fic for cutselvage (2/2)
For: cutselvage
From: lover_youshould
Part 1
After Aiba left for work the next morning, Nino heated up the rest of last night's dinner and took it with him to the living room, where he dusted off the bench of his rarely used piano. He normally played the one in his office, but the project he was starting right then wasn't for work. He took a seat, took a bite of mapo tofu, and started plinking out a new melody. He wanted something light and twinkly, something celebratory -- something Jun would like.
He wanted it to sound good, of course, but perhaps even more important at that moment was that it tasted right. It took a few hours, but when it sounded done to his ears, and tasted crisp and fizzy in his mouth, he knew he was finished.
He wandered downstairs to say hello to Riisa, then ventured out into the Square to find what he needed for that night. He passed by Love So Sweet and could see Jun out front, oblivious to Nino as he stared down at the clipboard in his hands and then directed someone who was loading purple boxes into the back of a car. Nino thought of waving hello but quickly changed his mind; Jun was locked deep in work mode, and besides, Nino would have plenty of time with him later.
He kept on walking, smiling to himself as he continued his search for a bottle of champagne Jun would approve of.
--
Nino and Aiba weren't attending the Summer Love Love Glitter Party -- it was mostly for celebrities and people who had wealth, connections, or both -- but because Love So Sweet had provided the chocolates, Jun and his crew were on the guest list. Nino and Aiba knew from stories of years past that the party usually ended around sundown, so when the skies started to darken, they sent Nasu-chan to the shop with a message for Jun:
We know you're celebrating with Asami, Kasumi, and Satomi,
But we'd like to give our congratulations as well.
Meet us at Tensai! when you're ready. ♥
(No rush!)
Kazu + Masaki
They'd picked Aiba's loft because he had a cozy seating area up on his roof, complete with lawn chairs arranged around a decently sized firepit and a little table to hold drinks. They settled up there and passed the time by playing cards and, when it started to get chilly, trying their best to light the firepit "the fun way!" at Aiba's behest, though after ten minutes of watching Aiba rubbing twigs together and mumbling "Almost there, seriously, watch this," Nino just pushed him out of the way and lit it with a spell.
It wasn't long after that when Maru-chan's barks two floors below let them know that Jun had arrived. Aiba looked over at Nino, who lifted his eyebrows and motioned to the hatch that led down into Aiba's loft. You do the honors.
A few minutes later, as Aiba was climbing back up with Jun in tow, Nino could hear that Jun was already complaining about how he'd been trying to convince Nino to do the same thing to his own roof for years. Aiba said, "Ooh, and our places are so close that we could even suspend a net between them and play volleyball!"
"That sounds very dangerous, Aiba-san," Jun said, but Nino heard the fondness in his voice.
As they made it onto the roof proper and walked over to the chairs, Jun was starting to brag about the wine he'd brought. Then, when he saw the table, the ice-filled bucket with the champagne, he stopped and said, "Oh, you already have something."
Nino couldn't quite suppress a smile as he lifted the bottle and handed it to Jun. "Nino picked it out just for you," Aiba said, beaming the way Nino was trying not to.
He'd been right about Jun's post-party elation: he made a little show out of opening the bottle with a spell and laughed when the top popped off. But when he heard the first twinkling notes of the melody Nino had charmed into it, he went very quiet. He stood there, as silent as Nino, for the whole minute it took for the music to play out. Nino smiled wider and wider as it went on, until he gave up and had to hide his face in the crook of his elbow.
When the music stopped, Jun turned his wide eyes in Nino's direction. "Kazu..."
Nino waved his hands dismissively, but he still couldn't stop grinning, even when Aiba wiped his eyes and snuffled, "Ahh, that was beautiful!"
Jun laughed as he moved into the seat beside Nino's, reaching out to grasp one of his hands. "Seriously. Thank you. It was wonderful."
Nino returned the squeeze, tasting his pride and happiness as plump, juicy grapes.
They poured the champagne into wine glasses Aiba had brought up with him, and they sipped it slowly as the stars twinkled above them. Nino was delighted to realize that his lack of voice meant Jun and Aiba had no choice but to carry on the conversation themselves and that, although they tried to keep Nino included, it naturally evolved into a discussion that was almost entirely between the two of them. Nino didn't mind at all; in the few gatherings they'd had before this, they'd always clumsily relied on him to be the bridge between them, but now that they simply couldn't, they were getting along just fine. Jun was genuinely fascinated to hear about all of Aiba's travels abroad, and Aiba wanted to know everything he could about the charms Jun used in his chocolates, thinking it might be a good idea to use some of them in pet treats.
Nino slipped away at some point to use the bathroom down in the loft, and when he climbed back up onto the roof, he saw that they'd scooted their chairs closer together. They were speaking quietly, intimately, with one of Jun's hands reaching across the barely-there space between them to rest on Aiba's knee.
As soon as they realized Nino had returned, they snapped away from each other as quickly as if Nino had broken a love spell. Jun scooted his chair back while Aiba stammered a bit, smiling bashfully, and Nino thought to himself, Even when I can't talk, these losers really do need me to spell everything out for them after all.
It had been nearly a week since Nino lost his voice, and he'd been wanting this -- had been watching them want it -- for even longer than that. He was tired of playing charades, tired of using vague gestures to approximate what he was after. Guessing games be damned. He crossed the roof until he was standing in the newly opened space between their chairs, he tugged on Jun's wrist to pull him to his feet, and then he kissed him.
Jun made a little surprised noise against Nino's mouth, but he didn't resist. Behind them, Aiba was stuttering, "Oh, should I -- uh --", so Nino pulled away from Jun to look over his shoulder and beckon Aiba closer. He reached back for Aiba's hand to hold, slotting their fingers neatly together when Aiba immediately acquiesced, and returned to kissing Jun, only to lean back a moment later so that he could kiss Aiba instead.
When he pulled back, Aiba's eyes were on him, sparkling and excited, and then flicked past him to Jun, who was already staring back. They looked at each other, and then back at Nino.
He did the most comforting, ice-breaking thing he could think of: he flashed them a thumbs-up.
They laughed, and with a smile still on his face, Jun slowly moved to Aiba. Aiba put his hands on Jun's waist and leaned in, Jun closed his eyes and tilted his head, and they met, finally, in the middle.
The kiss was sweet, a perfect mix of the two of them: curious but confident, chaste at first and then passionate very soon after that. Watching it made Nino feel weightless and happy -- made the inside of his mouth taste like cool, pure water in the middle of summer -- and when they finally pulled apart and spared only a moment looking at each other before turning their gazes on him, that taste only grew stronger. He stepped back into their space and was pulled into a kiss by Jun while Aiba moved behind him, bending to get his mouth on Nino's neck.
Even now, he could sense a bit of nervousness in each of them, so he did his best to put it to ease. He couldn't reassure them with words, couldn't tell them that this was okay, that it was what he wanted if only they wanted it too, but he remembered Aiba's words from the previous night: This is how you can show me what you want. He put his hands on them, one on the back of Jun's neck, the other reaching back to slide through the soft strands of Aiba's hair, just to touch them -- just to let them know.
Aiba's skin under his fingertips tasted bright and tart, like citrus; Jun's tasted deep and rich, like wine.
They kissed on the rooftop beneath the stars, only moving down into the loft when the fire started to dwindle and the air grew too chilly. They didn't do much else that night, which didn't surprise Nino; it had been a long day for Jun, a long week for all of them. It didn't disappoint him either, because even though he wanted more, the matter didn't seem immediate any longer. He knew, from years of friendship with each of them, that neither Jun nor Aiba did anything halfway. If they'd made it this far, they wouldn't turn back.
They stumbled into Aiba's huge bed, sleepy and giddy all at the same time, and one by one, they drifted to sleep. Nino was the last one left awake, and as he lay there, listening to Aiba and Jun breathing on either side of him, he felt comforted by the knowledge that this was where he would wake up -- that this was where he would be for a long time to come.
--
For the next few days, Jun spent a lot of time with him, happy to be taking a break after such an intense workload. He would spend the morning working at Love So Sweet and then come to visit Nino around noon, and he would hang around even as Nino was finishing his own work so that he could watch over him, feed him, and pour pot after pot of smelly tea into him, insisting that it might speed up the process of regaining his voice. Aiba stopped by one day and, upon learning about Jun's experiment, joined in with as much excitement in his eyes as Nino had ever seen. "I'm pretty sure it's just supposed to run its course," he said, "but there's only one way to find out!"
Nino put up an admirable fuss, considering he couldn't actually whine about it, but he was secretly happy to let them do it. It made him feel particularly warm, his mouth filled with the taste of miso soup, to watch them huddle together over a bubbling pot, leaning closer and closer into each other's space, fingers brushing as they added herbs and incantations.
On most nights, they headed back up to Aiba's roof to joke, play cards, watch the stars, and debate the benefits (Aiba) and dangers (Jun) of putting a volleyball net between the two lofts. On the fourth such night, Jun brought along some mugs and the ingredients for a new hot chocolate recipe he'd whipped up in his workshop that morning. It was only just sweet enough to be perfect for Nino's palate, and the purple steam rising from their mugs formed the shapes of various animals that pranced or leapt about before drifting into the sky -- a sky which, on that night, seemed to be particularly clear. It matched the way Nino could clearly taste the hot chocolate they were sipping, with no other flavors in his mouth to muddle it up.
He puzzled over it for a few minutes, and then decided that maybe the odd absence of flavor was simply what it tasted like to be perfectly content -- or, perhaps, that being perfectly content tasted just like Jun's hot chocolate.
He lifted the mug to take another sip, and right as he did, Aiba said, "Think about it, Matsujun, we'll just line the alley underneath with tatami mats, so if someone does fall --", and Nino choked on a laugh. The hot chocolate went down the wrong pipe, he spent a few moments coughing and thumping his chest in between peals of laughter, and when his coughing died down, he realized that Aiba and Jun were both staring at him.
Without thinking about it, he asked, "What?"
His voice was just a croaky whisper, like one of the bullhorn tadpoles in Aiba's shop -- but it was there.
The other two jumped to their feet, Jun only barely managing not to spill his drink, Aiba failing completely and getting it all over his pants, then hopping around on one foot as the hot chocolate trickled down into his socks. Nino found himself laughing again at the sight of it, and that's when it finally hit him: his voice was back.
"This is no laughing matter!" Aiba yelped, his pants already unzipped and halfway down his legs.
Jun stepped out of Aiba's path and set his mug down on the little table, then moved closer to Nino. "So was this the magical concoction that finally did the trick?"
Nino rasped out, "I think I finally just got tired of listening to you two talk about volleyball."
It felt good, if a little odd, to be using his voice again. He and Jun laughed some more at Aiba's struggle to get out of his pants, and then, when he finally had them off and was threatening to throw them at someone's head, the three of them went down into the loft to wash the stains out and get ready for sleep. Nino joked back and forth with them, letting out all the teasing he'd been holding in for days, and he tasted nothing but the lingering flavor of hot chocolate on Aiba's mouth before they brushed their teeth, the minty toothpaste on Jun's breath right after.
They settled onto Aiba's bed, the same as they had for the past several nights: Nino in the middle, Aiba and Jun pressed close on either side of him. As he stretched and yawned -- especially loudly, just because he could -- Nino was already considering how to make a convincing case that it was Aiba's responsibility to pay for Riisa's raise. But as his mind quieted down and his body relaxed, his thoughts drifted sleepily to how pleased he was to be lying there. He didn't think it was a feeling he knew how to express verbally, but he also knew that he wouldn't have to, even now that he had the voice for it.
He would continue to show it, instead, in the way he smiled at them, the way he touched them, the way he'd started hiding little melodies in Aiba's wallet or Jun's morning coffee. It was the same, he suspected, as the way they kept him fed, looked after him, made him laugh. All the little habits they'd picked up along the way to express their gratitude -- their happiness -- their love.
It wasn't something they had to say in words.
They knew it all the same.
From: lover_youshould
Part 1
After Aiba left for work the next morning, Nino heated up the rest of last night's dinner and took it with him to the living room, where he dusted off the bench of his rarely used piano. He normally played the one in his office, but the project he was starting right then wasn't for work. He took a seat, took a bite of mapo tofu, and started plinking out a new melody. He wanted something light and twinkly, something celebratory -- something Jun would like.
He wanted it to sound good, of course, but perhaps even more important at that moment was that it tasted right. It took a few hours, but when it sounded done to his ears, and tasted crisp and fizzy in his mouth, he knew he was finished.
He wandered downstairs to say hello to Riisa, then ventured out into the Square to find what he needed for that night. He passed by Love So Sweet and could see Jun out front, oblivious to Nino as he stared down at the clipboard in his hands and then directed someone who was loading purple boxes into the back of a car. Nino thought of waving hello but quickly changed his mind; Jun was locked deep in work mode, and besides, Nino would have plenty of time with him later.
He kept on walking, smiling to himself as he continued his search for a bottle of champagne Jun would approve of.
--
Nino and Aiba weren't attending the Summer Love Love Glitter Party -- it was mostly for celebrities and people who had wealth, connections, or both -- but because Love So Sweet had provided the chocolates, Jun and his crew were on the guest list. Nino and Aiba knew from stories of years past that the party usually ended around sundown, so when the skies started to darken, they sent Nasu-chan to the shop with a message for Jun:
We know you're celebrating with Asami, Kasumi, and Satomi,
But we'd like to give our congratulations as well.
Meet us at Tensai! when you're ready. ♥
(No rush!)
Kazu + Masaki
They'd picked Aiba's loft because he had a cozy seating area up on his roof, complete with lawn chairs arranged around a decently sized firepit and a little table to hold drinks. They settled up there and passed the time by playing cards and, when it started to get chilly, trying their best to light the firepit "the fun way!" at Aiba's behest, though after ten minutes of watching Aiba rubbing twigs together and mumbling "Almost there, seriously, watch this," Nino just pushed him out of the way and lit it with a spell.
It wasn't long after that when Maru-chan's barks two floors below let them know that Jun had arrived. Aiba looked over at Nino, who lifted his eyebrows and motioned to the hatch that led down into Aiba's loft. You do the honors.
A few minutes later, as Aiba was climbing back up with Jun in tow, Nino could hear that Jun was already complaining about how he'd been trying to convince Nino to do the same thing to his own roof for years. Aiba said, "Ooh, and our places are so close that we could even suspend a net between them and play volleyball!"
"That sounds very dangerous, Aiba-san," Jun said, but Nino heard the fondness in his voice.
As they made it onto the roof proper and walked over to the chairs, Jun was starting to brag about the wine he'd brought. Then, when he saw the table, the ice-filled bucket with the champagne, he stopped and said, "Oh, you already have something."
Nino couldn't quite suppress a smile as he lifted the bottle and handed it to Jun. "Nino picked it out just for you," Aiba said, beaming the way Nino was trying not to.
He'd been right about Jun's post-party elation: he made a little show out of opening the bottle with a spell and laughed when the top popped off. But when he heard the first twinkling notes of the melody Nino had charmed into it, he went very quiet. He stood there, as silent as Nino, for the whole minute it took for the music to play out. Nino smiled wider and wider as it went on, until he gave up and had to hide his face in the crook of his elbow.
When the music stopped, Jun turned his wide eyes in Nino's direction. "Kazu..."
Nino waved his hands dismissively, but he still couldn't stop grinning, even when Aiba wiped his eyes and snuffled, "Ahh, that was beautiful!"
Jun laughed as he moved into the seat beside Nino's, reaching out to grasp one of his hands. "Seriously. Thank you. It was wonderful."
Nino returned the squeeze, tasting his pride and happiness as plump, juicy grapes.
They poured the champagne into wine glasses Aiba had brought up with him, and they sipped it slowly as the stars twinkled above them. Nino was delighted to realize that his lack of voice meant Jun and Aiba had no choice but to carry on the conversation themselves and that, although they tried to keep Nino included, it naturally evolved into a discussion that was almost entirely between the two of them. Nino didn't mind at all; in the few gatherings they'd had before this, they'd always clumsily relied on him to be the bridge between them, but now that they simply couldn't, they were getting along just fine. Jun was genuinely fascinated to hear about all of Aiba's travels abroad, and Aiba wanted to know everything he could about the charms Jun used in his chocolates, thinking it might be a good idea to use some of them in pet treats.
Nino slipped away at some point to use the bathroom down in the loft, and when he climbed back up onto the roof, he saw that they'd scooted their chairs closer together. They were speaking quietly, intimately, with one of Jun's hands reaching across the barely-there space between them to rest on Aiba's knee.
As soon as they realized Nino had returned, they snapped away from each other as quickly as if Nino had broken a love spell. Jun scooted his chair back while Aiba stammered a bit, smiling bashfully, and Nino thought to himself, Even when I can't talk, these losers really do need me to spell everything out for them after all.
It had been nearly a week since Nino lost his voice, and he'd been wanting this -- had been watching them want it -- for even longer than that. He was tired of playing charades, tired of using vague gestures to approximate what he was after. Guessing games be damned. He crossed the roof until he was standing in the newly opened space between their chairs, he tugged on Jun's wrist to pull him to his feet, and then he kissed him.
Jun made a little surprised noise against Nino's mouth, but he didn't resist. Behind them, Aiba was stuttering, "Oh, should I -- uh --", so Nino pulled away from Jun to look over his shoulder and beckon Aiba closer. He reached back for Aiba's hand to hold, slotting their fingers neatly together when Aiba immediately acquiesced, and returned to kissing Jun, only to lean back a moment later so that he could kiss Aiba instead.
When he pulled back, Aiba's eyes were on him, sparkling and excited, and then flicked past him to Jun, who was already staring back. They looked at each other, and then back at Nino.
He did the most comforting, ice-breaking thing he could think of: he flashed them a thumbs-up.
They laughed, and with a smile still on his face, Jun slowly moved to Aiba. Aiba put his hands on Jun's waist and leaned in, Jun closed his eyes and tilted his head, and they met, finally, in the middle.
The kiss was sweet, a perfect mix of the two of them: curious but confident, chaste at first and then passionate very soon after that. Watching it made Nino feel weightless and happy -- made the inside of his mouth taste like cool, pure water in the middle of summer -- and when they finally pulled apart and spared only a moment looking at each other before turning their gazes on him, that taste only grew stronger. He stepped back into their space and was pulled into a kiss by Jun while Aiba moved behind him, bending to get his mouth on Nino's neck.
Even now, he could sense a bit of nervousness in each of them, so he did his best to put it to ease. He couldn't reassure them with words, couldn't tell them that this was okay, that it was what he wanted if only they wanted it too, but he remembered Aiba's words from the previous night: This is how you can show me what you want. He put his hands on them, one on the back of Jun's neck, the other reaching back to slide through the soft strands of Aiba's hair, just to touch them -- just to let them know.
Aiba's skin under his fingertips tasted bright and tart, like citrus; Jun's tasted deep and rich, like wine.
They kissed on the rooftop beneath the stars, only moving down into the loft when the fire started to dwindle and the air grew too chilly. They didn't do much else that night, which didn't surprise Nino; it had been a long day for Jun, a long week for all of them. It didn't disappoint him either, because even though he wanted more, the matter didn't seem immediate any longer. He knew, from years of friendship with each of them, that neither Jun nor Aiba did anything halfway. If they'd made it this far, they wouldn't turn back.
They stumbled into Aiba's huge bed, sleepy and giddy all at the same time, and one by one, they drifted to sleep. Nino was the last one left awake, and as he lay there, listening to Aiba and Jun breathing on either side of him, he felt comforted by the knowledge that this was where he would wake up -- that this was where he would be for a long time to come.
--
For the next few days, Jun spent a lot of time with him, happy to be taking a break after such an intense workload. He would spend the morning working at Love So Sweet and then come to visit Nino around noon, and he would hang around even as Nino was finishing his own work so that he could watch over him, feed him, and pour pot after pot of smelly tea into him, insisting that it might speed up the process of regaining his voice. Aiba stopped by one day and, upon learning about Jun's experiment, joined in with as much excitement in his eyes as Nino had ever seen. "I'm pretty sure it's just supposed to run its course," he said, "but there's only one way to find out!"
Nino put up an admirable fuss, considering he couldn't actually whine about it, but he was secretly happy to let them do it. It made him feel particularly warm, his mouth filled with the taste of miso soup, to watch them huddle together over a bubbling pot, leaning closer and closer into each other's space, fingers brushing as they added herbs and incantations.
On most nights, they headed back up to Aiba's roof to joke, play cards, watch the stars, and debate the benefits (Aiba) and dangers (Jun) of putting a volleyball net between the two lofts. On the fourth such night, Jun brought along some mugs and the ingredients for a new hot chocolate recipe he'd whipped up in his workshop that morning. It was only just sweet enough to be perfect for Nino's palate, and the purple steam rising from their mugs formed the shapes of various animals that pranced or leapt about before drifting into the sky -- a sky which, on that night, seemed to be particularly clear. It matched the way Nino could clearly taste the hot chocolate they were sipping, with no other flavors in his mouth to muddle it up.
He puzzled over it for a few minutes, and then decided that maybe the odd absence of flavor was simply what it tasted like to be perfectly content -- or, perhaps, that being perfectly content tasted just like Jun's hot chocolate.
He lifted the mug to take another sip, and right as he did, Aiba said, "Think about it, Matsujun, we'll just line the alley underneath with tatami mats, so if someone does fall --", and Nino choked on a laugh. The hot chocolate went down the wrong pipe, he spent a few moments coughing and thumping his chest in between peals of laughter, and when his coughing died down, he realized that Aiba and Jun were both staring at him.
Without thinking about it, he asked, "What?"
His voice was just a croaky whisper, like one of the bullhorn tadpoles in Aiba's shop -- but it was there.
The other two jumped to their feet, Jun only barely managing not to spill his drink, Aiba failing completely and getting it all over his pants, then hopping around on one foot as the hot chocolate trickled down into his socks. Nino found himself laughing again at the sight of it, and that's when it finally hit him: his voice was back.
"This is no laughing matter!" Aiba yelped, his pants already unzipped and halfway down his legs.
Jun stepped out of Aiba's path and set his mug down on the little table, then moved closer to Nino. "So was this the magical concoction that finally did the trick?"
Nino rasped out, "I think I finally just got tired of listening to you two talk about volleyball."
It felt good, if a little odd, to be using his voice again. He and Jun laughed some more at Aiba's struggle to get out of his pants, and then, when he finally had them off and was threatening to throw them at someone's head, the three of them went down into the loft to wash the stains out and get ready for sleep. Nino joked back and forth with them, letting out all the teasing he'd been holding in for days, and he tasted nothing but the lingering flavor of hot chocolate on Aiba's mouth before they brushed their teeth, the minty toothpaste on Jun's breath right after.
They settled onto Aiba's bed, the same as they had for the past several nights: Nino in the middle, Aiba and Jun pressed close on either side of him. As he stretched and yawned -- especially loudly, just because he could -- Nino was already considering how to make a convincing case that it was Aiba's responsibility to pay for Riisa's raise. But as his mind quieted down and his body relaxed, his thoughts drifted sleepily to how pleased he was to be lying there. He didn't think it was a feeling he knew how to express verbally, but he also knew that he wouldn't have to, even now that he had the voice for it.
He would continue to show it, instead, in the way he smiled at them, the way he touched them, the way he'd started hiding little melodies in Aiba's wallet or Jun's morning coffee. It was the same, he suspected, as the way they kept him fed, looked after him, made him laugh. All the little habits they'd picked up along the way to express their gratitude -- their happiness -- their love.
It wasn't something they had to say in words.
They knew it all the same.