cheek. But the only person left to hear the question was Matsujun, who was closing the door.
“Well you two are going out now, so it’s only normal that you pick him up. Be safe walking home.”
“Yeah, ok.”
Matsujun smirked again, and closed the door. Ohno stared at it for a moment. And then, bewildered, he walked home.
Pair: Ohmiya (Juntoshi, Ohba, Ohno/strangers, implied Nino/strangers)
Genre: Slice of life/drama/high school au
Rated: PG-13
Warnings for: Stalking behavior. Consensual casual physical exchanges between strangers. Questionable morals in general.
Summary: On assignment for the school paper, an apathetic photographer follows a delinquent baseball player and gets caught.
The door of room 2-B opened and Ohno found himself face to face with an outrageously handsome kid with thick eyebrows and a roguish white streak in his hair near his ear. Ohno couldn’t help but be drawn into his deep, soulful eyes.
“You must be new.” The handsome boy murmured in a sultry low voice over an amused half smirk.
It was undoubtedly the right place. Ohno could even hear Nino’s voice coming from inside. But the kid with the white streak wouldn’t move. He just stood there, a hand on either side of the door frame, as if waiting for something.
“Uhh…”
“Can’t get in without the password.”
Ohno swallowed hard. Nino didn’t say anything about a password. “Uh…”
“Who is it, Matsujun?”
“A new member I guess?” Matsujun leaned on the door frame, cooly tilting his head without ever looking away from Ohno.
“Oh-chan?” Nino called, unseen from inside.
“Yes.” Ohno said, relieved he hadn’t been forgotten, and strangely pleased he’d been given a nickname.
“I taught you the password, remember?”
Ohno remembered. Ohno remembered that Nino never taught him anything like a password, or even anything like a secret handshake. The only thing Nino taught him was-
Matsujun smirked at him, looking him over. Waiting.
Ohno cleared his throat. He tried not to blush. He licked his lips. Rubbed his nose. Scratched the hair behind his ear. All the while Matsujun’s smirk grew bigger.
“Aren’t you out of my league?” Ohno asked, with a half panicked, half nervous smile.
“Don’t worry, we’re all the same here. It’s not like I’m from some bourgeoisie family across the river.” Matsujun laughed, and so did a few of the nearby people inside. Ohno’s smile stiffened. He didn’t know if his family was bourgeoisie or not, but it didn’t sound like a good thing.
“Since you’re new, I’ll go easy on you.” The smirk softened into a smile. One of the ringed hands that had been holding the doorframe moved to Ohno’s chin. It was exactly what Nino had done, except very different. Matujun’s hand was bigger, and his hold was firmer. The kiss that followed was entirely different also. Just a brief press of lips rather than a tongue tango. But even from just the brief touch of his lips, Ohno could tell Matsujun must be an excellent kisser. Maybe not the kind that made people see stars for days like Nino, but the perfect, beautiful ones you see on tv dramas.
“You are way out of my league.” Ohno said, matter-of-factly.
“I’m not.” He grinned good-naturedly, “But he is. Take my advice: Stop yourself now before you fall too hard.”
“It’s enough for me just to be in his fanclub.” Ohno said. He had decided on the way over that it would be better to pretend he was actually Nino’s fan. He didn’t really have a reason for coming anyway, other than personal curiosity.
“He does like the humble worshipers.” Matsujun chuckled, and finally stepped aside, wrapping an arm around Ohno’s shoulder to lead him inside. “I swear this club gets more cult-like every day.”
There were more fanclub members than Ohno had expected. At least twenty. There weren’t enough seats for everyone in the small apartment. People were talking and mingling in a fashion more like that of a party than a fanclub meeting.
He spotted Nino immediately. Nino was lying on the couch, but not exactly. He was sprawled over the laps of three different people who were actually the ones sitting on the couch, and he was in the middle of telling some exciting baseball story. While he was talking, he caught Ohno’s eye and waved, and then continued the story.
Matsujun took it upon himself to begin introducing Ohno to people, but Ohno didn’t really pay attention. He wasn’t good with names anyway. No one seemed particularly interested in him either, and he was never asked which school he was from, for which he was grateful. Everyone seemed distracted by something. Ohno was pretty sure that something was Nino.
To Ohno’s great surprise he didn’t see a trace of alcohol anywhere. He’d never been to a dry party before. He didn’t know they were possible. No one was smoking anything either, legal substance or otherwise. Although, he had to remind himself, this wasn’t a party but a fanclub meeting.
“We took vows.” Matsujun said, as if reading his mind. “No one does anything remotely illegal until the tournament is over. I won’t even allow club members near cough syrup. The last thing any of us want is to get Nino kicked off the team. If someone slipped up and took a picture of us doing something stupid with their cell phone or something, it would be over. You’re under those rules too now, so take care you don’t break them.”
Matsujun gave the warning easily but with a subtle hint that the person breaking the rules would be answerable to him. Ohno silently thanked every god of every religion he could think of that he hadn’t brought his camera just in case it was against the rules too.
“Then…This isn’t…all that we’re going to do tonight…is it?” Ohno asked Matsujun, who was still hanging on his shoulder.
There was a knock on the door and Matsujun left to answer it instead. Ohno stood awkwardly where he was left in the middle of the room, alternating between staring at Nino and watching as Matsujun opened the door.
“Aiba! You’re late. Again.”
“Sorry, part time job and all that. Has it started yet?” Hastily the recently arrived Aiba leaned forward and gave Matsujun a kiss. Ohno was struck by how normal it was for them, with Aiba slipping inside and Jun shutting the door as if nothing special had happened. Now he felt embarrassed for making such a big scene.
“Not yet, but we’re about to. Come meet the new kid.” Matsujun led Aiba to Ohno. In the background, someone was turning music up. It was the kind of music with a boom-boom beat that Sho always played in the newspaper club room, to pump up the staff when really he only pumped up himself and annoyed everyone else.
“This is the one Nino calls Oh-chan.” Matsujun was smirking again.
“Oh-chan! We’ve heard so much about you! Is it true you stalked him for three hours without realizing that he knew you were following him?”
“Um.” Ohno didn’t think it had been three hours. He didn’t even think it had been thirty minutes.
“You don’t beat Jun’s record though. When he was stalking Nino, he ended up riding the Yamanote loop three times before realizing Nino was leading him around.”
“Would you shut up? It’s about to start.” Matsujun slapped Aiba upside the head, “And it was only once.”
Ohno wondered if Nino’s fanclub consisted entirely of friendly stalkers. If so it was officially the weirdest club he had ever been in. And Ohno had been in ‘Bruce Lee Films Re-enactors’ club for three years in junior high.
Then the lights went out.
It was pitch black except for the light coming in from under the door that led outside, and a couple of ‘power on’ lights belonging to electronics here and there.
“You know what this is, right?” Matsujun murmured in his ear. Much, much closer than Ohno remembered him standing a minute ago. All around them came the wet, slurpy sounds of people making out.
“The weirdest fanclub I’ve ever been in.” Ohno replied.
“Not scared, are you?” Matsujun’s hand found his arm, and blindly but skillfully worked its way up to Ohno’s neck.
Ohno thought about it. He should be scared. He was in a dark room full of people from a high school with a bad reputation, in the middle of a make-out party. And somewhere in the blackness of the room was Nino.
Ohno still remembered the kiss at the gate from a week ago. If he could find Nino again, if he could kiss him again…. “I’m not scared.”
“Good.”
Matsujun kissed him. Just as Ohno predicted, he was excellent and experienced. But it wasn’t as hot as he had thought it was going to be. Instead, it was the most precise kiss Ohno had ever experienced, with just enough attention to all of the good spots in his mouth. Except it was so methodological it bordered boring.
They ran out of air and broke. Three seconds later someone else was kissing him. Aiba, Ohno guessed, just because of the direction of the first touch of his hands came from where he remembered Aiba standing before the lights went out. Aiba’s kiss was the exact opposite of Jun’s. Where there had been a measured, careful attention, Aiba was all over the place all at once. It was like having the tail of a live fish flapping around in his mouth. Not bad by any means, but just not to Ohno’s liking.
They broke, and it was someone else. Not Matsujun or Aiba, but someone else who tasted of cinnamon breath mints. And then there was someone else who like to bite. And someone else who favored pecks over deep kisses.
Curiously there seemed to be an unspoken, universal rule that hands remain above the waist. Even when someone brushed his leg or back side the touch never lingered or else moved quickly to find safer ground. Ohno didn’t understand it, but he followed suit anyway. He had a feeling Matsujun was the enforcer of that rule also.
After a while Ohno didn’t know where he was in the room anymore. At some point he was against a wall, and then another he was sitting on something, though if it was a chair or a table, he had no clue. He couldn’t really feel his lips or his tongue anymore, but he felt loose and good.
And then he found Nino.
He knew it was Nino immediately, but only because of his small, squishy but baseball-calloused hands that were finding their way up Ohno’s arm to his shoulder. To his neck. His chin.
Ohno inhaled sharply.
Nino kissed him.
It wasn’t the same kiss as the one Nino gave him against the school gate.
It was a thousand, ten thousand times better.
Maybe it was because he’d just made out so many times with less talented kissers that it just seemed better. But it was like Nino could read his mind. Every little incline of the head, or turn of the tongue was simultaneously matched. It was smooth and controlled but every so often, before Ohno could get bored, Nino would change his pattern and do something new. With the first kiss Ohno thought he had seen stars, but this. This was like seeing galaxies. The universe. Beyond the universe.
It was a kiss Ohno wanted to live every day for the rest of his life. If they could just keep going on forever, and then after forever.
Nino suddenly stopped, and shouted, “Lights!” before Ohno’s senses had time to crash back to earth.
Someone found the light switch, and everyone groaned as their eyes readjusted to the sudden brightness.
When they did, everyone stared at Nino. And at Ohno who was with Nino.
Ohno stared at Nino, blushing but pleased it was Nino as he had expected.
“Are you kidding?” Someone said.
“The new guy?” Someone else added.
“Oh-chan, huh.” Nino said, rubbing his chin with his whole palm, thinking.
Looking around nervously, Ohno swallowed, aware of and uncomfortable with the attention. Everyone was staring at him alone now. Even Nino.
“Oh-chan, huh.” Nino said again, now sliding his arm around Ohno’s shoulders, and walking him towards the door. People parted, making room as they walked by. Matsujun opened the door, then stood aside.
“I’m getting kicked out?” Ohno asked, with difficulty. He’d been making out for so long it felt weird to use his mouth for speech instead.
“Come back tomorrow. 6 am.” Nino said.
“…I don’t really do early mornings….”
Nino laughed. “Ok, pick me up after practice tomorrow afternoon.”
“Um. Ok.”
“See you then.” Nino smiled again, and kissed him on the cheek before going back inside.
“Why?”Ohno asked, his palm hugging where Nino’s lips had graced his cheek. But the only person left to hear the question was Matsujun, who was closing the door.
“Well you two are going out now, so it’s only normal that you pick him up. Be safe walking home.”
“Yeah, ok.”
Matsujun smirked again, and closed the door. Ohno stared at it for a moment. And then, bewildered, he walked home.