fic for lysanderpuck (2/2)
For: lysanderpuck
From: calerine
Part 1
vii.
Two things happen in the week after Kitagawa’s visit:
(1) Sho starts bringing Shii-chan on jobs with them because no one wants to stay at home while everyone’s out “fighting evil”.
(2) Nino wears his skirts and dresses everyday.7
The former was admittedly, expected. Everyone likes Shii-chan well enough, but no one’s about to volunteer for Baby Duty and miss out. The latter, too. Summer is fast running out and late August this year is warm enough, especially after days of that insistent drizzle that makes Tokyo look like the city in Blade Runner, except not so bloodthirsty. (Jun would argue otherwise.)
On Tuesday, Nino and Sho trek out to the supermarket for groceries. They buy enough pork belly and kimchi to feed an army and come home to find that Aiba and Jun have set up the clay barbeque on the roof. It sits in the centre of a circle of beach chairs, surrounded by beautifully plated ingredients, courtesy of Jun’s theatrical flair and obsessive love of tiny things.
While Jun and Sho set up, Nino plants his elbows on the railings and breathes in the rain-enriched earth. The city sprawls out, as if one of those overly expensive lush carpets rolling out from under his feet. Autumns in Chiba were always quieter than this, slower and filled with dwindling afternoon trips to the beach, warm sand between his toes while the approaching dusk was cold where it kissed his cheeks, Jun yelling laughter into the wind as they raced back to make curfew.
This afternoon, Koenji is alive. He drinks in the clear blue skies and Maru’s laundry waving in the sun next door, jeans making dark puddles on the concrete.
At ground level, there are people hurrying around, large enough for Nino to discern their clothing choices but tiny enough for him not to hate. Someone with bright green hair and a pink dress, a couple gazing so deeply into each other’s eyes that they’re blocking up half the pavement. A kid emerges from the kissaten next door with a muffin, and Yasu rushes out to hand her napkins. Aiba, fixing one of the ferns on the shopfront, waves and Nino hears talk about purple roses and Yoko’s bicycle. He closes his eyes, breathes out. It’s taken him a long time but like this, Tokyo is bearable.
Across the street, on their own roof, Kotaki is dozing on a rickety sun chair, sunglasses sliding off the tip of his nose. Next to him, Ryusei has a paperback spread over his face and another open on his chest. Nino rests his cheek on the open palm of his hand and smiles, pictures them both afterwards, so tanned their customers might lose sight of them during service. Perhaps Kotaki will have tan lines in the shape of his sunglasses, and Shigeoka will call him Panda-pants again.
By the time Ohno gets home from his shift bearing day-old karaage bentos, a fire is roaring, white-hot charcoal crumbling apart in the white-hot heat. These days are growing shorter, but sunsets still streak candyfloss purple and pink across the sky.
As Ohno settles, Nino thrusts a sauce bowl filled with too much ponzu towards him. It sloshes, spills onto Ohno’s hand and he licks it up, crow’s feet deepening at that sour tang of citrus and salt, and Nino’s leg hooking over his knee. Then Nino watches as Ohno’s mirth slows, mellows out long into patient want when he leans over to kiss him. Under the hem of Nino’s skirt, Ohno’s hand inches upwards. Nino feels the ticklish scrape of his fingernails on the tender insides of his thigh. Just as he’s about to swat them away, the fingers stop.
Ohno exhales minutely and leaves them there. Nino knocks their knees together, looking up in time to find Ohno's face spreading slowly into a smile.
Across the grill, Sho’s already tipsy on cheap beer and good company. He’s got a fist clenched loosely around the buttons of Aiba’s striped cardigan and his head lolls against Aiba’s shoulder. Nino can’t make out what he’s laughing at, but snatches of a haiku by Aiba drift over, sounding like erotic shapes of beef - yet another masterpiece by The Ero-Master. (Once, he spotted a penis-shaped cloud and set it as his phone’s wallpaper for ages.)
Shii-chan sits on his lap, fidgeting and watching Jun with curious eyes. Her shaker rattles when she gnaws on it, and the sky is loud with Sho’s breathless guffaws. Jun, orange glow licking his nose, nudges a cabbage package of meat and rice into Ohno’s hands and squeezes Nino’s wrists as he passes. When he settles back into his seat, Shii-chan stretches out from Aiba’s hands, demanding to be held.
Nino’s fingers slip around his beer bottle, condensation peeling the label away from the glass. It’s room temperature now, from the day-warmed roof and his unexpected pensiveness, so he steals a gulp of Ohno’s and slides down in his seat. The fire’s heat is just on the side of too hot against his knees, everything smells like sizzling pork and burnt wood. He sets his eyes in the distance, on the tips of skyscrapers and the outlines of their points blurring against the blue sky, and waits for the night to swallow the sun.
viii.
Two days later, an Irregular comes to pick up flowers.8 She lurks outside on the shopfront for a while, considering one of the tiny plants, a tiny cacti in a red pot that fits within the palm of her hand.
Nino notices her from inside the shop. Her neon-coloured puffy vest would stand out anywhere, even Harajuku, let alone against their quiet street on this sluggish afternoon. He hums, continues pretending that he’s doing actual work and waits until she picks up the repotted broccoli flowers. At the counter, Aiba’s busy ringing up what seems to be someone’s lifetime supply of fertiliser, so Nino strides across the shop floor. He sticks his head out of the front door and grins. The bell tinkles merrily overhead.
“Hey, hey,” Becky sing-songs, trailing in after him, flowers and cactus balanced in each hand. Her long, long skirt swishes behind her, lends her an air of elegance that Nino would argue is completely unfounded.
“What can we do for you today?” He asks, as the customer at the counter leaves ladened with four bags of plant food. There’s another protocol entirely if the shop’s busy but it’s not today, in this lull that makes Nino sleepy and grateful for any little bit of excitement he can get.
Nino rounds the corner and bumps his hip against Aiba’s companionably.
“Hi Becky!” Aiba says, sounding pleasantly surprised. They usually only see her on delivery day but sometimes she comes in bearing news, and every single time, they end up relocating upstairs to play a few rounds of Unnecessarily Aggressive and Competitive Mario Kart. “What’s shaking?”
Becky's laughter rings out. “Aiba-chan, you’re never going to sound like a cowboy.” She slides her tiny cactus across the counter and fishes change out from her vest pocket, dropping hundred yen coins on the counter. “Just this please, aaaaand this.” From some other hidden pocket, she pulls out a slip of paper. It’s torn from her planner, the last week of May disappearing into jagged edges. There are prints of cheerful giraffes all around the border. “Overheard this on the comms last night, thought you’d like to know.”
Aiba reaches across to take it. Becky turns to Nino, smiling, warm and crinkly-eyed. He recalls the first time they met. Their bicycles had crashed into each other rounding a blind corner and she’d broken half of her delivery pots. Afterwards, Jun had commented that it sounded exactly like the cold open of a shoujo anime episode. Except instead of a summer romance, he ended up with another person in his life who keeps getting him to adopt stray kittens every other week.
“Our bedroom window has been looking a little sad lately,” she explains, gesturing to the little pot that Nino’s slipping into a fold-out cardboard holder. “Nino-chan, you look very pretty,” and Nino narrows his eyes. His skirt is navy blue with white stripes today, but nobody ever talks about it as casually as Becky does.
“Then you’d better name this cactus after me,” he says and out of the overwhelming kindness of his heart, gives her one of Yasu’s blueberry and white chocolate bars from under the counter. It’s still warm and for a moment, its sweet, fruity scent wafts up into the air. Nino rubs his finger tips together, the buttery grease sticks.
“Too late, I’m naming it after Shihori.” Becky tears off a corner and munches nosily. “She says hi by the way. She's working today. Ooh, Aiba-chan told me about Shii-chan!"
Before Nino can reply, Aiba exhales clumsily. It sounds too much like a sigh for Nino’s comfort. “Thank you, Becky-chan. I’ll talk to the rest.”
Becky nods, rolling back on her heels. Then she’s cocking her head mischieviously, cracking her knuckles and going, “I have all afternoon, Aiba-shi. I’m gonna crush you.”
Aiba narrows his eyes, and crosses the shop to turn the OPEN sign over. “We’ll see about that, Nino, be our referee.”
“I never said I wanted this job, and every time-” He grumbles but he’s already climbling the stairs, already making out above their routine pre-Mario-Kart thrash talk: Yamashita Hiroshi, Kitagawa Keiko looking into rumours of embezzlement.
ix.
They go that night, texting Kitagawa in advance to make sure.
None of them wanted to wait, especially if it might concern her and Shii-chan.
Sho had taken a look at the note and frowned.
“Do we all need to go? Will we get in the way?” He asked, checking the clock. He had a shift starting in six hours, but Aiba was already loading Ohno’s gun and Jun had already suited up, tucking a thermos of warmed milk into the place where his hip flask used to sit. It didn't quite fit, but it’ll do.
“After last week, it’s safer if four of us go. Sho-kun, you don’t have to,” Ohno answered, finally gathering all his knives in the same place. His movements, as he practised reaching for his holster, was still a little too stiff for Nino’s liking.
“Yeah, yeah. You say that, but every time I haven’t gone, someone comes back hurt from doing a stupid thing,” Sho grumbled, as he started systematically assembling his guns.
Nino wriggled into his black dress, commenting "Sho-kun, at this point there's no use denying that you're basically the baby-proof corners to our scary sharp edges," and made loud kissing noises until Sho chucked Nino's taser at his head.
Now they’re staring up at Kitagawa’s apartment building from the tinted windows of their van and Shii-chan’s trying her best to inhale every drop of milk what with the way she is sucking on the teat of her empty bottle. Nino double-checks the address on his phone, just to be sure.
Ohno twists around in the passenger’s seat, “who’s going to say what?”
Nino shrugs, “anybody, anything but Aiba-chan,” and Aiba lunges from the backseat to whack him over his head. “Last time you did that my arm was in a sling for three weeks, okay.”
Sho turns the engine off. The van chokes out a shudder. “This isn’t going to be a diplomatic discussion anyway, we just have to make sure we’re on the same page so we can protect her and Shii-chan better. The last time - I - I don't want to do it. Nino and Aiba-chan can be on talking duty instead. Jun-kun will be in charge of Shii-chan, Leader and I will take watch.”
Sho and Ohno check each other’s weapons before they get out, and Jun makes sure his gun is within easy reach even with Shii-chan hoisted on his back. They fall into their roles easily, silent other than the moment that the single, sad bonsai plant outside Kitagawa’s front door elicits mumbling from Aiba.
She lets them in, offers them tea and Jun, Nino and Aiba gather around her small coffee space while Sho and Ohno check the perimeter. It’s a tiny one-bedroom apartment, sparsely decorated and littered with haphazard, tilted stacks of books. When he sits, Nino finds a dangly earring under the table.
“Sorry for the mess; I’ve been working on a story, haven’t been home much,” she smiles, a little bashful. Jun lifts Shii-chan onto the ground so she sits between them, babbling and trying to grab hold the hem of Kitagawa’s long skirt.
“Aah, no no, we're sorry for the short notice, it’s just that we received something this afternoon that couldn’t be confirmed over the phone,” Aiba pulls out the note from Becky, smoothing it out on the coffee table, and it is as if everyone's holding their breath. When she looks up, her eyes are wide.
“I didn’t think -” she begins, then rushes to riffle through a box of unattached papers by her charging laptop. They go everywhere. “This story I’ve been working on - concerns embezzlement in the Diet, but I haven’t been able to link it to any specific perpetrators, they’ve been buried so deep within the system it’s hard to get a handle on -”
"You say Yamashita-san doesn't know where you live right?" Jun asks. He's frowning, has on his thinking face that Nino would recognise from miles away.
From across the room, Sho clears his throat, and with disbelief in his voice goes, "You're still poking around?" In a split second, Kitagawa's fingers go white around her papers and she exhales, so controlled the air whistles through her teeth.
"Sakurai-san, I understand your concern. But you can't deny that this is important." Her jaw is set, sudden tightness in the line of her back. The tension in the room is palpable, thick, like the beginning scent of a fire, sparks catching on dry wood and roaring to life. Jun stands to hand Shii-chan over to Sho, a hand on the back of his spine as Sho uncurls his fists and fits them around her instead, letting her tap her open palm on his forehead playfully. Nino watches as they retreat into the kitchen, Sho's head tilted downwards to listen.
Kitagawa exhales. "Sorry," she sighs, ducking her head in embarrassment, almost. "It's just - this is a lot. Everything - life." She meets Aiba's eyes, then Nino's, a self-deprecating noise escaping from her lips. Then she shakes herself visibly, "He doesn't know. At least I don't think so. I've taken great pains to keep it from him."
"Does he know you left her with us," Jun starts slow. He's so still now, beside Nino that he can feel his every breath, in and out. He knows something all of them are not getting.
Kitagawa swallows. "No, no definitely not."
"If he doesn't know we're connected -" Jun gestures, chewing on his bottom lip.
Someone raps on the door. Kitagawa jumps. Nino feels Aiba's body move, automatically positioning himself in front of Kitagawa as he reaches for his chain whip. Jun tucks his hand into his jacket, and Nino closes around around the familiar grip of his taser.
Across the room, Ohno's rolling his silencer onto the barrel of his gun. Nino meets his eyes and nods, once, going for the door. Outside there are three men in suits. The first one blinks when he sees him. Nino can see the way his eyes run down his figure, take in the make-up, his mustard yellow nails and his dress.
"And what the fuck are you supposed to be," he growls. The words sound like a mouthful of pebbles, a curse. Kitagawa's voice drifts towards him, and Nino hears Aiba calling out his name in confirmation before he lunges. In a flash, Nino forgoes his taser, gets one hand around the pepper spray in his pocket and with his right, drags the man in by the collar of shirt.
The man, caught off guard, only starts struggling when they hit the genkan step, but the force of Nino's grip makes him trip. He flounders for footing he can't find. Behind him, the other two advance, about to reach for Nino when Ohno engages. He hears the sssschick of Ohno unsheathing his daggers, and someone pushing the door closed.
The man grabs out to dislodge Nino. His fist catches hold of Nino's shoulder, but then Nino press on the trigger, and he goes down coughing, kicking out a foot, getting Nino in his knee. It makes Nino slip, roll on the ground, leaping and using his body weight to hold the guy down. Then he clambers around his midriff to punch his cheek. The momentum throws his head sideways, a trail of blood and spit flying, splattering across the floor.
Nino presses his open palm against his trembling throat, pushing his thumb on the soft flesh under the man's chin so he has to tilt backwards, bare his neck.
"This, is what I'm supposed to be," Nino grits out. He's breathing hard, half from the struggle, half from this white-hot anger that burns through his veins and makes him press down harder. The man gurgles, chokes on the air in his lungs. His body spasms. This guy fights dirty, like all the wannabe yakuza kids they took on after class in high school. "Why are you here, who sent you?"
The man heaves. His lungs make a wheezing sound. "Fuck you -" he spits out, and Nino tightens his hold. The skin around the man's eyes has swelled up in to a painful shade of red; he can't even open his eyes.
"Tell me, or your friends are going back with your purple corpse in a bag." Nino snarls. The apartment is silent now. He feels the rest behind him, the combined weight of their gazes.
Shii-chan starts to cry.
"Ueno," the man says through clenched teeth. His lip is bleeding, Nino doesn't remember hitting him there. "The reporter Kitagawa - knowing too much -"
It takes a moment for realisation to dawn. It hadn't been for Shii-chan at all; this hadn't all been about her.
"Fuck," Nino deflates, letting go of the man's shirt so forcefully that his head hits the floor. He gets up in a daze. "Fuck." Frustration makes him scrub his hands over his face. His palms come away stained with foundation and lipstick. They'd been thinking about this all wrong.
"We need to go," Sho's voice commands, urgent. "We all need to go, come on."
Nino looks up and sees his shock mirrored in Ohno's face, but his voice is also saying come on, come on, Nino so he takes his outreached hand and follows.
*
In AKAN Love afterwards, Nino admires his scabbed knuckles under the low light and tells Hamada what he did, his hushed words scrabble across the vinyl bar top and fall straight into Hamada’s shaker.9
His head is still spinning, the beginning of the night feels like an eternity away now, Ohno tracing the outline of his lips with a lip-liner and complaining when he kept fidgeting. Nino thinks about Kitagawa in their home now, Sho's face when he'd spread out the extra futon in Nino's room and left for work with his scrubs in a bag. Jun when he left too, in a different suit. Aiba had walked him out, and they had stood outside under the awnings of their backdoor, talking for twenty minutes, until Aiba returned and stuck his cold fingers under Nino's jumper.
All of a sudden, Shige is popping out of the back room to high-five Nino across the bar. He gets bits of dough in between Nino’s fingers and laughs too loud, too toothily, but today Nino doesn’t mind it so much.
Hamada slides a lemon bitter towards him.
“On the house,” he says, stretching towards Nino weirdly. Hamada always seems to take any chance he can get to contort into strange shapes. “Good job.”
Akito sends him home with baguettes for everyone, and the timeless advice of anything can be a weapon if you try hard enough, but stale bread is probably better than fresh though.
x.
After cashing in favours and pulling all the strings she's got, Kitagawa still doesn't have much on Yamashita. But it'll do.
"It's enough to bring him down a few notches. At least we can prove that he's dabbled with the yakuza, and he's connected in some way to Ueno. Whether willingly or not is another matter," Sho says, scanning through her notes, all those compressed pen scribbles with what looks like grudging admiration. His hair sticks out uncombed, flat down one side where his head had hit the pillow upon reaching home this morning. His eyes are still bloodshot but he's in fresh scrubs again, and it makes Nino want to fuss. This overworked and perpetually tired Sho-chan, seeing him like this makes Nino want to make sure he's eating enough, drinking liquids that are not coffee. But he knows Sho hates that; pushed him away once when he tried, griping Nino, I'm an adult. I'm the older brother here. So Nino stopped.
It's dark out.
Nino spent the entire day with Aiba in the flower shop, taking stock for the new week, placing flowers out in the shopfront to Aiba's very detailed instructions of can you make it more enticing, or like - welcoming or something? In the afternoon, Ohno had emerged from his studio with hands of clay and offered to take over at the till, so they could go next door to cajole Maru for free coffee. They found Subaru there today, hunched over the counter with a dark espresso between his fingers. He'd answered at least, when they inquired after the band, those new songs they played in the kissaten a few months ago, and the program for their live gigs at that dodgy pub in Shinjuku.
Then, they took a walk afterwards, after dropping off a cup of takeaway for Ohno who had been bent over a sketch sheet of foods he'd felt like eating. Meandering, past Hikawa Shrine and the ice-cream shop, when the sun was going down behind squished-together houses, and Aiba asked thoughtfully, do you think Shota-kun is happy? And Nino thought of the way Yasu still looked at Subaru, his eyes watery with tenderness and his words going all willing and wanting.
I don't know, he'd replied. I hope so - they must have split up for a reason. Aiba had sighed wistfully then, wearing a troubled look that said he was feeling too hard for other people.10 Then on the way back, they stopped for matcha soft-cream, and Nino was reminded once again that Aiba should not be considered an adult, if he can't even finish an ice-cream without getting it all over his hands. They even had to dash the rest of the way home, so he could wash his arms before they stuck to everything he touched.
"Any kind of evidence is enough to bring politicians down a few notches. We could use with more people like Kitagawa-san, really," Nino says distractedly. There are reruns of the first Kinnikuman series on NTV, and Aiba's been spending evenings watching them over dinner. His arm around Nino's shoulder has gone slack. He's probably forgotten about it, and Nino will have to listen to him complain about arm aches the entire evening.
Sho hums, shuffling a bunch of papers around in his hand, a finger at a spot he found interesting. In the bathroom mirror, Jun is putting his face on. When he bends for moisturiser, Nino finds his back streaked with scratch marks.
"Adventurous night yesterday, MJ?" Nino teases. Jun flips him off without even turning around.
"Nino, you say that now, but what if we wake up tomorrow to another three more babies downstairs. Word gets around fast," Sho looks up to wriggle his eyebrows. It just looks weird, like he's got something stuck in his throat and can't get it out.
"Never do that again, Sho-chan, especially not in public." Nino shifts, making to get up but a sound of protest rumbles in Aiba's chest. It's barely there, but enough for Nino to roll his eyes and lean back down again. "Plus if that happens, Aiba-chan will adopt them all and give them names also. Right?"
It takes Aiba a moment to reply, and when he does, the words sound like they're trying so hard to be comprehensible Japanese, but not quite reaching yet.
Then, their room door slides open. The atmosphere in the room changes. Sho straightens from his slouch, and Jun shakes out his dress shirt. Kitagawa steps out with Shii-chan, a pen keeping her hair in a messy bun. Another sits behind her ear. Nino can feel Sho staring; so much for being arch nemeses.
"I've decided, I'm going to meet Hiroshi-san," she announces with aplomb. Aiba goes to take Shii-chan from her arms, settling back beside Nino with his knees drawn to his chest. His body language has changed. Suddenly, he's stiffer, his angles poking Nino in the ribs when just a moment before he was all concaves, sleepily so.
"What do you mean -" Sho starts, frown forming, but Jun's buttoning up his shirt and promising, "We'll be there."
Kitagawa nods, grateful. "Thank you," she bows, and takes a moment to find the right words. "I can't thank you enough for the help, for letting me stay here, for keeping Chie safe."
Later when a silence has settled and Kitagawa has gone back into the room, Jun slips his arms into the sleeves of his suit jacket. The ironed fabric makes a soft swishing sound.
"This is not our decision to make, Sho-kun." The resignation in his voice betrays the firm line of his back. Nino remembers when Jun was the one screaming at the world, sneaking into the administrations office because he was losing the picture of his parents in his mind.
"I know, but -" Sho begins, a startled frustration blooming on his face that says he'd forgotten, that he wants this to be his choice. "I'm going to be late," he finishes, grabbing his bag and stomping down the stairs, even though the clock over the TV reads 8:38pm and his shift only starts at 11.
After Jun calls out I'm leaving, Nino sighs, mutters "This is not the orphanage anymore." On the TV, Kinnikuman is triumphant once again.
All Aiba does is blow a raspberry in Shii-chan's belly, and pretends he hadn't heard.
*
It's late now. The house is dark, silent. Kitagawa must be asleep, but then again, they hadn't checked.
Ohno only got back half an hour ago. They hadn't meant to stay up waiting, but it just happened. It’s past midnight, they should be asleep, planned to be, but this tiredness weighs heavy on Nino’s mind. Slumber only makes daylight arrive faster, hurtling towards them. So what if all he wants to do is sit in a dark place, to be soothed by the ringing silence and ethereality of witching hour, and maybe some annoyingly cheery game music? At this point, time is irrelevant anyway. He's been on his 3DS for hours, his back hurts, and his eyes are dry from staring at the screen.
When he finally looks up, blinking rapidly at the solitary light bulb on the veranda, the backs of his eyelids are stained purple and blue from the light, and Ohno is sketching the flitting moths. Aiba sits next to him with Jun’s copy of this week’s Shounen Jump! balanced precariously on his knees, their legs touch through thin pyjama pants. On Ohno’s other side, he’s spread out his pencils, some good crayons that he bought last week to experiment with. Beyond their still, concentrating figures, the world is all neon lights through the darkness, the passing-bys of cars and conversations. Nino imagines the bar across the road must be winding down too, Hamada cleaning out his glasses with practised finesse, and Shigeoka leaning his hip against the kitchen sink as he scrubs flour from under his fingernails.
Aiba murmurs to Ohno, and Nino can’t make out what he’s saying. But then, he reads out from the page, chuckles, and says it again so Ohno's face dissolves into mirth. His body leans towards Aiba, his nose scrunching up. After their chuckles peter out, trailing off, Aiba leans over to look. His chin rests on Ohno's shoulder as he lets out a long breath and his body turns soft, pliant.
Nino can't take his eyes away. In his hands, his game is still running, still singing, his avatar leaps into molten lava, but here, the world's compressed itself into a paper ball, this small muted moment, pouring orange light onto all the shadows of Aiba and Ohno's faces, into the way their arms bend to meet paper and how their bodies look like holding each other.
If Nino were the sort of person or had the words, he'd say I love you. But he's not and he doesn't, so he just keeps watching, listening to Ohno's pencil working at paper, and Aiba when he turns the page to find something else funny.
For as long as Nino watches, they remain like this, bodies propped up against each other, easy and habitual.
xi.
In the morning, Nino wakes up bathed in the first rays of sunlight through the veranda doors and his phone buzzing madly under his pillow with texts from Jun.
He’s suddenly conscious, tipped into sharp reality. Downstairs, Jun's hissing Nino, Ninoooooooooo, fuck, where are you through the back door, knocking as quietly and impatiently as only Jun can on the window. He's going to burn the house down if Nino doesn't get the door open soon, so he shoves his feet into his slippers and skips steps.
"Finally," Jun heaves, far more dramatically than the situation warrants. "I was about to knock on Maru's door to ask if I could climb over from his place."
Nino turns, sniggers helplessly. The sliver of light on the corridor narrows and disappears to the sound of Jun turning the lock. "You're not nearly Aiba-chan enough for that."11
"Yeah, no I'm not," Jun pokes Nino's butt as they head up the stairs. Nino is tempted to hit him in the face with it. "Imagine if Sho-kun tried though, I think he'd get stuck somewhere then Maru will call us going 'Sakurai-san is stuck! I don't know what to do!'"
"With Sho-chan's voice in the background yelling for help."
Aiba stirs when they reach the top. He makes eye contact with Nino, then he's crawling groggily into the space that Nino'd left behind, throwing his arm over Ohno's back and going back to sleep.
"His moment of glory," Jun agrees, then sobers. He goes into the kitchen, takes his bottle of disgustingly green aojiru out from the fridge. It's nearly toxic with healthiness. "About Sho-kun - "
"Leader's going to talk to him," Nino hoists himself up on the kitchen counter, despite Jun's disapproving tuts. But then again, he's the one drinking that horrid concoction willingly so he's in no position to tell Nino off.
Jun nods, staring into the distance as he drinks from the bottle. His jacket is folded over the armrest of the couch, and his sleeves are rolled up. Sometimes, it still surprises Nino how much time has passed since Jun was wearing Aiba's old shirts and had a temper than could rival Sho's.
"Are you doing okay?" Nino swings a leg up to poke his hip with his toes.
"Yeah, I'm good." He's smiling bashfully, looking up at Nino from under his fringe. "You?"
"I'm alright, getting there," Nino supplies and hops off the counter to stand beside Jun, closer than is comfortable, but then then it makes Jun coil his arm around Nino's smaller frame, his hand curling around his shoulder. This is perfect.12
They stay like this for a while. Listen to Ohno snore, and the fridge humming in its corner, and Koenji gradually waking up, shaking sleep from its eyes. A bicycle bell's ring drifts through the open kitchen window. In a while, Sho will be back, knocking on the backdoor and falling asleep standing up, and Nino will try his damnest not to fuss. But he'll allow himself to nudge a mug of tea into Sho's work-clumsy hands and usher him towards Aiba's empty futon.
"It's been a long few weeks," Jun murmurs, almost to himself.
Nino hums in acknowledgement. "I wonder what kind of person she'll grow to be."
"Hopefully someone who doesn't forget her keys, and decides climbing home through her neighbours' house is clearly the wisest decision." Jun shakes his head, and turns to rinse out his empty bottle.
"Can you believe that Aiba Masaki is an actual human being that exists?" Nino watches Aiba's tentacle arms tighten their grip around Ohno's torso. The thing about Ohno is that when he sleeps, he's just completely dead to the world. This is also why morning wake-up sex has never worked where he is concerned.
"At this point, if you told me he was a Johnny's idol in another life, I'd believe you."
xii.
It should not come as a surprise, but Aiba wants to go with Kitagawa to see Yamashita. He tells Nino this right in the middle of a conversation, after the shop is closed and they're sitting on stools on the roof.
“Aiba-chan, we’ll all go if you want to.” Nino says gently. He doesn’t want to be the one to do this, but their lives have been intertwined for the longest, as far back as he can remember and maybe this is what they were building up to. All the times Aiba had lifted his eyes to the sky and hoped for his parents’ silhouettes in the doorway, and every time Nino had stayed silent. “But you know he’s just a man right? He’s not your parents or grandparents, and this is not a point in one of those movies where the orphans face down with the irresponsible father and they teach him the importance of life or- or, whatever the fuck it is he has to learn.” Nino stops to catch his breath, resentment sparking, then as gently as he can, "you don't have to teach him anything."
Aiba’s quiet, so still that Nino wants to reach and put his hands on his chest to feel the familiar, measured rise and fall and his surely rabbiting pulse. Nino feels his own thudding in his throat, about to tear its way out of his ribs and leap into the bustling traffic out on the street.
“They’re gone, Aiba-chan. If they wanted to come back, they would have the moment they left.” He finally reaches out, finally places his hand feather light on Aiba’s knees.
Aiba lets out a shuddering exhale. Next door, Maru is singing along to AKB48, slightly off-pitch. It’s too loud, but not nearly loud enough.
“But he needs to know. When he hears me out, he'll understand,” Aiba chokes out, raw, like the world has dropped out from beneath his feet. It gives Nino goose bumps. He's so tired, exhausted from the fingers of his past snipping at his heels. If only the universe could go back to normal, or even to yesterday night when Ohno fell asleep on his drawings, and he and Aiba had to coax him the two steps into their futons, or maybe this morning when Ohno woke up with a cheekful of pencil stains.
“What happens if he doesn't want to? What then, what if he looks you in the eyes and says ‘so what?’” Nino murmurs, and it’s inevitable now. He thinks about how the texture of tofu makes his stomach turn; how Jun always sleeps with the lights on, and Ohno flinches whenever someone raises a hand. Sho took years to relearn how to make eye contact during conversations. Adrenaline is running riot in his veins. “Aiba-chan. we’re -- I don’t want us to be victims. I'm tired of it.”
Then Aiba chokes out a warble of a sob, and folds into his knees as if someone just sucker-punched him in the stomach. He's always cried quietly. Too many times, Nino had found him tucked into small corners of the orphanage, so still it looked like he was napping if not for his shaking shoulders. Then one day, he'd stopped, or maybe Nino stopped finding him.
Nino sits on his haunches in front of Aiba’s knees, bites his lip, and rests his chin on Aiba's knee. Immediately, Aiba lunges down towards him, shuffling near, pushing his gangly arms and wet cheeks into Nino’s space. Nino rebalances them, rests his free hand on the back of Aiba's neck.
“Aiba-chan,” Nino barely gets out before Aiba's pushed his face into the slope of Nino's neck and Nino's skin is warm with the vapour of his exhales. “Masaki,” he murmurs, and it feels foreign on his tongue, strangely unfitting. It's been years since Aiba's been anything but Aiba-kun, Aiba-chan, or even Aiba-shi after all. They left their first names in the orphanage, in the days when he couldn't say Masaki nearly enough to convey please stop asking me to give up my lunch for another experiment with cucumbers and you're a complete idiot, but you're all I have in kind.
Nino holds him until his calves start to hurt and he has to sit instead. Aiba follows, unspeaking. It feels like the world has remade itself several times over, squeezed them dry and hung them out. His lungs are full of the faded dregs of Aiba’s aftershave, his sweat and Ohno's cigerettes, the scent of blooming hydrangeas in August, while his fingers make fists in the worn linen of Aiba's florist smock that he forgot to take off.
When it starts getting chilly, Nino says into Aiba's shoulder. "We should probably go downstairs. Oh-chan's going to burn dinner if we don't help."
Aiba pulls away, wiping his nose on the back of his hand and half-giggling, half-croaking, goes, "Aah, I left snot all over your shirt. And probably some drool."
Nino sighs, shoving Aiba's lightly. "Ugh, you're the worst, Matsujun is going to kill me." He waits for Aiba to quiet down again, eyes drifting into the distance over Nino's head.
"It's been so long already huh," He muses, wonderingly. This time Nino is the one leaning in, tucking his head under Aiba's chin and listening to his hiccupping breaths in the tremours of his throat. The world turns to dusk around them.
"Mmm, I guess you're stuck with us for good." Nino grins, lifting his head to kiss Aiba once, breathlessly. He tucks his cold fingertips under Aiba's shirt, feels his belly shiver in surprise. He'll be all right.
"Unfortunately," Aiba adds, getting to his feet and ducking away before Nino can swat at him. "I'll race you down! Last one down is doing washing up!"
xiii.
Tuesday morning.
Yamashita arrives at AKAN Love in a blacked-out Mercedes, that runs over the curb a little and has to fix its parking.
From their veranda, Jun barks out surprised laughter. "Clearly they should hire Sho-kun to drive instead."
Inside, Sho is tearing away at sheets of nori with the ferocity of himself on zero cups of coffee, except he's had five and his hands are already getting jittery. Hina already banned him for the day, saying it's probably dangerous for a nurse to have shaky hands, reaching a point where all he was doing was sprouting this morning's news at everyone he saw. Shii-chan occasionally wanders over for some nori, and Sho's taken to absently passing her broken corners, then she's crawling back to Aiba who is trying to build a palace out of giant blocks. It's slightly lacking in some places. At the moment, he's calling them windows but they look more like holes to Nino.
Ohno's on shop duty now. Nino hears the doorbell ding brightly when someone enters and the smile in Ohno's voice when he says hello!
Over the weekend, they'd laid out the plan to the kids at AKAN Love, introduced Kitagawa and Shii-chan, who took an instant liking to Hamada. She had then proceeded to tell him a story in gibberish whilst pointing insistently at the bananas on his shirt. Around the bar counter, Jun caught them up the events so far so they could understand the sheer gravity of the meeting, the consequences of it going south and Ryusei had a frown so deep it could have been a tributary system.
Then they had documented it together; all of Jun's plans for in case anything goes wrong, possible scenarios and escape routes, walked through everything thrice. Kotaki unrolled his blueprints and found that they were taller than even him. Sho gave everyone a copy of their phone numbers, and handing Junta a handgun that he first disassembled and reassembled - twice. Made Junta do it twice too, so Sho knew for sure that he was confident, not just nodding and smiling politely. Technically they were not even obliged to help, but Jun brought over his famous chicken bake, and promised them a home-cooked three-course meal and they were all sold.
Now Jun watches as Kitagawa shakes Yamashita's hand, keeping her distance while his hoard of bodyguards position themselves around them. From the roof, Kotaki flashes them a grin and an okay sign, and Jun replies him through text.
Nino heads downstairs to join Ohno, pulling on Aiba's smock on over the jumper he's wearing. It's Ohno's, but he hadn't noticed in the dark this morning. Now he's warm and cosy, and definitely not taking it off.
"Oh, did Akito-kun come by this morning?" is the first thing Nino says when he sees Ohno slouching behind the counter, eating garlic bread. The entire shop already smells like flowers and garlic. Ohno hums around a mouthful of bread, and offers him some. A cloud of steam billows out of the bun when Nino tears it open. It's sweet and salty with the thick, heady scent of roasted garlic cloves, then a buttery rich that spreads throughout Nino's mouth.
"This is amazing," Nino says, then dusts his hands quickly when a customer enters and Aiba's stomping down the stairs saying, "I'll take over, Leader, you're needed upstairs."
Then he sniffs the air. "Why does everything smell like garlic - oh! Hello, how can I help you?"
From this angle, Nino can see them clearly, beyond the passing cars and pedestrians taking their time on the pavement. It's past morning rush hour, and a grandma is waiting for her dog to finish sniffing a patch of grass on the side of the road. Aiba would know its breed.
Yamashita's on the phone, and Kitagawa is watching him carefully from across their table. Kamiyama seems to have gone all out on appearances today, a maroon tablecloth and irises in a vase on the table. Nino's only slightly impressed; it's not like this guy deserves a nice tablecloth anyway. They would have met in a dumpster if it meant that all five of them could get a good angle on the meeting.
When the customer leaves, Aiba busies himself with sweeping up fallen petals on the floor. His dustpan knocks against the legs of the displays as he moves. "Yamashita-san called Sho-chan asking for our leader. It was kind of like those like, alien encounter movies, only weirder, I guess -"
Nino frowns, but Aiba keeps going, his words like one long fused-together thread of thought.
"- we have dirt on him. I saw the amount of stuff Kitagawa-san wrote, her handwriting was so tiny and there was a lot of it. She connected him to the yakuza and Ueno-san, and then connected Ueno-san to a heck load of really shady business. I don't think he would want that getting out, we'll be fine." Aiba leans the broom and dustpan back behind the counter, getting Nino to budge over slightly so he could pick up his spray bottle from behind the counter. He starts spraying water on the potted herbs, moving with a single minded determination.
"Mmm." Nino answers. He's getting restless now, his leg shaking where it rests on the rung of his tall chair. Across the road, he can see Akito showing Yamashita out of the door, and he's standing up, moving, patting Aiba's back frantically. "He's leaving, he's leaving."
Suddenly everyone's coming downstairs, and Aiba's turning the sign on the door to CLOSED.
"He's leaving, he's leaving," Aiba tells them, waving his hand wildly for some reason. "What did you say, Leader?" His eyes are wide, and he's breathless with the exhilaration.
"I told we have no outside interests, we don't want anything to do with him, we aren't going to release anything if he leaves Kitagawa-san alone, and that Shii-chan is staying with Kitagawa-san and he can fuck right off," Ohno finishes in a single breath, the remnants of a fight still in his jawline, but he's grinning and reaching for Nino's hand.
Sho, carrying Shii-chan, gets hit in the nose when she waves her hands too, imitating Aiba. "Hold on, hold on, Shii-chan, you're all bara-bara huh."
Ten minutes later, Kitagawa crosses the road, looking left, right before taking long strides. In the bright sunlight, her eyebags are even more obvious but still, she carries herself with that unwavering certainty.
"How was it?" Jun says as soon as she gets in the door. She smiles thinly, exhausted, and gives him two thumb-ups.
"YAY! KITAGAWA-SAN, YAY!" Aiba crows, throwing his hands into the air. He thrusts his palm out for a high five, and Kitagawa meets it. He's smiling so hard he looks ridiculous, and Nino's heart feels like it could burst.
"Yay!" She replies, laughing, disbelief on her face.
"Yay Shii-chan!" Aiba holds his hand out to Shii-chan too. In reply, she exclaims "YA!" loudly before bopping Aiba on his head with her tiny fist. Nino finds himself choking out laughter; she's been picking up some questionable habits over the past few weeks, most of them from Jun.
"We're all going out for yakiniku!" Sho announces, and suddenly everyone's talking at once. Jun's on the phone with Junta going are you free right now? Yes, right now. We're going out for yakiniku! and Ohno and Aiba keep trying to high-five each other and Nino with increasingly enthusiastic cries of YAAAAAAAAAY! Kitagawa watches them, and the way Sho swings Shii-chan around so she squeals and clings to his neck, then she's wrapping her arms around herself and beaming too.
"Thank you," Kitagawa says again later, when she's at the backdoor with Shii-chan strapped in a carrier on her shoulders and they've discussed future baby-sitting arrangements at length. "I know I've said it a lot, but I can't thank you enough for everything, all this."
"We did what we had to," Jun replies. "Just like you did." Under his breath, Sho mutters something about Jun being way too cool for the rest of them.
Together, they watch her retreating back. It makes Nino feel like he's 15, 16 and 17 again, and waving while Ohno, Sho and Aiba walked away, became smaller and smaller until their figures were swallowed up by distance. This time though, he's not bidding his time, waiting for some point in the future that he cannot see. This time, he's here, standing on the steps of this old house in Tokyo on this warm autumn with the rough sounds of the grinder drifting out from Maru's open backdoor, and a flower shop that smells like garlic. This time, they're all stuck in a tiny doorway, waving until Jun feels silly and Ohno declares he's hungry again.
Sho's eyes are glistening.
"Are you crying?"
"NO, the sun's just too strong okay!"
This time - it's different.
Epilogue
"Do you know what happened a few days ago?" Hina asks the next time Nino's over at the shop. "There was a blacked-out car and men in suits everywhere around the bar, wonder what happened huh."
But Nino only shrugs nonchalantly, taking another bite of Yasu's freshly baked banana bread. "No idea. Hina, I can't believe you're still not used to seeing important people around, you've been in Tokyo for ten years!"
Once again, Maru decides to tell them about that one time he shook hands with that Shounentai member. You know that one, the one with the hair?
*
Nino's taking out a guy with a terrible haircut when Aiba ducks into the doorway. He would really rather he not.
"N-kun, can I borrow your taser again? Sorry, I promise it's the last time," Aiba clasps his palms together and makes a pleading face. In Nino's arms, the guy grabs ahold of his elbow, meaning to topple him, but he lets go of his shoulders, shrugs out of the grip and delivers an uppercut. The guy's head whips around and he lands on the ground with a thud.
"I told you to use my work name!" Nino complains exasperatedly. Aiba has the stupidest nickname in the whole world ('Birdman') but they all still use it; 'Game' is not even that hard to pronounce. "Behind you -"
Aiba punches, then looks. It only got the man in his chest, off-centre from his heart. The man recoils, pulls the safety off his gun but Aiba kicks him behind his knee and grabs his wrist, jerking his arm backwards so there's a cracking sound and the gun clatters to the ground. The man screams. Aiba hits his cheek, ducking when he swings with his other arm. Then, he steadies his footing, and drags the guy upwards by his shirt, throws two punches so hard that he slumps on the ground, unconscious.
"Sorry, sorry, ah, it's okay, I'm going to use this gun then. Bye!" Aiba dashes off again, far too noisy for someone who is supposed to be a vigilante.
"You're the WORST." Nino shouts after him, and it draws the attention of another two guards, who surround Nino, bracing for a fight.
"Yup, I LOVE YOU TOO!" Nino hears, just before he whips around, tasing one of the men and kicking the other in his balls.
end.
From: calerine
Part 1
vii.
Two things happen in the week after Kitagawa’s visit:
(1) Sho starts bringing Shii-chan on jobs with them because no one wants to stay at home while everyone’s out “fighting evil”.
(2) Nino wears his skirts and dresses everyday.7
The former was admittedly, expected. Everyone likes Shii-chan well enough, but no one’s about to volunteer for Baby Duty and miss out. The latter, too. Summer is fast running out and late August this year is warm enough, especially after days of that insistent drizzle that makes Tokyo look like the city in Blade Runner, except not so bloodthirsty. (Jun would argue otherwise.)
On Tuesday, Nino and Sho trek out to the supermarket for groceries. They buy enough pork belly and kimchi to feed an army and come home to find that Aiba and Jun have set up the clay barbeque on the roof. It sits in the centre of a circle of beach chairs, surrounded by beautifully plated ingredients, courtesy of Jun’s theatrical flair and obsessive love of tiny things.
While Jun and Sho set up, Nino plants his elbows on the railings and breathes in the rain-enriched earth. The city sprawls out, as if one of those overly expensive lush carpets rolling out from under his feet. Autumns in Chiba were always quieter than this, slower and filled with dwindling afternoon trips to the beach, warm sand between his toes while the approaching dusk was cold where it kissed his cheeks, Jun yelling laughter into the wind as they raced back to make curfew.
This afternoon, Koenji is alive. He drinks in the clear blue skies and Maru’s laundry waving in the sun next door, jeans making dark puddles on the concrete.
At ground level, there are people hurrying around, large enough for Nino to discern their clothing choices but tiny enough for him not to hate. Someone with bright green hair and a pink dress, a couple gazing so deeply into each other’s eyes that they’re blocking up half the pavement. A kid emerges from the kissaten next door with a muffin, and Yasu rushes out to hand her napkins. Aiba, fixing one of the ferns on the shopfront, waves and Nino hears talk about purple roses and Yoko’s bicycle. He closes his eyes, breathes out. It’s taken him a long time but like this, Tokyo is bearable.
Across the street, on their own roof, Kotaki is dozing on a rickety sun chair, sunglasses sliding off the tip of his nose. Next to him, Ryusei has a paperback spread over his face and another open on his chest. Nino rests his cheek on the open palm of his hand and smiles, pictures them both afterwards, so tanned their customers might lose sight of them during service. Perhaps Kotaki will have tan lines in the shape of his sunglasses, and Shigeoka will call him Panda-pants again.
By the time Ohno gets home from his shift bearing day-old karaage bentos, a fire is roaring, white-hot charcoal crumbling apart in the white-hot heat. These days are growing shorter, but sunsets still streak candyfloss purple and pink across the sky.
As Ohno settles, Nino thrusts a sauce bowl filled with too much ponzu towards him. It sloshes, spills onto Ohno’s hand and he licks it up, crow’s feet deepening at that sour tang of citrus and salt, and Nino’s leg hooking over his knee. Then Nino watches as Ohno’s mirth slows, mellows out long into patient want when he leans over to kiss him. Under the hem of Nino’s skirt, Ohno’s hand inches upwards. Nino feels the ticklish scrape of his fingernails on the tender insides of his thigh. Just as he’s about to swat them away, the fingers stop.
Ohno exhales minutely and leaves them there. Nino knocks their knees together, looking up in time to find Ohno's face spreading slowly into a smile.
Across the grill, Sho’s already tipsy on cheap beer and good company. He’s got a fist clenched loosely around the buttons of Aiba’s striped cardigan and his head lolls against Aiba’s shoulder. Nino can’t make out what he’s laughing at, but snatches of a haiku by Aiba drift over, sounding like erotic shapes of beef - yet another masterpiece by The Ero-Master. (Once, he spotted a penis-shaped cloud and set it as his phone’s wallpaper for ages.)
Shii-chan sits on his lap, fidgeting and watching Jun with curious eyes. Her shaker rattles when she gnaws on it, and the sky is loud with Sho’s breathless guffaws. Jun, orange glow licking his nose, nudges a cabbage package of meat and rice into Ohno’s hands and squeezes Nino’s wrists as he passes. When he settles back into his seat, Shii-chan stretches out from Aiba’s hands, demanding to be held.
Nino’s fingers slip around his beer bottle, condensation peeling the label away from the glass. It’s room temperature now, from the day-warmed roof and his unexpected pensiveness, so he steals a gulp of Ohno’s and slides down in his seat. The fire’s heat is just on the side of too hot against his knees, everything smells like sizzling pork and burnt wood. He sets his eyes in the distance, on the tips of skyscrapers and the outlines of their points blurring against the blue sky, and waits for the night to swallow the sun.
viii.
Two days later, an Irregular comes to pick up flowers.8 She lurks outside on the shopfront for a while, considering one of the tiny plants, a tiny cacti in a red pot that fits within the palm of her hand.
Nino notices her from inside the shop. Her neon-coloured puffy vest would stand out anywhere, even Harajuku, let alone against their quiet street on this sluggish afternoon. He hums, continues pretending that he’s doing actual work and waits until she picks up the repotted broccoli flowers. At the counter, Aiba’s busy ringing up what seems to be someone’s lifetime supply of fertiliser, so Nino strides across the shop floor. He sticks his head out of the front door and grins. The bell tinkles merrily overhead.
“Hey, hey,” Becky sing-songs, trailing in after him, flowers and cactus balanced in each hand. Her long, long skirt swishes behind her, lends her an air of elegance that Nino would argue is completely unfounded.
“What can we do for you today?” He asks, as the customer at the counter leaves ladened with four bags of plant food. There’s another protocol entirely if the shop’s busy but it’s not today, in this lull that makes Nino sleepy and grateful for any little bit of excitement he can get.
Nino rounds the corner and bumps his hip against Aiba’s companionably.
“Hi Becky!” Aiba says, sounding pleasantly surprised. They usually only see her on delivery day but sometimes she comes in bearing news, and every single time, they end up relocating upstairs to play a few rounds of Unnecessarily Aggressive and Competitive Mario Kart. “What’s shaking?”
Becky's laughter rings out. “Aiba-chan, you’re never going to sound like a cowboy.” She slides her tiny cactus across the counter and fishes change out from her vest pocket, dropping hundred yen coins on the counter. “Just this please, aaaaand this.” From some other hidden pocket, she pulls out a slip of paper. It’s torn from her planner, the last week of May disappearing into jagged edges. There are prints of cheerful giraffes all around the border. “Overheard this on the comms last night, thought you’d like to know.”
Aiba reaches across to take it. Becky turns to Nino, smiling, warm and crinkly-eyed. He recalls the first time they met. Their bicycles had crashed into each other rounding a blind corner and she’d broken half of her delivery pots. Afterwards, Jun had commented that it sounded exactly like the cold open of a shoujo anime episode. Except instead of a summer romance, he ended up with another person in his life who keeps getting him to adopt stray kittens every other week.
“Our bedroom window has been looking a little sad lately,” she explains, gesturing to the little pot that Nino’s slipping into a fold-out cardboard holder. “Nino-chan, you look very pretty,” and Nino narrows his eyes. His skirt is navy blue with white stripes today, but nobody ever talks about it as casually as Becky does.
“Then you’d better name this cactus after me,” he says and out of the overwhelming kindness of his heart, gives her one of Yasu’s blueberry and white chocolate bars from under the counter. It’s still warm and for a moment, its sweet, fruity scent wafts up into the air. Nino rubs his finger tips together, the buttery grease sticks.
“Too late, I’m naming it after Shihori.” Becky tears off a corner and munches nosily. “She says hi by the way. She's working today. Ooh, Aiba-chan told me about Shii-chan!"
Before Nino can reply, Aiba exhales clumsily. It sounds too much like a sigh for Nino’s comfort. “Thank you, Becky-chan. I’ll talk to the rest.”
Becky nods, rolling back on her heels. Then she’s cocking her head mischieviously, cracking her knuckles and going, “I have all afternoon, Aiba-shi. I’m gonna crush you.”
Aiba narrows his eyes, and crosses the shop to turn the OPEN sign over. “We’ll see about that, Nino, be our referee.”
“I never said I wanted this job, and every time-” He grumbles but he’s already climbling the stairs, already making out above their routine pre-Mario-Kart thrash talk: Yamashita Hiroshi, Kitagawa Keiko looking into rumours of embezzlement.
ix.
They go that night, texting Kitagawa in advance to make sure.
None of them wanted to wait, especially if it might concern her and Shii-chan.
Sho had taken a look at the note and frowned.
“Do we all need to go? Will we get in the way?” He asked, checking the clock. He had a shift starting in six hours, but Aiba was already loading Ohno’s gun and Jun had already suited up, tucking a thermos of warmed milk into the place where his hip flask used to sit. It didn't quite fit, but it’ll do.
“After last week, it’s safer if four of us go. Sho-kun, you don’t have to,” Ohno answered, finally gathering all his knives in the same place. His movements, as he practised reaching for his holster, was still a little too stiff for Nino’s liking.
“Yeah, yeah. You say that, but every time I haven’t gone, someone comes back hurt from doing a stupid thing,” Sho grumbled, as he started systematically assembling his guns.
Nino wriggled into his black dress, commenting "Sho-kun, at this point there's no use denying that you're basically the baby-proof corners to our scary sharp edges," and made loud kissing noises until Sho chucked Nino's taser at his head.
Now they’re staring up at Kitagawa’s apartment building from the tinted windows of their van and Shii-chan’s trying her best to inhale every drop of milk what with the way she is sucking on the teat of her empty bottle. Nino double-checks the address on his phone, just to be sure.
Ohno twists around in the passenger’s seat, “who’s going to say what?”
Nino shrugs, “anybody, anything but Aiba-chan,” and Aiba lunges from the backseat to whack him over his head. “Last time you did that my arm was in a sling for three weeks, okay.”
Sho turns the engine off. The van chokes out a shudder. “This isn’t going to be a diplomatic discussion anyway, we just have to make sure we’re on the same page so we can protect her and Shii-chan better. The last time - I - I don't want to do it. Nino and Aiba-chan can be on talking duty instead. Jun-kun will be in charge of Shii-chan, Leader and I will take watch.”
Sho and Ohno check each other’s weapons before they get out, and Jun makes sure his gun is within easy reach even with Shii-chan hoisted on his back. They fall into their roles easily, silent other than the moment that the single, sad bonsai plant outside Kitagawa’s front door elicits mumbling from Aiba.
She lets them in, offers them tea and Jun, Nino and Aiba gather around her small coffee space while Sho and Ohno check the perimeter. It’s a tiny one-bedroom apartment, sparsely decorated and littered with haphazard, tilted stacks of books. When he sits, Nino finds a dangly earring under the table.
“Sorry for the mess; I’ve been working on a story, haven’t been home much,” she smiles, a little bashful. Jun lifts Shii-chan onto the ground so she sits between them, babbling and trying to grab hold the hem of Kitagawa’s long skirt.
“Aah, no no, we're sorry for the short notice, it’s just that we received something this afternoon that couldn’t be confirmed over the phone,” Aiba pulls out the note from Becky, smoothing it out on the coffee table, and it is as if everyone's holding their breath. When she looks up, her eyes are wide.
“I didn’t think -” she begins, then rushes to riffle through a box of unattached papers by her charging laptop. They go everywhere. “This story I’ve been working on - concerns embezzlement in the Diet, but I haven’t been able to link it to any specific perpetrators, they’ve been buried so deep within the system it’s hard to get a handle on -”
"You say Yamashita-san doesn't know where you live right?" Jun asks. He's frowning, has on his thinking face that Nino would recognise from miles away.
From across the room, Sho clears his throat, and with disbelief in his voice goes, "You're still poking around?" In a split second, Kitagawa's fingers go white around her papers and she exhales, so controlled the air whistles through her teeth.
"Sakurai-san, I understand your concern. But you can't deny that this is important." Her jaw is set, sudden tightness in the line of her back. The tension in the room is palpable, thick, like the beginning scent of a fire, sparks catching on dry wood and roaring to life. Jun stands to hand Shii-chan over to Sho, a hand on the back of his spine as Sho uncurls his fists and fits them around her instead, letting her tap her open palm on his forehead playfully. Nino watches as they retreat into the kitchen, Sho's head tilted downwards to listen.
Kitagawa exhales. "Sorry," she sighs, ducking her head in embarrassment, almost. "It's just - this is a lot. Everything - life." She meets Aiba's eyes, then Nino's, a self-deprecating noise escaping from her lips. Then she shakes herself visibly, "He doesn't know. At least I don't think so. I've taken great pains to keep it from him."
"Does he know you left her with us," Jun starts slow. He's so still now, beside Nino that he can feel his every breath, in and out. He knows something all of them are not getting.
Kitagawa swallows. "No, no definitely not."
"If he doesn't know we're connected -" Jun gestures, chewing on his bottom lip.
Someone raps on the door. Kitagawa jumps. Nino feels Aiba's body move, automatically positioning himself in front of Kitagawa as he reaches for his chain whip. Jun tucks his hand into his jacket, and Nino closes around around the familiar grip of his taser.
Across the room, Ohno's rolling his silencer onto the barrel of his gun. Nino meets his eyes and nods, once, going for the door. Outside there are three men in suits. The first one blinks when he sees him. Nino can see the way his eyes run down his figure, take in the make-up, his mustard yellow nails and his dress.
"And what the fuck are you supposed to be," he growls. The words sound like a mouthful of pebbles, a curse. Kitagawa's voice drifts towards him, and Nino hears Aiba calling out his name in confirmation before he lunges. In a flash, Nino forgoes his taser, gets one hand around the pepper spray in his pocket and with his right, drags the man in by the collar of shirt.
The man, caught off guard, only starts struggling when they hit the genkan step, but the force of Nino's grip makes him trip. He flounders for footing he can't find. Behind him, the other two advance, about to reach for Nino when Ohno engages. He hears the sssschick of Ohno unsheathing his daggers, and someone pushing the door closed.
The man grabs out to dislodge Nino. His fist catches hold of Nino's shoulder, but then Nino press on the trigger, and he goes down coughing, kicking out a foot, getting Nino in his knee. It makes Nino slip, roll on the ground, leaping and using his body weight to hold the guy down. Then he clambers around his midriff to punch his cheek. The momentum throws his head sideways, a trail of blood and spit flying, splattering across the floor.
Nino presses his open palm against his trembling throat, pushing his thumb on the soft flesh under the man's chin so he has to tilt backwards, bare his neck.
"This, is what I'm supposed to be," Nino grits out. He's breathing hard, half from the struggle, half from this white-hot anger that burns through his veins and makes him press down harder. The man gurgles, chokes on the air in his lungs. His body spasms. This guy fights dirty, like all the wannabe yakuza kids they took on after class in high school. "Why are you here, who sent you?"
The man heaves. His lungs make a wheezing sound. "Fuck you -" he spits out, and Nino tightens his hold. The skin around the man's eyes has swelled up in to a painful shade of red; he can't even open his eyes.
"Tell me, or your friends are going back with your purple corpse in a bag." Nino snarls. The apartment is silent now. He feels the rest behind him, the combined weight of their gazes.
Shii-chan starts to cry.
"Ueno," the man says through clenched teeth. His lip is bleeding, Nino doesn't remember hitting him there. "The reporter Kitagawa - knowing too much -"
It takes a moment for realisation to dawn. It hadn't been for Shii-chan at all; this hadn't all been about her.
"Fuck," Nino deflates, letting go of the man's shirt so forcefully that his head hits the floor. He gets up in a daze. "Fuck." Frustration makes him scrub his hands over his face. His palms come away stained with foundation and lipstick. They'd been thinking about this all wrong.
"We need to go," Sho's voice commands, urgent. "We all need to go, come on."
Nino looks up and sees his shock mirrored in Ohno's face, but his voice is also saying come on, come on, Nino so he takes his outreached hand and follows.
*
In AKAN Love afterwards, Nino admires his scabbed knuckles under the low light and tells Hamada what he did, his hushed words scrabble across the vinyl bar top and fall straight into Hamada’s shaker.9
His head is still spinning, the beginning of the night feels like an eternity away now, Ohno tracing the outline of his lips with a lip-liner and complaining when he kept fidgeting. Nino thinks about Kitagawa in their home now, Sho's face when he'd spread out the extra futon in Nino's room and left for work with his scrubs in a bag. Jun when he left too, in a different suit. Aiba had walked him out, and they had stood outside under the awnings of their backdoor, talking for twenty minutes, until Aiba returned and stuck his cold fingers under Nino's jumper.
All of a sudden, Shige is popping out of the back room to high-five Nino across the bar. He gets bits of dough in between Nino’s fingers and laughs too loud, too toothily, but today Nino doesn’t mind it so much.
Hamada slides a lemon bitter towards him.
“On the house,” he says, stretching towards Nino weirdly. Hamada always seems to take any chance he can get to contort into strange shapes. “Good job.”
Akito sends him home with baguettes for everyone, and the timeless advice of anything can be a weapon if you try hard enough, but stale bread is probably better than fresh though.
x.
After cashing in favours and pulling all the strings she's got, Kitagawa still doesn't have much on Yamashita. But it'll do.
"It's enough to bring him down a few notches. At least we can prove that he's dabbled with the yakuza, and he's connected in some way to Ueno. Whether willingly or not is another matter," Sho says, scanning through her notes, all those compressed pen scribbles with what looks like grudging admiration. His hair sticks out uncombed, flat down one side where his head had hit the pillow upon reaching home this morning. His eyes are still bloodshot but he's in fresh scrubs again, and it makes Nino want to fuss. This overworked and perpetually tired Sho-chan, seeing him like this makes Nino want to make sure he's eating enough, drinking liquids that are not coffee. But he knows Sho hates that; pushed him away once when he tried, griping Nino, I'm an adult. I'm the older brother here. So Nino stopped.
It's dark out.
Nino spent the entire day with Aiba in the flower shop, taking stock for the new week, placing flowers out in the shopfront to Aiba's very detailed instructions of can you make it more enticing, or like - welcoming or something? In the afternoon, Ohno had emerged from his studio with hands of clay and offered to take over at the till, so they could go next door to cajole Maru for free coffee. They found Subaru there today, hunched over the counter with a dark espresso between his fingers. He'd answered at least, when they inquired after the band, those new songs they played in the kissaten a few months ago, and the program for their live gigs at that dodgy pub in Shinjuku.
Then, they took a walk afterwards, after dropping off a cup of takeaway for Ohno who had been bent over a sketch sheet of foods he'd felt like eating. Meandering, past Hikawa Shrine and the ice-cream shop, when the sun was going down behind squished-together houses, and Aiba asked thoughtfully, do you think Shota-kun is happy? And Nino thought of the way Yasu still looked at Subaru, his eyes watery with tenderness and his words going all willing and wanting.
I don't know, he'd replied. I hope so - they must have split up for a reason. Aiba had sighed wistfully then, wearing a troubled look that said he was feeling too hard for other people.10 Then on the way back, they stopped for matcha soft-cream, and Nino was reminded once again that Aiba should not be considered an adult, if he can't even finish an ice-cream without getting it all over his hands. They even had to dash the rest of the way home, so he could wash his arms before they stuck to everything he touched.
"Any kind of evidence is enough to bring politicians down a few notches. We could use with more people like Kitagawa-san, really," Nino says distractedly. There are reruns of the first Kinnikuman series on NTV, and Aiba's been spending evenings watching them over dinner. His arm around Nino's shoulder has gone slack. He's probably forgotten about it, and Nino will have to listen to him complain about arm aches the entire evening.
Sho hums, shuffling a bunch of papers around in his hand, a finger at a spot he found interesting. In the bathroom mirror, Jun is putting his face on. When he bends for moisturiser, Nino finds his back streaked with scratch marks.
"Adventurous night yesterday, MJ?" Nino teases. Jun flips him off without even turning around.
"Nino, you say that now, but what if we wake up tomorrow to another three more babies downstairs. Word gets around fast," Sho looks up to wriggle his eyebrows. It just looks weird, like he's got something stuck in his throat and can't get it out.
"Never do that again, Sho-chan, especially not in public." Nino shifts, making to get up but a sound of protest rumbles in Aiba's chest. It's barely there, but enough for Nino to roll his eyes and lean back down again. "Plus if that happens, Aiba-chan will adopt them all and give them names also. Right?"
It takes Aiba a moment to reply, and when he does, the words sound like they're trying so hard to be comprehensible Japanese, but not quite reaching yet.
Then, their room door slides open. The atmosphere in the room changes. Sho straightens from his slouch, and Jun shakes out his dress shirt. Kitagawa steps out with Shii-chan, a pen keeping her hair in a messy bun. Another sits behind her ear. Nino can feel Sho staring; so much for being arch nemeses.
"I've decided, I'm going to meet Hiroshi-san," she announces with aplomb. Aiba goes to take Shii-chan from her arms, settling back beside Nino with his knees drawn to his chest. His body language has changed. Suddenly, he's stiffer, his angles poking Nino in the ribs when just a moment before he was all concaves, sleepily so.
"What do you mean -" Sho starts, frown forming, but Jun's buttoning up his shirt and promising, "We'll be there."
Kitagawa nods, grateful. "Thank you," she bows, and takes a moment to find the right words. "I can't thank you enough for the help, for letting me stay here, for keeping Chie safe."
Later when a silence has settled and Kitagawa has gone back into the room, Jun slips his arms into the sleeves of his suit jacket. The ironed fabric makes a soft swishing sound.
"This is not our decision to make, Sho-kun." The resignation in his voice betrays the firm line of his back. Nino remembers when Jun was the one screaming at the world, sneaking into the administrations office because he was losing the picture of his parents in his mind.
"I know, but -" Sho begins, a startled frustration blooming on his face that says he'd forgotten, that he wants this to be his choice. "I'm going to be late," he finishes, grabbing his bag and stomping down the stairs, even though the clock over the TV reads 8:38pm and his shift only starts at 11.
After Jun calls out I'm leaving, Nino sighs, mutters "This is not the orphanage anymore." On the TV, Kinnikuman is triumphant once again.
All Aiba does is blow a raspberry in Shii-chan's belly, and pretends he hadn't heard.
*
It's late now. The house is dark, silent. Kitagawa must be asleep, but then again, they hadn't checked.
Ohno only got back half an hour ago. They hadn't meant to stay up waiting, but it just happened. It’s past midnight, they should be asleep, planned to be, but this tiredness weighs heavy on Nino’s mind. Slumber only makes daylight arrive faster, hurtling towards them. So what if all he wants to do is sit in a dark place, to be soothed by the ringing silence and ethereality of witching hour, and maybe some annoyingly cheery game music? At this point, time is irrelevant anyway. He's been on his 3DS for hours, his back hurts, and his eyes are dry from staring at the screen.
When he finally looks up, blinking rapidly at the solitary light bulb on the veranda, the backs of his eyelids are stained purple and blue from the light, and Ohno is sketching the flitting moths. Aiba sits next to him with Jun’s copy of this week’s Shounen Jump! balanced precariously on his knees, their legs touch through thin pyjama pants. On Ohno’s other side, he’s spread out his pencils, some good crayons that he bought last week to experiment with. Beyond their still, concentrating figures, the world is all neon lights through the darkness, the passing-bys of cars and conversations. Nino imagines the bar across the road must be winding down too, Hamada cleaning out his glasses with practised finesse, and Shigeoka leaning his hip against the kitchen sink as he scrubs flour from under his fingernails.
Aiba murmurs to Ohno, and Nino can’t make out what he’s saying. But then, he reads out from the page, chuckles, and says it again so Ohno's face dissolves into mirth. His body leans towards Aiba, his nose scrunching up. After their chuckles peter out, trailing off, Aiba leans over to look. His chin rests on Ohno's shoulder as he lets out a long breath and his body turns soft, pliant.
Nino can't take his eyes away. In his hands, his game is still running, still singing, his avatar leaps into molten lava, but here, the world's compressed itself into a paper ball, this small muted moment, pouring orange light onto all the shadows of Aiba and Ohno's faces, into the way their arms bend to meet paper and how their bodies look like holding each other.
If Nino were the sort of person or had the words, he'd say I love you. But he's not and he doesn't, so he just keeps watching, listening to Ohno's pencil working at paper, and Aiba when he turns the page to find something else funny.
For as long as Nino watches, they remain like this, bodies propped up against each other, easy and habitual.
xi.
In the morning, Nino wakes up bathed in the first rays of sunlight through the veranda doors and his phone buzzing madly under his pillow with texts from Jun.
He’s suddenly conscious, tipped into sharp reality. Downstairs, Jun's hissing Nino, Ninoooooooooo, fuck, where are you through the back door, knocking as quietly and impatiently as only Jun can on the window. He's going to burn the house down if Nino doesn't get the door open soon, so he shoves his feet into his slippers and skips steps.
"Finally," Jun heaves, far more dramatically than the situation warrants. "I was about to knock on Maru's door to ask if I could climb over from his place."
Nino turns, sniggers helplessly. The sliver of light on the corridor narrows and disappears to the sound of Jun turning the lock. "You're not nearly Aiba-chan enough for that."11
"Yeah, no I'm not," Jun pokes Nino's butt as they head up the stairs. Nino is tempted to hit him in the face with it. "Imagine if Sho-kun tried though, I think he'd get stuck somewhere then Maru will call us going 'Sakurai-san is stuck! I don't know what to do!'"
"With Sho-chan's voice in the background yelling for help."
Aiba stirs when they reach the top. He makes eye contact with Nino, then he's crawling groggily into the space that Nino'd left behind, throwing his arm over Ohno's back and going back to sleep.
"His moment of glory," Jun agrees, then sobers. He goes into the kitchen, takes his bottle of disgustingly green aojiru out from the fridge. It's nearly toxic with healthiness. "About Sho-kun - "
"Leader's going to talk to him," Nino hoists himself up on the kitchen counter, despite Jun's disapproving tuts. But then again, he's the one drinking that horrid concoction willingly so he's in no position to tell Nino off.
Jun nods, staring into the distance as he drinks from the bottle. His jacket is folded over the armrest of the couch, and his sleeves are rolled up. Sometimes, it still surprises Nino how much time has passed since Jun was wearing Aiba's old shirts and had a temper than could rival Sho's.
"Are you doing okay?" Nino swings a leg up to poke his hip with his toes.
"Yeah, I'm good." He's smiling bashfully, looking up at Nino from under his fringe. "You?"
"I'm alright, getting there," Nino supplies and hops off the counter to stand beside Jun, closer than is comfortable, but then then it makes Jun coil his arm around Nino's smaller frame, his hand curling around his shoulder. This is perfect.12
They stay like this for a while. Listen to Ohno snore, and the fridge humming in its corner, and Koenji gradually waking up, shaking sleep from its eyes. A bicycle bell's ring drifts through the open kitchen window. In a while, Sho will be back, knocking on the backdoor and falling asleep standing up, and Nino will try his damnest not to fuss. But he'll allow himself to nudge a mug of tea into Sho's work-clumsy hands and usher him towards Aiba's empty futon.
"It's been a long few weeks," Jun murmurs, almost to himself.
Nino hums in acknowledgement. "I wonder what kind of person she'll grow to be."
"Hopefully someone who doesn't forget her keys, and decides climbing home through her neighbours' house is clearly the wisest decision." Jun shakes his head, and turns to rinse out his empty bottle.
"Can you believe that Aiba Masaki is an actual human being that exists?" Nino watches Aiba's tentacle arms tighten their grip around Ohno's torso. The thing about Ohno is that when he sleeps, he's just completely dead to the world. This is also why morning wake-up sex has never worked where he is concerned.
"At this point, if you told me he was a Johnny's idol in another life, I'd believe you."
xii.
It should not come as a surprise, but Aiba wants to go with Kitagawa to see Yamashita. He tells Nino this right in the middle of a conversation, after the shop is closed and they're sitting on stools on the roof.
“Aiba-chan, we’ll all go if you want to.” Nino says gently. He doesn’t want to be the one to do this, but their lives have been intertwined for the longest, as far back as he can remember and maybe this is what they were building up to. All the times Aiba had lifted his eyes to the sky and hoped for his parents’ silhouettes in the doorway, and every time Nino had stayed silent. “But you know he’s just a man right? He’s not your parents or grandparents, and this is not a point in one of those movies where the orphans face down with the irresponsible father and they teach him the importance of life or- or, whatever the fuck it is he has to learn.” Nino stops to catch his breath, resentment sparking, then as gently as he can, "you don't have to teach him anything."
Aiba’s quiet, so still that Nino wants to reach and put his hands on his chest to feel the familiar, measured rise and fall and his surely rabbiting pulse. Nino feels his own thudding in his throat, about to tear its way out of his ribs and leap into the bustling traffic out on the street.
“They’re gone, Aiba-chan. If they wanted to come back, they would have the moment they left.” He finally reaches out, finally places his hand feather light on Aiba’s knees.
Aiba lets out a shuddering exhale. Next door, Maru is singing along to AKB48, slightly off-pitch. It’s too loud, but not nearly loud enough.
“But he needs to know. When he hears me out, he'll understand,” Aiba chokes out, raw, like the world has dropped out from beneath his feet. It gives Nino goose bumps. He's so tired, exhausted from the fingers of his past snipping at his heels. If only the universe could go back to normal, or even to yesterday night when Ohno fell asleep on his drawings, and he and Aiba had to coax him the two steps into their futons, or maybe this morning when Ohno woke up with a cheekful of pencil stains.
“What happens if he doesn't want to? What then, what if he looks you in the eyes and says ‘so what?’” Nino murmurs, and it’s inevitable now. He thinks about how the texture of tofu makes his stomach turn; how Jun always sleeps with the lights on, and Ohno flinches whenever someone raises a hand. Sho took years to relearn how to make eye contact during conversations. Adrenaline is running riot in his veins. “Aiba-chan. we’re -- I don’t want us to be victims. I'm tired of it.”
Then Aiba chokes out a warble of a sob, and folds into his knees as if someone just sucker-punched him in the stomach. He's always cried quietly. Too many times, Nino had found him tucked into small corners of the orphanage, so still it looked like he was napping if not for his shaking shoulders. Then one day, he'd stopped, or maybe Nino stopped finding him.
Nino sits on his haunches in front of Aiba’s knees, bites his lip, and rests his chin on Aiba's knee. Immediately, Aiba lunges down towards him, shuffling near, pushing his gangly arms and wet cheeks into Nino’s space. Nino rebalances them, rests his free hand on the back of Aiba's neck.
“Aiba-chan,” Nino barely gets out before Aiba's pushed his face into the slope of Nino's neck and Nino's skin is warm with the vapour of his exhales. “Masaki,” he murmurs, and it feels foreign on his tongue, strangely unfitting. It's been years since Aiba's been anything but Aiba-kun, Aiba-chan, or even Aiba-shi after all. They left their first names in the orphanage, in the days when he couldn't say Masaki nearly enough to convey please stop asking me to give up my lunch for another experiment with cucumbers and you're a complete idiot, but you're all I have in kind.
Nino holds him until his calves start to hurt and he has to sit instead. Aiba follows, unspeaking. It feels like the world has remade itself several times over, squeezed them dry and hung them out. His lungs are full of the faded dregs of Aiba’s aftershave, his sweat and Ohno's cigerettes, the scent of blooming hydrangeas in August, while his fingers make fists in the worn linen of Aiba's florist smock that he forgot to take off.
When it starts getting chilly, Nino says into Aiba's shoulder. "We should probably go downstairs. Oh-chan's going to burn dinner if we don't help."
Aiba pulls away, wiping his nose on the back of his hand and half-giggling, half-croaking, goes, "Aah, I left snot all over your shirt. And probably some drool."
Nino sighs, shoving Aiba's lightly. "Ugh, you're the worst, Matsujun is going to kill me." He waits for Aiba to quiet down again, eyes drifting into the distance over Nino's head.
"It's been so long already huh," He muses, wonderingly. This time Nino is the one leaning in, tucking his head under Aiba's chin and listening to his hiccupping breaths in the tremours of his throat. The world turns to dusk around them.
"Mmm, I guess you're stuck with us for good." Nino grins, lifting his head to kiss Aiba once, breathlessly. He tucks his cold fingertips under Aiba's shirt, feels his belly shiver in surprise. He'll be all right.
"Unfortunately," Aiba adds, getting to his feet and ducking away before Nino can swat at him. "I'll race you down! Last one down is doing washing up!"
xiii.
Tuesday morning.
Yamashita arrives at AKAN Love in a blacked-out Mercedes, that runs over the curb a little and has to fix its parking.
From their veranda, Jun barks out surprised laughter. "Clearly they should hire Sho-kun to drive instead."
Inside, Sho is tearing away at sheets of nori with the ferocity of himself on zero cups of coffee, except he's had five and his hands are already getting jittery. Hina already banned him for the day, saying it's probably dangerous for a nurse to have shaky hands, reaching a point where all he was doing was sprouting this morning's news at everyone he saw. Shii-chan occasionally wanders over for some nori, and Sho's taken to absently passing her broken corners, then she's crawling back to Aiba who is trying to build a palace out of giant blocks. It's slightly lacking in some places. At the moment, he's calling them windows but they look more like holes to Nino.
Ohno's on shop duty now. Nino hears the doorbell ding brightly when someone enters and the smile in Ohno's voice when he says hello!
Over the weekend, they'd laid out the plan to the kids at AKAN Love, introduced Kitagawa and Shii-chan, who took an instant liking to Hamada. She had then proceeded to tell him a story in gibberish whilst pointing insistently at the bananas on his shirt. Around the bar counter, Jun caught them up the events so far so they could understand the sheer gravity of the meeting, the consequences of it going south and Ryusei had a frown so deep it could have been a tributary system.
Then they had documented it together; all of Jun's plans for in case anything goes wrong, possible scenarios and escape routes, walked through everything thrice. Kotaki unrolled his blueprints and found that they were taller than even him. Sho gave everyone a copy of their phone numbers, and handing Junta a handgun that he first disassembled and reassembled - twice. Made Junta do it twice too, so Sho knew for sure that he was confident, not just nodding and smiling politely. Technically they were not even obliged to help, but Jun brought over his famous chicken bake, and promised them a home-cooked three-course meal and they were all sold.
Now Jun watches as Kitagawa shakes Yamashita's hand, keeping her distance while his hoard of bodyguards position themselves around them. From the roof, Kotaki flashes them a grin and an okay sign, and Jun replies him through text.
Nino heads downstairs to join Ohno, pulling on Aiba's smock on over the jumper he's wearing. It's Ohno's, but he hadn't noticed in the dark this morning. Now he's warm and cosy, and definitely not taking it off.
"Oh, did Akito-kun come by this morning?" is the first thing Nino says when he sees Ohno slouching behind the counter, eating garlic bread. The entire shop already smells like flowers and garlic. Ohno hums around a mouthful of bread, and offers him some. A cloud of steam billows out of the bun when Nino tears it open. It's sweet and salty with the thick, heady scent of roasted garlic cloves, then a buttery rich that spreads throughout Nino's mouth.
"This is amazing," Nino says, then dusts his hands quickly when a customer enters and Aiba's stomping down the stairs saying, "I'll take over, Leader, you're needed upstairs."
Then he sniffs the air. "Why does everything smell like garlic - oh! Hello, how can I help you?"
From this angle, Nino can see them clearly, beyond the passing cars and pedestrians taking their time on the pavement. It's past morning rush hour, and a grandma is waiting for her dog to finish sniffing a patch of grass on the side of the road. Aiba would know its breed.
Yamashita's on the phone, and Kitagawa is watching him carefully from across their table. Kamiyama seems to have gone all out on appearances today, a maroon tablecloth and irises in a vase on the table. Nino's only slightly impressed; it's not like this guy deserves a nice tablecloth anyway. They would have met in a dumpster if it meant that all five of them could get a good angle on the meeting.
When the customer leaves, Aiba busies himself with sweeping up fallen petals on the floor. His dustpan knocks against the legs of the displays as he moves. "Yamashita-san called Sho-chan asking for our leader. It was kind of like those like, alien encounter movies, only weirder, I guess -"
Nino frowns, but Aiba keeps going, his words like one long fused-together thread of thought.
"- we have dirt on him. I saw the amount of stuff Kitagawa-san wrote, her handwriting was so tiny and there was a lot of it. She connected him to the yakuza and Ueno-san, and then connected Ueno-san to a heck load of really shady business. I don't think he would want that getting out, we'll be fine." Aiba leans the broom and dustpan back behind the counter, getting Nino to budge over slightly so he could pick up his spray bottle from behind the counter. He starts spraying water on the potted herbs, moving with a single minded determination.
"Mmm." Nino answers. He's getting restless now, his leg shaking where it rests on the rung of his tall chair. Across the road, he can see Akito showing Yamashita out of the door, and he's standing up, moving, patting Aiba's back frantically. "He's leaving, he's leaving."
Suddenly everyone's coming downstairs, and Aiba's turning the sign on the door to CLOSED.
"He's leaving, he's leaving," Aiba tells them, waving his hand wildly for some reason. "What did you say, Leader?" His eyes are wide, and he's breathless with the exhilaration.
"I told we have no outside interests, we don't want anything to do with him, we aren't going to release anything if he leaves Kitagawa-san alone, and that Shii-chan is staying with Kitagawa-san and he can fuck right off," Ohno finishes in a single breath, the remnants of a fight still in his jawline, but he's grinning and reaching for Nino's hand.
Sho, carrying Shii-chan, gets hit in the nose when she waves her hands too, imitating Aiba. "Hold on, hold on, Shii-chan, you're all bara-bara huh."
Ten minutes later, Kitagawa crosses the road, looking left, right before taking long strides. In the bright sunlight, her eyebags are even more obvious but still, she carries herself with that unwavering certainty.
"How was it?" Jun says as soon as she gets in the door. She smiles thinly, exhausted, and gives him two thumb-ups.
"YAY! KITAGAWA-SAN, YAY!" Aiba crows, throwing his hands into the air. He thrusts his palm out for a high five, and Kitagawa meets it. He's smiling so hard he looks ridiculous, and Nino's heart feels like it could burst.
"Yay!" She replies, laughing, disbelief on her face.
"Yay Shii-chan!" Aiba holds his hand out to Shii-chan too. In reply, she exclaims "YA!" loudly before bopping Aiba on his head with her tiny fist. Nino finds himself choking out laughter; she's been picking up some questionable habits over the past few weeks, most of them from Jun.
"We're all going out for yakiniku!" Sho announces, and suddenly everyone's talking at once. Jun's on the phone with Junta going are you free right now? Yes, right now. We're going out for yakiniku! and Ohno and Aiba keep trying to high-five each other and Nino with increasingly enthusiastic cries of YAAAAAAAAAY! Kitagawa watches them, and the way Sho swings Shii-chan around so she squeals and clings to his neck, then she's wrapping her arms around herself and beaming too.
"Thank you," Kitagawa says again later, when she's at the backdoor with Shii-chan strapped in a carrier on her shoulders and they've discussed future baby-sitting arrangements at length. "I know I've said it a lot, but I can't thank you enough for everything, all this."
"We did what we had to," Jun replies. "Just like you did." Under his breath, Sho mutters something about Jun being way too cool for the rest of them.
Together, they watch her retreating back. It makes Nino feel like he's 15, 16 and 17 again, and waving while Ohno, Sho and Aiba walked away, became smaller and smaller until their figures were swallowed up by distance. This time though, he's not bidding his time, waiting for some point in the future that he cannot see. This time, he's here, standing on the steps of this old house in Tokyo on this warm autumn with the rough sounds of the grinder drifting out from Maru's open backdoor, and a flower shop that smells like garlic. This time, they're all stuck in a tiny doorway, waving until Jun feels silly and Ohno declares he's hungry again.
Sho's eyes are glistening.
"Are you crying?"
"NO, the sun's just too strong okay!"
This time - it's different.
Epilogue
"Do you know what happened a few days ago?" Hina asks the next time Nino's over at the shop. "There was a blacked-out car and men in suits everywhere around the bar, wonder what happened huh."
But Nino only shrugs nonchalantly, taking another bite of Yasu's freshly baked banana bread. "No idea. Hina, I can't believe you're still not used to seeing important people around, you've been in Tokyo for ten years!"
Once again, Maru decides to tell them about that one time he shook hands with that Shounentai member. You know that one, the one with the hair?
*
Nino's taking out a guy with a terrible haircut when Aiba ducks into the doorway. He would really rather he not.
"N-kun, can I borrow your taser again? Sorry, I promise it's the last time," Aiba clasps his palms together and makes a pleading face. In Nino's arms, the guy grabs ahold of his elbow, meaning to topple him, but he lets go of his shoulders, shrugs out of the grip and delivers an uppercut. The guy's head whips around and he lands on the ground with a thud.
"I told you to use my work name!" Nino complains exasperatedly. Aiba has the stupidest nickname in the whole world ('Birdman') but they all still use it; 'Game' is not even that hard to pronounce. "Behind you -"
Aiba punches, then looks. It only got the man in his chest, off-centre from his heart. The man recoils, pulls the safety off his gun but Aiba kicks him behind his knee and grabs his wrist, jerking his arm backwards so there's a cracking sound and the gun clatters to the ground. The man screams. Aiba hits his cheek, ducking when he swings with his other arm. Then, he steadies his footing, and drags the guy upwards by his shirt, throws two punches so hard that he slumps on the ground, unconscious.
"Sorry, sorry, ah, it's okay, I'm going to use this gun then. Bye!" Aiba dashes off again, far too noisy for someone who is supposed to be a vigilante.
"You're the WORST." Nino shouts after him, and it draws the attention of another two guards, who surround Nino, bracing for a fight.
"Yup, I LOVE YOU TOO!" Nino hears, just before he whips around, tasing one of the men and kicking the other in his balls.
end.