fic for gimmick_game
For: gimmick_game
From: honeyporridge
Title: spaceships in this universe
Pairing/Focus: nino! ohmiya?
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: gaping holes in plot :(
Summary: nino doesn’t remember how old he’s turning anyways. it’s hard to when you live on a spaceship.
Notes: thank you T for putting up with me and my inability to make up my mind. i hope that you enjoy it but i only wish that i could have done better for you, gimmick_game. i had fun writing this even if i spent most of my time tearing my hair out♥
It starts on a day like any other except for the fact that it’s Nino’s birthday. Nino himself doesn’t remember because it’s hard to keep track of the days when every morning is the same as every night. There is no sun and no moon. There is no clock or calendar that he can keep and call his own. He wakes up when everyone falls asleep and he sleeps just as he hears people coming alive.
Still, it is Sho who comes to wake him up, tapping his shoulder until Nino makes grumpy sounds. He doesn’t stop. Nino knows he won’t.
“Happy birthday,” he says, softly as Nino opens his eyes and blinks blearily up at Sho. Sho’s smile is as blinding as his stupidly pristine white coat. Nino doesn’t even remember how old he’s supposed to be.
“Happy birthday,” he repeats, an incomprehensible mumble, and he turns his face back into his pillow with a huffy snuffle. He hears Sho laugh and it warms his heart a little. The sound of the glass door closing is loud as he departs. Nino turns around and he looks at the ceiling of his cell. Oh, he’s turning 17.
Slowly, he sits up and shifts so that his feet dangle just centimetres above the cold floor and after a deep breath, he gets out of bed. Another day, another month, another year. It’s really all the same.
---
Everyone thinks that Nino is crazy but that’s okay. It’s not like Nino wants anyone to think otherwise. He lives at his own pace, moving whenever it’s convenient for him even if he mostly crouches in the corners of his cell at most times of the day and slips out when the lights are dimmed in an imitation of what night might have been back of Earth. He also hoards cubes of food in his room because he only nibbles for each meal and he mostly eats when mealtime is over. He’s growing, not much, but he knows he should be.
There are scribbles all over his cell from the floor to the ceiling. It is filled with nothing but Nino’s heart. They come to clean his cell ever week and they erase his heart but he does it again and again and he can’t stop. How can he? He started when he was younger and he doesn’t have any plans to stop any time soon.
“Where did you get that from?” asked Sho and Nino looked at the pencil that was still in his hand before he looked back up at Sho who was standing over where he was crouched on the floor, scribbling symbols and old words that no one else on this ship recognised anymore. He didn’t have time to hide it when Sho walked in.
“I found it,” he said, gripping it tightly and curling into himself a little. Nino liked Sho but Sho was different. Sho was an adult. He was worlds apart from Nino and somehow, Sho understood what Nino was saying as he stared at his scribbles on the floor. He moved to sit on the chair in the corner of the room and all he did was watch as Nino continued scribbling. Still, as much as Sho was silent and seemed to approve of Nino’s scribbling, there was little he could to do actually let Nino keep it where it was.
---
Nino shuffles through the morning crowd of Block 5 for the first time in weeks. Block 5, also known as Japan, is always most crowded in the morning because of values that they still retain from their days on Earth. There’s not much to be done unless you’re one of the Educated or one of the White Coats. Nino is neither, like most of the people. He’s not important at all even if Sho repeatedly assures him that there is a purpose for him and one day, he’ll understand. Nino doesn’t understand. He’s already 17 and he still doesn’t. So he shuffles around in his plain gray jersey just like everyone else.
They’re heading towards the central facilities but Nino isn’t. He’s going in the opposite direction, towards Block 12. No one ever goes to Block 12 because it’s always guarded but Nino’s small and there’s a tiny door that he can fit into and he goes in through the air duct. That’s where he found the pencil he scribbles with.
There are many things like the pencil in the hidden corners of Block 12 and Nino loves that he almost always finds something new whenever he goes. There are forgotten toys and other little things that Nino doesn’t know the names of and he’s pretty sure that once upon a time, it would have been names and words known by everyone but that life is forgotten. It’s a treasure trove and Nino knows that Aiba would love it but there’s no way Aiba’s going to fit. That doesn’t stop Nino from taking tiny gadgets with him to leave at the foot of Aiba’s bed every once in a while.
Block 12 is always quiet. A little dusty and mostly forgotten and Nino likes it that way because he can just hide in the shadows and pretend that he’s somewhere else. Somewhere that’s not in a ship in the middle of the universe, travelling in search of a planet that they haven’t found.
Yet, that day, as Nino climbs out of the air duct, he notices that there is someone. There is someone in his space and before Nino can even see the person properly, he feels himself bristle. He’s not sure whether he should approach or back off but it’s his space. Nino found it first and he’s not letting random people just get into it.
He approaches the person rather cautiously, socked feet padding lightly against the metal floors and before he calls out or even gets near enough to touch him, the stranger turns around and Nino finds that he’s mesmerized. In the dim lights, he makes out a sleepy soft smile directed towards him. He doesn’t say anything but the way he looks at Nino makes him feel rather inexplicably shy.
And really, it’s not amazing or out of the world but that’s how he meets Ohno in the stillness of the corridors of Block 12.
---
Nino has a collection of torn pages hidden in every possible place in his otherwise empty cell. Nino likes paper. He likes the way it feels under his fingertips, likes the way that there are words written on them and that there are stories he cannot read on them. They shouldn’t be cast away even if they have been forgotten and the boy knows that there are people on this ship who can read it but Nino doesn’t feel like he can trust anyone around him to not take it away from him. They’d tell him to go to the library to read if he wanted to but Nino had little to no interest in the new language or in the screens that had been created to replace paper since before he was born.
He reads what he does understand when his corridor is particularly empty and the other residents have drifted off to sleep or towards the places created to keep them all occupied from the fact that they are drifting, with no destination. Nino would share, really, except he’s never really liked to. They’re all in a place where everyone’s supposed to be the same but Nino knows that they aren’t and that they can’t possibly be. They’ll speak the same words, eat the same food, wear the same kind of clothes and pretend to be interested in the same boring things but Nino will never accept being the same as everyone else.
Nino hides his things inside the hollow pipes that make up his bed frame and in the little spaces under the tiny shelf he has and in between the folds of his clothes. He always curls up on his bed, arms wrapped around his knees, to make himself look smaller whenever the White Coats send someone to clean his room and he watches in silence as they erase his words and his dreams. They stopped trying to clean his ceiling because it’s inconvenient and Nino really believes that Sho might have had a hand in it. Well, Nino’s not going to ask them to anyway. He’s written his whole soul up there for it to stare back at him when he looks up. First thing in the night and the last thing in the morning, he sees the dreams he’ll never write on the floor because it doesn’t belong there. He dreams about what the Earth could look like, what it could have been because he’ll never know even if he reads. He’ll never know what the moon looks like or what wind feels like.
There are many regrets, which he holds, which cannot possibly be his own and it’s a little lonely because Nino can’t share it with people.
---
Ohno’s not the type to talk a lot and it doesn’t take very long for Nino to find out but it really doesn’t stop him from liking Ohno. He’s not like Aiba who likes to chatter about everything and nothing and he’s not like Sho who talks to him rather patiently and tries to get Nino to talk about things. Some days, Sho’s patience runs thin when Nino does nothing but repeat words back at him and on other days, Aiba runs out of things to say and they sit side by side, knees almost pressed together, watching as people pass by, never once stopping to look at them.
Nino likes Ohno. There’s something calming about the older man and it makes Nino want to talk. There are no empty spaces or awkward silences that need to be filled but something tugs at Nino’s heart. Tell me, he says in the way he lets Nino play with his hands and they huddle together so close that Nino feels that they could be connected and it wouldn’t be weird. The fact that this thought occurs to him barely a week after he first met Ohno unsettles him a little. Nino’s always been his own island.
He spends a few hours pacing up and down the main corridor between Block 5 and Block 4 until Matsumoto from the library grabs his arm and Nino jumps. He’s thankful that he didn’t flinch, somewhat. He looks up at Matsumoto’s rather awkward face and he makes a face that says, “What?”
Matsumoto scowls at him (and Nino’s scowl deepens right back without hesitation) but he lets go and Nino slouches away and goes back to sleep on it.
When he finally slinks back to Block 12, he’s a little surprised to actually find Ohno in their usual cell again and he’s sleeping on the bed, chest rising and falling with every inhale and every soft puff of breath. Nino wants to touch Ohno. He does so. He leans down as he touches Ohno’s tanned cheek lightly and wonders how he got such a skin tone when almost everyone he’s seen is fair and so very, very white.
Ohno is warm and soft under Nino's fingers and Nino can't seem to bring himself to stop. He touches the corners of Ohno's closed eyes, presses his fingers lightly against the sides of his lips and he wonders whether Ohno is actually just a dream. It is then that Ohno opens his eyes and he blinks sleepily at Nino, smiling that same soft smile he did when Nino first met Ohno.
"Nino," he says, barely louder than a whisper, and Nino smiles back. "Oh-chan," he says in the same softness as if either one of their voices would break whatever it is that they have at the moment.
---
There are many things that Nino suspects. For instance, he has no idea where the White Coats sleep. He’s tried looking before but if they aren’t drifting around from cell to cell, visiting people in a certain pattern, they’d be in the library, teaching the Educated ones how to maintain the ship’s statuses or about the history of humanity. Nino wasn’t chosen to be one of the Educated ones and he really doesn’t care because they wouldn’t teach him about what he wants to know anyway.
There’s also the thing where some of the White Coats disappear from an extended period of time and they come back with a spring in their step. Nino doesn’t understand it. Where do they go to? Is there a special area just for them because there could be and nobody would suspect a thing.
Also where does their food and water come from? Nino wonders and thinks about it but he can’t find the answers to them. He remembers asking Sho once but Sho went tight-lipped and his eyebrows shifted into that angle that said that he wasn’t happy and Nino had retreated but he hasn’t given up. No, not really.
He keeps turning them over in his head over and over again. There are so many things aboard this ship that he questions and he also wonders whether anyone else does but it’s not like he can just step up on to a table and say it out loud, “There’s something wrong with this ship and our lives!”
---
Neither Matsumoto nor Sho look pleased when they find out that Nino’s been sneaking into Block 12. Nino doesn’t like that they’re both towering over him as he sits on his bed, his legs folded under him, and they’re exchanging looks that Nino can’t read. Nino feels like a child. More than he’s felt for a while now.
Nino’s pretty sure that he’s in trouble. Though the reason of being in trouble escapes him because he’s been going into Block 12 for the longest time ever and he’s fairly sure that it’s never disturbed anyone.
“Am I in trouble?” he asks in the smallest voice he can make. Sho visibly softens a little but Matsumoto remains as displeased as before.
That night, Nino continues his scribbling. He hasn’t done it for a while since he met Ohno. He wonders whether he’ll get to go there again, wonders if he’ll see Ohno again, wonders where Ohno is outside of Block 12 because he’s never seen the older man outside their own world and then he stops. He stops, pencil hovering over the floor before he tosses it under his bed and climbs into bed. He doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to think about anything.
Maybe he’ll wake up and the whole thing would have been nothing but a dream.
---
It’s Ohno who comes to look for him.
Nino wakes up to a hand on his arm, warmth seeping through the thin nightwear. He blinks blearily and is rather surprised to see Ohno’s round face hovering above his. He’s greeted with a tiny, almost grim smile and he just stares and squints until Ohno pulls him up into a sitting position and he just sits there as Ohno passes him clothes to change into.
“Why?” he asks and Ohno just presses them into his hands and Nino does so, trying not to feel awkward that there is another person in his room as he strips. When he is done, Ohno puts a cap on his head and takes his hand, holds it tight. Follow me, he says and Nino does. They walk briskly down the corridors, pausing every time they hear someone coming.
Nino watches every flicker on Ohno’s face, watches as Ohno tenses when they wait for the shadows to pass before continuing. It feels like a game and the warmth of Ohno’s hand holding his distracts him from noticing that they are heading towards Block 12.
The guards barely look at Ohno who pulls Nino after him with a confident stride. It's rather different from the usually pliant man that Nino spent time with but Nino doesn't hate it. It's when they're standing in one of the furthest cells that Ohno stops and turns around to look at him. He pulls off the cap on Nino's head and he smiles rather sheepishly.
"I should have asked you first," he starts and he looks down at their joined hands and his smile grows. Nino tilts his head a little, fighting from smiling back because he really doesn't get it and he wonders when everything got as confusing as it is right now.
Nino doesn't ask but he just squeezes Ohno's hand in reply. Somehow, he feels as if he understands. He'll go wherever Ohno will bring him. It's dangerous. It's silly but now that there's a tiny spark in his life, Nino's not going to let it go anytime soon. He tries for a reassuring smile but he's not really sure what makes a smile reassuring.
Ohno brings him a little further until all that Nino sees is a wall and when he looks closer, he realises that there is a strange line. Ohno lets go of his hand and pushes him forward lightly and Nino places his hands on the wall except it's not a wall. It's a door and when Nino pushes a little harder, it opens before him.
The first thing Nino sees is nothing but white and there are white things floating and dancing out there and it is cold, colder than anything Nino's ever felt before and his heart soars. He turns to look at Ohno for a moment before he looks back. He takes a deep breath and takes his first step.
From: honeyporridge
Title: spaceships in this universe
Pairing/Focus: nino! ohmiya?
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: gaping holes in plot :(
Summary: nino doesn’t remember how old he’s turning anyways. it’s hard to when you live on a spaceship.
Notes: thank you T for putting up with me and my inability to make up my mind. i hope that you enjoy it but i only wish that i could have done better for you, gimmick_game. i had fun writing this even if i spent most of my time tearing my hair out♥
It starts on a day like any other except for the fact that it’s Nino’s birthday. Nino himself doesn’t remember because it’s hard to keep track of the days when every morning is the same as every night. There is no sun and no moon. There is no clock or calendar that he can keep and call his own. He wakes up when everyone falls asleep and he sleeps just as he hears people coming alive.
Still, it is Sho who comes to wake him up, tapping his shoulder until Nino makes grumpy sounds. He doesn’t stop. Nino knows he won’t.
“Happy birthday,” he says, softly as Nino opens his eyes and blinks blearily up at Sho. Sho’s smile is as blinding as his stupidly pristine white coat. Nino doesn’t even remember how old he’s supposed to be.
“Happy birthday,” he repeats, an incomprehensible mumble, and he turns his face back into his pillow with a huffy snuffle. He hears Sho laugh and it warms his heart a little. The sound of the glass door closing is loud as he departs. Nino turns around and he looks at the ceiling of his cell. Oh, he’s turning 17.
Slowly, he sits up and shifts so that his feet dangle just centimetres above the cold floor and after a deep breath, he gets out of bed. Another day, another month, another year. It’s really all the same.
---
Everyone thinks that Nino is crazy but that’s okay. It’s not like Nino wants anyone to think otherwise. He lives at his own pace, moving whenever it’s convenient for him even if he mostly crouches in the corners of his cell at most times of the day and slips out when the lights are dimmed in an imitation of what night might have been back of Earth. He also hoards cubes of food in his room because he only nibbles for each meal and he mostly eats when mealtime is over. He’s growing, not much, but he knows he should be.
There are scribbles all over his cell from the floor to the ceiling. It is filled with nothing but Nino’s heart. They come to clean his cell ever week and they erase his heart but he does it again and again and he can’t stop. How can he? He started when he was younger and he doesn’t have any plans to stop any time soon.
“Where did you get that from?” asked Sho and Nino looked at the pencil that was still in his hand before he looked back up at Sho who was standing over where he was crouched on the floor, scribbling symbols and old words that no one else on this ship recognised anymore. He didn’t have time to hide it when Sho walked in.
“I found it,” he said, gripping it tightly and curling into himself a little. Nino liked Sho but Sho was different. Sho was an adult. He was worlds apart from Nino and somehow, Sho understood what Nino was saying as he stared at his scribbles on the floor. He moved to sit on the chair in the corner of the room and all he did was watch as Nino continued scribbling. Still, as much as Sho was silent and seemed to approve of Nino’s scribbling, there was little he could to do actually let Nino keep it where it was.
---
Nino shuffles through the morning crowd of Block 5 for the first time in weeks. Block 5, also known as Japan, is always most crowded in the morning because of values that they still retain from their days on Earth. There’s not much to be done unless you’re one of the Educated or one of the White Coats. Nino is neither, like most of the people. He’s not important at all even if Sho repeatedly assures him that there is a purpose for him and one day, he’ll understand. Nino doesn’t understand. He’s already 17 and he still doesn’t. So he shuffles around in his plain gray jersey just like everyone else.
They’re heading towards the central facilities but Nino isn’t. He’s going in the opposite direction, towards Block 12. No one ever goes to Block 12 because it’s always guarded but Nino’s small and there’s a tiny door that he can fit into and he goes in through the air duct. That’s where he found the pencil he scribbles with.
There are many things like the pencil in the hidden corners of Block 12 and Nino loves that he almost always finds something new whenever he goes. There are forgotten toys and other little things that Nino doesn’t know the names of and he’s pretty sure that once upon a time, it would have been names and words known by everyone but that life is forgotten. It’s a treasure trove and Nino knows that Aiba would love it but there’s no way Aiba’s going to fit. That doesn’t stop Nino from taking tiny gadgets with him to leave at the foot of Aiba’s bed every once in a while.
Block 12 is always quiet. A little dusty and mostly forgotten and Nino likes it that way because he can just hide in the shadows and pretend that he’s somewhere else. Somewhere that’s not in a ship in the middle of the universe, travelling in search of a planet that they haven’t found.
Yet, that day, as Nino climbs out of the air duct, he notices that there is someone. There is someone in his space and before Nino can even see the person properly, he feels himself bristle. He’s not sure whether he should approach or back off but it’s his space. Nino found it first and he’s not letting random people just get into it.
He approaches the person rather cautiously, socked feet padding lightly against the metal floors and before he calls out or even gets near enough to touch him, the stranger turns around and Nino finds that he’s mesmerized. In the dim lights, he makes out a sleepy soft smile directed towards him. He doesn’t say anything but the way he looks at Nino makes him feel rather inexplicably shy.
And really, it’s not amazing or out of the world but that’s how he meets Ohno in the stillness of the corridors of Block 12.
---
Nino has a collection of torn pages hidden in every possible place in his otherwise empty cell. Nino likes paper. He likes the way it feels under his fingertips, likes the way that there are words written on them and that there are stories he cannot read on them. They shouldn’t be cast away even if they have been forgotten and the boy knows that there are people on this ship who can read it but Nino doesn’t feel like he can trust anyone around him to not take it away from him. They’d tell him to go to the library to read if he wanted to but Nino had little to no interest in the new language or in the screens that had been created to replace paper since before he was born.
He reads what he does understand when his corridor is particularly empty and the other residents have drifted off to sleep or towards the places created to keep them all occupied from the fact that they are drifting, with no destination. Nino would share, really, except he’s never really liked to. They’re all in a place where everyone’s supposed to be the same but Nino knows that they aren’t and that they can’t possibly be. They’ll speak the same words, eat the same food, wear the same kind of clothes and pretend to be interested in the same boring things but Nino will never accept being the same as everyone else.
Nino hides his things inside the hollow pipes that make up his bed frame and in the little spaces under the tiny shelf he has and in between the folds of his clothes. He always curls up on his bed, arms wrapped around his knees, to make himself look smaller whenever the White Coats send someone to clean his room and he watches in silence as they erase his words and his dreams. They stopped trying to clean his ceiling because it’s inconvenient and Nino really believes that Sho might have had a hand in it. Well, Nino’s not going to ask them to anyway. He’s written his whole soul up there for it to stare back at him when he looks up. First thing in the night and the last thing in the morning, he sees the dreams he’ll never write on the floor because it doesn’t belong there. He dreams about what the Earth could look like, what it could have been because he’ll never know even if he reads. He’ll never know what the moon looks like or what wind feels like.
There are many regrets, which he holds, which cannot possibly be his own and it’s a little lonely because Nino can’t share it with people.
---
Ohno’s not the type to talk a lot and it doesn’t take very long for Nino to find out but it really doesn’t stop him from liking Ohno. He’s not like Aiba who likes to chatter about everything and nothing and he’s not like Sho who talks to him rather patiently and tries to get Nino to talk about things. Some days, Sho’s patience runs thin when Nino does nothing but repeat words back at him and on other days, Aiba runs out of things to say and they sit side by side, knees almost pressed together, watching as people pass by, never once stopping to look at them.
Nino likes Ohno. There’s something calming about the older man and it makes Nino want to talk. There are no empty spaces or awkward silences that need to be filled but something tugs at Nino’s heart. Tell me, he says in the way he lets Nino play with his hands and they huddle together so close that Nino feels that they could be connected and it wouldn’t be weird. The fact that this thought occurs to him barely a week after he first met Ohno unsettles him a little. Nino’s always been his own island.
He spends a few hours pacing up and down the main corridor between Block 5 and Block 4 until Matsumoto from the library grabs his arm and Nino jumps. He’s thankful that he didn’t flinch, somewhat. He looks up at Matsumoto’s rather awkward face and he makes a face that says, “What?”
Matsumoto scowls at him (and Nino’s scowl deepens right back without hesitation) but he lets go and Nino slouches away and goes back to sleep on it.
When he finally slinks back to Block 12, he’s a little surprised to actually find Ohno in their usual cell again and he’s sleeping on the bed, chest rising and falling with every inhale and every soft puff of breath. Nino wants to touch Ohno. He does so. He leans down as he touches Ohno’s tanned cheek lightly and wonders how he got such a skin tone when almost everyone he’s seen is fair and so very, very white.
Ohno is warm and soft under Nino's fingers and Nino can't seem to bring himself to stop. He touches the corners of Ohno's closed eyes, presses his fingers lightly against the sides of his lips and he wonders whether Ohno is actually just a dream. It is then that Ohno opens his eyes and he blinks sleepily at Nino, smiling that same soft smile he did when Nino first met Ohno.
"Nino," he says, barely louder than a whisper, and Nino smiles back. "Oh-chan," he says in the same softness as if either one of their voices would break whatever it is that they have at the moment.
---
There are many things that Nino suspects. For instance, he has no idea where the White Coats sleep. He’s tried looking before but if they aren’t drifting around from cell to cell, visiting people in a certain pattern, they’d be in the library, teaching the Educated ones how to maintain the ship’s statuses or about the history of humanity. Nino wasn’t chosen to be one of the Educated ones and he really doesn’t care because they wouldn’t teach him about what he wants to know anyway.
There’s also the thing where some of the White Coats disappear from an extended period of time and they come back with a spring in their step. Nino doesn’t understand it. Where do they go to? Is there a special area just for them because there could be and nobody would suspect a thing.
Also where does their food and water come from? Nino wonders and thinks about it but he can’t find the answers to them. He remembers asking Sho once but Sho went tight-lipped and his eyebrows shifted into that angle that said that he wasn’t happy and Nino had retreated but he hasn’t given up. No, not really.
He keeps turning them over in his head over and over again. There are so many things aboard this ship that he questions and he also wonders whether anyone else does but it’s not like he can just step up on to a table and say it out loud, “There’s something wrong with this ship and our lives!”
---
Neither Matsumoto nor Sho look pleased when they find out that Nino’s been sneaking into Block 12. Nino doesn’t like that they’re both towering over him as he sits on his bed, his legs folded under him, and they’re exchanging looks that Nino can’t read. Nino feels like a child. More than he’s felt for a while now.
Nino’s pretty sure that he’s in trouble. Though the reason of being in trouble escapes him because he’s been going into Block 12 for the longest time ever and he’s fairly sure that it’s never disturbed anyone.
“Am I in trouble?” he asks in the smallest voice he can make. Sho visibly softens a little but Matsumoto remains as displeased as before.
That night, Nino continues his scribbling. He hasn’t done it for a while since he met Ohno. He wonders whether he’ll get to go there again, wonders if he’ll see Ohno again, wonders where Ohno is outside of Block 12 because he’s never seen the older man outside their own world and then he stops. He stops, pencil hovering over the floor before he tosses it under his bed and climbs into bed. He doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to think about anything.
Maybe he’ll wake up and the whole thing would have been nothing but a dream.
---
It’s Ohno who comes to look for him.
Nino wakes up to a hand on his arm, warmth seeping through the thin nightwear. He blinks blearily and is rather surprised to see Ohno’s round face hovering above his. He’s greeted with a tiny, almost grim smile and he just stares and squints until Ohno pulls him up into a sitting position and he just sits there as Ohno passes him clothes to change into.
“Why?” he asks and Ohno just presses them into his hands and Nino does so, trying not to feel awkward that there is another person in his room as he strips. When he is done, Ohno puts a cap on his head and takes his hand, holds it tight. Follow me, he says and Nino does. They walk briskly down the corridors, pausing every time they hear someone coming.
Nino watches every flicker on Ohno’s face, watches as Ohno tenses when they wait for the shadows to pass before continuing. It feels like a game and the warmth of Ohno’s hand holding his distracts him from noticing that they are heading towards Block 12.
The guards barely look at Ohno who pulls Nino after him with a confident stride. It's rather different from the usually pliant man that Nino spent time with but Nino doesn't hate it. It's when they're standing in one of the furthest cells that Ohno stops and turns around to look at him. He pulls off the cap on Nino's head and he smiles rather sheepishly.
"I should have asked you first," he starts and he looks down at their joined hands and his smile grows. Nino tilts his head a little, fighting from smiling back because he really doesn't get it and he wonders when everything got as confusing as it is right now.
Nino doesn't ask but he just squeezes Ohno's hand in reply. Somehow, he feels as if he understands. He'll go wherever Ohno will bring him. It's dangerous. It's silly but now that there's a tiny spark in his life, Nino's not going to let it go anytime soon. He tries for a reassuring smile but he's not really sure what makes a smile reassuring.
Ohno brings him a little further until all that Nino sees is a wall and when he looks closer, he realises that there is a strange line. Ohno lets go of his hand and pushes him forward lightly and Nino places his hands on the wall except it's not a wall. It's a door and when Nino pushes a little harder, it opens before him.
The first thing Nino sees is nothing but white and there are white things floating and dancing out there and it is cold, colder than anything Nino's ever felt before and his heart soars. He turns to look at Ohno for a moment before he looks back. He takes a deep breath and takes his first step.