Title: Once (and for all)
Pairing: Ohmiya, friendship
Rating: PG-13
“I kissed Captain once,” Nino says.
“Try a hundred times,” Jun replies, flipping a page of his magazine.
Nino shrugs, leaning back in his seat and knocking Yoshi’s kart off the road with a well aimed turtle shell. “I meant for real.”
Sho chokes on his coffee and almost ends up spraying his wardrobe pants with it. Instead, he just swallows wrong and spends the next few minutes coughing hard while Ohno pats his back distractedly.
“You did?” Aiba exclaims with gleeful interest. “Did you kiss him with tongue?”
“Mm,” Nino shrugs again, eyes still glued to his little screen. “Damn, stupid Bowser!” he mutters. “Did not see that one coming.”
“Nino!” Aiba slaps his knee. “Tell me!”
“Hm? Ah, well, there isn’t much to say,” Nino says as if he hadn’t just revealed a juicy piece of gossip. “Second? Seriously?” he frowns at his DS before finally putting it down. “It was a few years ago. We were on tour and Leader and I were sharing a room. We got drunk, and it seemed like a good idea so I kissed him.”
“Ah,” Ohno says, switching from patting to rubbing Sho’s back. “I thought you didn’t remember.”
“It seemed like a good idea?” Jun snorts.
“Then what happened?” Aiba asks a little too eagerly.
“He backed off and said ‘huh’,” Ohno says, and everyone turns to look at him.
There is a pause then as they all wait for something more - or rather Aiba does while Sho tries to regain his breath. The corners of Nino’s mouth twitch up as Ohno gives Sho one last little pat on the back.
“Huh?” Jun repeats, maybe a little incredulous.
Ohno nods. “Huh,” he confirms.
Jun looks from one to the other, then rolls his eyes. “Idiots,” he mutters. He’s quickly losing interest as they are clearly playing around. Again.
Aiba, conversely, is hooked. “Seriously? Seriously?”
Nino shrugs again. “What was I supposed to say? I was drunk and I thought I might be a little gay for him so I kissed him. Then I realised that... yeah, not so much.”
Aiba giggles. “You’re kidding right?”
“Am not,” Nino replies, picking up his game again.
Jun flips a page of his magazine. “What if he had been gay for you?” he asks.
Nino blinks.
“I could have been,” Ohno says matter-of-factly. “You could have broken my heart.”
There is a moment where they both stare at each other, then Jun sighs and throws his magazine back onto the table in front of him. “You two are gross,” he says, pushing out of his seat and making his way to the coffee machine.
It’s only when the corners of Ohno’s lips finally quirk up, though, that Nino breaks eye contact. “Jerk,” he says, but he sounds relieved.
Then Ohno cocks his head and gives Nino a toothy smile in a kind of peace offering gesture, and that is that.
“What if I had been?” Ohno asks later, when Nino is dropping him off at his place.
The look Nino gives him is maybe a little too serious. “Don’t fuck with things like that, Oh-chan.”
Ohno looks down and gives a half shrug. “Yeah, okay,” he says, both dismissive and a little apologetic. “ See you tomorrow.”
The winter air rushes in as soon as he opens the door, and he braces himself against the cold. He already has a leg out of the car when Nino speaks.
“I love you. You know that, right?”
Ohno pauses, then twists around to give him a smile. “That’s a little gay,” he teases, but they both know exactly what Nino means.
“Fuck you.” Nino laughs. “But you know it’s true.”
Ohno smiles, a little shy but mostly grateful. “Yeah, fuck you too,” he says, and closes the door on Nino’s grinning face. He knows.