017. electric twist [final].
title: electric twist [final chapter]
pairing: ninomiya kazunari/ohno satoshi
rating: pg-13
word count: 2447
disclaimer: this is purely a work of fiction. i don't own! i just play with them
author's note: i know i'm horrible, i meant to post this days ago but it got its third facelift instead in between watching yamada taro :-( anyway, this feels weird still and a little anticlimactic BUT thank you to everyone who has been reading and commenting, i appreciate so much!
summary:
chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four
5. all i know is i love you too much to walk away.
Nino doesn’t quite comprehend what had occurred that day. But three days later, they’re still walking around each other with tentative steps, and they haven’t spoken a word about it. It’s awkward, if anything. Nino wishes he could figure out what it is that they need to say to each other, though, because he hadn’t been the one that had tilted the entire universe upside down, and then acted like nothing had even happened. Nino’s world is a different place, after that kiss, with words like hope and chance and possibility jumbling around in his head but he doesn’t know if Ohno means what Nino thinks he means.
On screen, it’s an entirely separate story. Like what they are in front of a camera is what they had been only days before and off-screen is a never-ending scene from some terrible drama where the two main characters are in constant misinterpretation of one another.
The first time they’re caught alone in the green room, for more than thirty seconds, since The Kiss, as Nino has dubbed it in his head, the air is tense around them. Ohno is twitching nervously, unable to look at Nino, with hands that are in constant motion- packing things away in his bag, playing with the edge of his shirt, tossing his water bottle. Nino isn’t angry; he wants to tell Ohno that, wants to tell him everything, and kiss him again because it’s been three goddamn days and he wants that inferno firing back through his bloodstream and Ohno has steadfastly disregarded or thwarted Nino’s attempts at a discussion. This is his chance, he thinks, but when he opens his mouth, Sho wanders into the room wearing a distraught expression.
“I swear I didn’t lose them,” he’s muttering, and Nino could kick him or scream or cry because all he needs is five minutes five minutes of time with Ohno to ask him why he had done what he did and why he doesn’t do it again.
“Lose what?” Nino snaps, in unison with Ohno’s concerned tone. When he glances over, Ohno’s eyebrows are raised, as though he might laugh or mention it, but then he seems to remember the situation that they’re currently in and his face flushes as he turns away.
Nino bites his lips so hard that it begins to bleed.
“I was working on something for Zero and I had some articles…” Sho starts to say when Ohno abruptly stands up, swinging his bag over his shoulder.
“See you tomorrow!” He says to no one in particular, and runs for the door before either Sho or Nino can get a word in edgewise, let alone say goodbye.
“Weird,” Sho comments. Annoyed, Nino walks over to him, arms crossing over his chest, and waits for Sho to give him his full attention. It doesn’t take long, as Nino is directly in the path Sho needs to take to get to his own things. “Um…want to help me look?”
Nino satisfies his frustration by aiming a delightfully hard kick to Sho’s shin. When Sho yelps and bolts away, a pained look knotting on his face, Nino still doesn’t feel any better. “You deserved that,” he says anyway, “and no, I don’t want to help you look. Couldn’t you have waited a few more minutes before barging in?”
“Barging in?” Sho grits his teeth, teetering over to the couch to rub at his shin. “It’s going to bruise, because I ‘barged in’ to a room we all share?”
“You-” Nino doesn’t bother to finish his sentence; instead, he shakes his head and a light bulb appears to come to life above Sho’s head because his entire face brightens with wonder and then he smacks a hand down against his knee before bringing it up to point at Nino. “What the hell are you doing?” Nino questions, warily.
Sho looks like he might laugh. “He did something, didn’t he?” He asks, and Nino really isn’t sure how Sho came to this conclusion at all so he just shrugs and lets Sho make what he will out of that instead. “You know,” Sho goes on thoughtfully, as if he didn’t need Nino to respond anyway, “Satoshi works better with actions and not words, sometimes. Is that a road you’re willing to walk?”
“I’d prefer both,” Nino grumbles, crossly, “I think we’ve both taken our share of action.” He doesn’t ask why Sho seems to know what’s whispering in his mind, or about their current situation in general, but he assumes it’s something that Sho- being observant as he is- has noticed on his own time. Usually, he’s better at this, at reading Ohno and what his actions and reactions are meant to mean. Part of why he believes that he understands Ohno so well is because he’s spent years trying to speak his language, refining it and concentrating and pressing each ounce of focus he obtains into following Ohno Satoshi’s every thought process and mannerism. But now, he’s completely uncertain about quite a few things.
Rolling his pant leg up, Sho bends to inspect the black and blue mark blooming into life on his leg. “You know, Nino,” he says, voice muffled by his position, “there are other ways to get through to him. To talk to him, if that’s what you want to do.”
“He ignores my calls, my mails, and then comes to work the next day and tells me he’s sorry, ‘but I was pretty busy last night’.” Scowling, Nino shovels his DS into his bag, his change of clothes, as Sho sits back up to narrow his eyes at him.
“Nino,” he says, sharply, “I don’t know what happened, but I do know that if you wanted to talk to him about it, you would stop at nothing. So maybe the truth is, deep down, you’re a little bit scared yourself.”
He doesn’t want that to be true but he thinks about it when he leaves and decides that no matter where he goes from here, he’s not going to let a little thing like fear hold him back.
--
Maybe he didn’t think it over. Maybe it’s a mistake, if Ohno really wants distance. But he had considered Sho’s words long enough to end up outside of Ohno’s front door, hand raised and ready to knock. It certainly isn’t the brightest idea he’s had, but he has a few things to prove, and if he’s being brutally honest, he wants all of this sorted out for the sake of his sanity, his curiosity, and his heart.
Once he’s followed through, sharp rapping with his knuckles echoing ominously in the air, is about the time he realizes that he is somewhat scared. Especially when the door opens and Ohno pokes his head out and the welcome on his lips freezes in his throat.
He looks at Nino like he desperately wants to slam the door in his face but Nino worms a hand between Ohno and the doorframe casually so that this threat is extinguished quickly. “G’evenin’,” he greets, “you’re not busy, yeah?” He’s being pushy, but Ohno has seen him be worse than this.
“Well-” Ohno begins, eyes flicking around, apparently in frantic search of an excuse. Nino doesn’t allow him to get to that point, nudging his way into the apartment. “-I guess not,” he sighs, resignedly. He obediently trots along behind Nino as Nino, silently gathering his wits about him, invites himself to grab a beer out of the fridge.
For a while, he doesn’t know what to say. There aren’t any right words, he doesn’t think, just ones that will pass for acceptable. After a few minutes of heavy silence, Ohno picking at his nails and Nino taking long sips from his bottle, he heads for a jumping-off point. “You don’t have to ignore me, you know,” he says.
“I haven’t-”
“-if you’re that embarrassed,” he continues, loudly, “then you shouldn’t have kissed me like that in the first place.” It isn’t what he’d intended to say, but judging from the blush bursting across Ohno’s cheeks, it does the trick. Nino decides he can go with this. “Honestly. If it’s just so embarrassing for you, then you never have to kiss me again. We can go right back to normal if you didn’t mean it.”
The reaction this evokes causes no small amount of triumph and relief to slam into his stomach; Ohno’s head jerks up, eyes wide and horrified. “Nino-”
“So that’s all I came here to tell you. Since you didn’t mean it.” Nino sets his bottle down on the counter, praying this last push won’t be a push in the wrong direction. If this swings the opposite way, Nino knows that he, personally, is going to be knee-deep in hurt, pity and self-loathing.
Ohno is still staring at him with that same terror-stricken, dumbfounded expression. He slowly makes his way over to the kitchen table and takes a seat. It might have been too much for Nino to say, because Ohno is biting his lower lip in a way that suggests he might cry. And if he cries, Nino will probably just die right here. “I did mean it,” he says, in such a tiny voice that Nino leans forward to hear him.
“Did you?” Nino asks; it’s cruel, to continue like this, it’s cold but he has to make Ohno say it, say what he’s thinking. “I mean, really. You won’t talk to me at all, you run away when I try, so the only logical explanation is that-”
“I did mean it!” Ohno bursts out, slamming a fist against the table top. “I wouldn’t just- I’d never change everything like that and not mean it-”
To hell with it, Nino thinks, because Ohno is looking at him like the world will end if he doesn’t believe him. “That’s enough,” he says. He marches over to him and grabs him by the collar of his shirt, roughly yanking him up to crush their mouths together.
Ohno makes a surprised noise against his mouth, shoulders jerking when Nino slides a hand down one side. He can feel Ohno shaking against him, but then he doesn’t care about that; he can only think of the way Ohno tastes so good and Nino, after being denied that pleasure for days, has to drink it in. He touches his tongue timidly against Ohno’s mouth and Ohno opens for him, and the sound he makes is like nothing Nino has ever heard before.
When he pulls away, Ohno is staring at him with eyes that are questioning the surreality of the entire situation and Nino has to laugh. He can’t help himself; he thinks he’s a bit hysterical. “I believe you,” he murmurs, “I’m sorry.”
“Sometimes you’re dumber than I am,” Ohno mutters, the drugged expression on his face shifting to slight annoyance. “I really thought you were going to tell me not to kiss you anymore or-or something! You scared me, you ass.”
“I wouldn’t really,” Nino admits, embarrassed, his fingers fluttering lightly along Ohno’s waist, “I like kissing you. It’s my favorite thing to do, especially when it feels the way it does with you, like you’re the only person I should be kissing in the first place. Nothing else makes as much sense as that. There’s always going to be us, right?”
“Right,” Ohno agrees, sounding slightly awed, before letting out a soft laugh into Nino’s mouth before kissing him again in a way that is both the same and also very different from the usual.
--
There’s a mosquito on his arm.
Nino glares, finding a sick pleasure in smacking his opposite hand down on it and smashing it unceremoniously against his skin. He needs a shower and it’s hot and sticky out and now there are mosquito guts stained on his arm. “I hate this,” he announces, “I had to fall for someone who loves the outdoors.”
“Almost as much as he loves you, too,” Ohno smirks, “that might be the worst part to you.” He scratches absently at the side of his nose, smearing sunscreen everywhere. He childishly kicks his legs out over the edge of the dock, readjusting to a more comfortable sitting position and switching his fishing rod from one hand to the other. “At least I didn’t drag you out on the boat, right?” He points out, glancing hopefully at Nino and offering a smile.
Nino looks down at the rod between his hands and back up at Ohno’s smile. He really can’t resist that smile, the same way he can’t resist leaning over to kiss it, to close the gap between their mouths. “Thank god for small favors,” he comments dryly, but he leans one hand heavily down on the wooden plank beneath him, trying to recover from the gravity-reducing euphoria of Ohno’s kiss. Ohno catches the motion out of the corner of his eye and grins somewhat shyly. “You’re lucky you’re cute,” Nino tells him, once he’s forced his world to right itself.
“There’s a lot of things I’m lucky for,” Ohno says.
They lapse into silence for a while, with the exception of yelps at bites on their lines. Fishing isn’t precisely a hobby that Nino finds enjoyable, but Ohno does, and it makes him happy for them to be together. Makes both of them happy. They pass hours like this, Ohno promising to cook whatever they catch, until it’s too dark to continue and they pack up their things. Nino can’t wait to get home and clean up and eat, because his stomach has been actively demanding his attention for the last two hours, so he’s prepared to hurry mindlessly down the dock when Ohno says his name.
He turns, confused, as Ohno pulls out a permanent marker. “Remember outside the studio, with the cement,” he says, suddenly, and there’s a slight drop in Nino’s stomach. “You said we should leave our names everywhere. You remember, right?”
“How could I forget anything about that day?” Nino mumbles around a quiet laugh.
Ohno crouches down, squinting through the darkness as he uncaps his marker. “I think it’s a really good idea,” he says, and he writes the characters for Ohmiya on the plank under his feet. Nino’s heart thrums between his ribs as he watches. “This works best, doesn’t it?”
Nino gratefully reaches for Ohno’s hand when he climbs to his feet and silently swears that he will do the same thing for every place they go, because there’s no point in trying to live forever if they aren’t together.
pairing: ninomiya kazunari/ohno satoshi
rating: pg-13
word count: 2447
disclaimer: this is purely a work of fiction. i don't own! i just play with them
author's note: i know i'm horrible, i meant to post this days ago but it got its third facelift instead in between watching yamada taro :-( anyway, this feels weird still and a little anticlimactic BUT thank you to everyone who has been reading and commenting, i appreciate so much!
summary:
chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four
5. all i know is i love you too much to walk away.
Nino doesn’t quite comprehend what had occurred that day. But three days later, they’re still walking around each other with tentative steps, and they haven’t spoken a word about it. It’s awkward, if anything. Nino wishes he could figure out what it is that they need to say to each other, though, because he hadn’t been the one that had tilted the entire universe upside down, and then acted like nothing had even happened. Nino’s world is a different place, after that kiss, with words like hope and chance and possibility jumbling around in his head but he doesn’t know if Ohno means what Nino thinks he means.
On screen, it’s an entirely separate story. Like what they are in front of a camera is what they had been only days before and off-screen is a never-ending scene from some terrible drama where the two main characters are in constant misinterpretation of one another.
The first time they’re caught alone in the green room, for more than thirty seconds, since The Kiss, as Nino has dubbed it in his head, the air is tense around them. Ohno is twitching nervously, unable to look at Nino, with hands that are in constant motion- packing things away in his bag, playing with the edge of his shirt, tossing his water bottle. Nino isn’t angry; he wants to tell Ohno that, wants to tell him everything, and kiss him again because it’s been three goddamn days and he wants that inferno firing back through his bloodstream and Ohno has steadfastly disregarded or thwarted Nino’s attempts at a discussion. This is his chance, he thinks, but when he opens his mouth, Sho wanders into the room wearing a distraught expression.
“I swear I didn’t lose them,” he’s muttering, and Nino could kick him or scream or cry because all he needs is five minutes five minutes of time with Ohno to ask him why he had done what he did and why he doesn’t do it again.
“Lose what?” Nino snaps, in unison with Ohno’s concerned tone. When he glances over, Ohno’s eyebrows are raised, as though he might laugh or mention it, but then he seems to remember the situation that they’re currently in and his face flushes as he turns away.
Nino bites his lips so hard that it begins to bleed.
“I was working on something for Zero and I had some articles…” Sho starts to say when Ohno abruptly stands up, swinging his bag over his shoulder.
“See you tomorrow!” He says to no one in particular, and runs for the door before either Sho or Nino can get a word in edgewise, let alone say goodbye.
“Weird,” Sho comments. Annoyed, Nino walks over to him, arms crossing over his chest, and waits for Sho to give him his full attention. It doesn’t take long, as Nino is directly in the path Sho needs to take to get to his own things. “Um…want to help me look?”
Nino satisfies his frustration by aiming a delightfully hard kick to Sho’s shin. When Sho yelps and bolts away, a pained look knotting on his face, Nino still doesn’t feel any better. “You deserved that,” he says anyway, “and no, I don’t want to help you look. Couldn’t you have waited a few more minutes before barging in?”
“Barging in?” Sho grits his teeth, teetering over to the couch to rub at his shin. “It’s going to bruise, because I ‘barged in’ to a room we all share?”
“You-” Nino doesn’t bother to finish his sentence; instead, he shakes his head and a light bulb appears to come to life above Sho’s head because his entire face brightens with wonder and then he smacks a hand down against his knee before bringing it up to point at Nino. “What the hell are you doing?” Nino questions, warily.
Sho looks like he might laugh. “He did something, didn’t he?” He asks, and Nino really isn’t sure how Sho came to this conclusion at all so he just shrugs and lets Sho make what he will out of that instead. “You know,” Sho goes on thoughtfully, as if he didn’t need Nino to respond anyway, “Satoshi works better with actions and not words, sometimes. Is that a road you’re willing to walk?”
“I’d prefer both,” Nino grumbles, crossly, “I think we’ve both taken our share of action.” He doesn’t ask why Sho seems to know what’s whispering in his mind, or about their current situation in general, but he assumes it’s something that Sho- being observant as he is- has noticed on his own time. Usually, he’s better at this, at reading Ohno and what his actions and reactions are meant to mean. Part of why he believes that he understands Ohno so well is because he’s spent years trying to speak his language, refining it and concentrating and pressing each ounce of focus he obtains into following Ohno Satoshi’s every thought process and mannerism. But now, he’s completely uncertain about quite a few things.
Rolling his pant leg up, Sho bends to inspect the black and blue mark blooming into life on his leg. “You know, Nino,” he says, voice muffled by his position, “there are other ways to get through to him. To talk to him, if that’s what you want to do.”
“He ignores my calls, my mails, and then comes to work the next day and tells me he’s sorry, ‘but I was pretty busy last night’.” Scowling, Nino shovels his DS into his bag, his change of clothes, as Sho sits back up to narrow his eyes at him.
“Nino,” he says, sharply, “I don’t know what happened, but I do know that if you wanted to talk to him about it, you would stop at nothing. So maybe the truth is, deep down, you’re a little bit scared yourself.”
He doesn’t want that to be true but he thinks about it when he leaves and decides that no matter where he goes from here, he’s not going to let a little thing like fear hold him back.
--
Maybe he didn’t think it over. Maybe it’s a mistake, if Ohno really wants distance. But he had considered Sho’s words long enough to end up outside of Ohno’s front door, hand raised and ready to knock. It certainly isn’t the brightest idea he’s had, but he has a few things to prove, and if he’s being brutally honest, he wants all of this sorted out for the sake of his sanity, his curiosity, and his heart.
Once he’s followed through, sharp rapping with his knuckles echoing ominously in the air, is about the time he realizes that he is somewhat scared. Especially when the door opens and Ohno pokes his head out and the welcome on his lips freezes in his throat.
He looks at Nino like he desperately wants to slam the door in his face but Nino worms a hand between Ohno and the doorframe casually so that this threat is extinguished quickly. “G’evenin’,” he greets, “you’re not busy, yeah?” He’s being pushy, but Ohno has seen him be worse than this.
“Well-” Ohno begins, eyes flicking around, apparently in frantic search of an excuse. Nino doesn’t allow him to get to that point, nudging his way into the apartment. “-I guess not,” he sighs, resignedly. He obediently trots along behind Nino as Nino, silently gathering his wits about him, invites himself to grab a beer out of the fridge.
For a while, he doesn’t know what to say. There aren’t any right words, he doesn’t think, just ones that will pass for acceptable. After a few minutes of heavy silence, Ohno picking at his nails and Nino taking long sips from his bottle, he heads for a jumping-off point. “You don’t have to ignore me, you know,” he says.
“I haven’t-”
“-if you’re that embarrassed,” he continues, loudly, “then you shouldn’t have kissed me like that in the first place.” It isn’t what he’d intended to say, but judging from the blush bursting across Ohno’s cheeks, it does the trick. Nino decides he can go with this. “Honestly. If it’s just so embarrassing for you, then you never have to kiss me again. We can go right back to normal if you didn’t mean it.”
The reaction this evokes causes no small amount of triumph and relief to slam into his stomach; Ohno’s head jerks up, eyes wide and horrified. “Nino-”
“So that’s all I came here to tell you. Since you didn’t mean it.” Nino sets his bottle down on the counter, praying this last push won’t be a push in the wrong direction. If this swings the opposite way, Nino knows that he, personally, is going to be knee-deep in hurt, pity and self-loathing.
Ohno is still staring at him with that same terror-stricken, dumbfounded expression. He slowly makes his way over to the kitchen table and takes a seat. It might have been too much for Nino to say, because Ohno is biting his lower lip in a way that suggests he might cry. And if he cries, Nino will probably just die right here. “I did mean it,” he says, in such a tiny voice that Nino leans forward to hear him.
“Did you?” Nino asks; it’s cruel, to continue like this, it’s cold but he has to make Ohno say it, say what he’s thinking. “I mean, really. You won’t talk to me at all, you run away when I try, so the only logical explanation is that-”
“I did mean it!” Ohno bursts out, slamming a fist against the table top. “I wouldn’t just- I’d never change everything like that and not mean it-”
To hell with it, Nino thinks, because Ohno is looking at him like the world will end if he doesn’t believe him. “That’s enough,” he says. He marches over to him and grabs him by the collar of his shirt, roughly yanking him up to crush their mouths together.
Ohno makes a surprised noise against his mouth, shoulders jerking when Nino slides a hand down one side. He can feel Ohno shaking against him, but then he doesn’t care about that; he can only think of the way Ohno tastes so good and Nino, after being denied that pleasure for days, has to drink it in. He touches his tongue timidly against Ohno’s mouth and Ohno opens for him, and the sound he makes is like nothing Nino has ever heard before.
When he pulls away, Ohno is staring at him with eyes that are questioning the surreality of the entire situation and Nino has to laugh. He can’t help himself; he thinks he’s a bit hysterical. “I believe you,” he murmurs, “I’m sorry.”
“Sometimes you’re dumber than I am,” Ohno mutters, the drugged expression on his face shifting to slight annoyance. “I really thought you were going to tell me not to kiss you anymore or-or something! You scared me, you ass.”
“I wouldn’t really,” Nino admits, embarrassed, his fingers fluttering lightly along Ohno’s waist, “I like kissing you. It’s my favorite thing to do, especially when it feels the way it does with you, like you’re the only person I should be kissing in the first place. Nothing else makes as much sense as that. There’s always going to be us, right?”
“Right,” Ohno agrees, sounding slightly awed, before letting out a soft laugh into Nino’s mouth before kissing him again in a way that is both the same and also very different from the usual.
--
There’s a mosquito on his arm.
Nino glares, finding a sick pleasure in smacking his opposite hand down on it and smashing it unceremoniously against his skin. He needs a shower and it’s hot and sticky out and now there are mosquito guts stained on his arm. “I hate this,” he announces, “I had to fall for someone who loves the outdoors.”
“Almost as much as he loves you, too,” Ohno smirks, “that might be the worst part to you.” He scratches absently at the side of his nose, smearing sunscreen everywhere. He childishly kicks his legs out over the edge of the dock, readjusting to a more comfortable sitting position and switching his fishing rod from one hand to the other. “At least I didn’t drag you out on the boat, right?” He points out, glancing hopefully at Nino and offering a smile.
Nino looks down at the rod between his hands and back up at Ohno’s smile. He really can’t resist that smile, the same way he can’t resist leaning over to kiss it, to close the gap between their mouths. “Thank god for small favors,” he comments dryly, but he leans one hand heavily down on the wooden plank beneath him, trying to recover from the gravity-reducing euphoria of Ohno’s kiss. Ohno catches the motion out of the corner of his eye and grins somewhat shyly. “You’re lucky you’re cute,” Nino tells him, once he’s forced his world to right itself.
“There’s a lot of things I’m lucky for,” Ohno says.
They lapse into silence for a while, with the exception of yelps at bites on their lines. Fishing isn’t precisely a hobby that Nino finds enjoyable, but Ohno does, and it makes him happy for them to be together. Makes both of them happy. They pass hours like this, Ohno promising to cook whatever they catch, until it’s too dark to continue and they pack up their things. Nino can’t wait to get home and clean up and eat, because his stomach has been actively demanding his attention for the last two hours, so he’s prepared to hurry mindlessly down the dock when Ohno says his name.
He turns, confused, as Ohno pulls out a permanent marker. “Remember outside the studio, with the cement,” he says, suddenly, and there’s a slight drop in Nino’s stomach. “You said we should leave our names everywhere. You remember, right?”
“How could I forget anything about that day?” Nino mumbles around a quiet laugh.
Ohno crouches down, squinting through the darkness as he uncaps his marker. “I think it’s a really good idea,” he says, and he writes the characters for Ohmiya on the plank under his feet. Nino’s heart thrums between his ribs as he watches. “This works best, doesn’t it?”
Nino gratefully reaches for Ohno’s hand when he climbs to his feet and silently swears that he will do the same thing for every place they go, because there’s no point in trying to live forever if they aren’t together.