019. until you were gone.
title: until you were gone
pairing: ninomiya kazunari/ohno satoshi
rating: r
word count: 7,266 O_O
disclaimer: this is purely a work of fiction. i don't own! i just play with them
author's note: ah! AH~! i apologize. i have been working on writing so much lately yet not enough. i have been working (at my job, i mean) like crazy in the past month due to boatloads of drama. anyway, i think the flow of this one is a little odd because i started it at the end of june and kept dropping it and then picking it back up again, determined not to give up on it. the end is somewhat silly but, well, i admittedly rushed it in my desire to have it completed. but enjoy!! and thank you for reading! OH! AND HOW IS EVERYONE LOVING BOKU NO MITEIRU FUUKEI?
summary:
part one.
6 months ago.
The alarm blares to life, digital numbers glowing an evil red in the half-light of Ohno’s bedroom. He grumbles under his breath, untangling himself from the body-warm sheets of his bed to smack a palm flat onto the snooze button. He swings his legs over the edge of the mattress and stretches, cat-like, lithe limbs splayed in opposing directions.
When he stands, a hand shoots out from under the covers, small fingers gripping his wrist. A voice thick with slumber slurs, “y’promised,” and Ohno’s lips tilt upwards into a small grin.
He leans back over the bed, tugging the sheets down just enough to reveal dark eyes squinting at him beneath messy locks of black hair. “I didn’t forget,” he says, quietly, “I’ll be back in an hour.”
“You promised,” Nino repeats, with more conviction this time, a whine snaking through his tone. Ohno presses a comforting kiss to his forehead, between his brows. Nino’s fingers tighten. “We had a deal.”
Ohno knows. They always have a deal. He says, “we can’t sleep in past ten anyway, you have to go home and change before work.”
Nino’s face transforms from adorably sleepy to annoyed too quickly for Ohno to keep up. “The deal,” he reminds, “was that if I stayed the night, you’d sleep in with me. You know I hate it when you break your promises.” Before Ohno can really defend himself, Nino is rolling over again, releasing Ohno’s wrist in favor of covering his face with the bed sheets.
He can’t shrug it off, because Nino will bring it back later. It could happen in an hour, tonight, tomorrow, next week, next month. In a year. Nino doesn’t forget. Ohno hates it and loves him for it all at once, which is confusing in ways that make his head ache. It’s complicated.
But there isn’t anything about them that is simple.
People think that because Nino and Ohno are so close, their relationship comes easily, no matter what the relationship could be classified as. People are usually wrong. Ohno doesn’t understand them at all, and he has no idea why everyone else seems to. It’s ludicrous to him, that he knows the way Nino’s skin tastes beneath his tongue, the heat of his body when Ohno curls his fingers around his hips, the words he whispers when he comes, but Ohno has no idea what Nino is thinking, not ever. He doesn’t have a definition for them. If Ohno gets too close to telling Nino something that Nino doesn’t want to hear, his eyes shutter and he dodges away from the topic. If things get too serious, intimate in ways that Nino rarely allows, he runs.
It leaves Ohno trapped and craving, struggling to find Nino in moments of weakness where he will let them be normal. They don’t talk about what they want from each other. In place of that, they make deals.
Ohno wants Nino to spend the night, Nino wants him to stay in bed. They argue and discuss these things in code. I’ll stay if you sleep until ten. Ohno thinks that if he wants to hear Nino tell him he loves him, then he’s fallen in love with the wrong person.
He can’t sleep in until ten, it isn’t ingrained into his mental clock the way that it’s been imprinted into Nino’s head. It’s seven, and the sun is barely awake, streaming weak light through his blinds. It doesn’t stop him from running a few errands- milk, bread, another toothbrush for Nino because he repeatedly throws out the ones that Ohno leaves on the bathroom counter for him. When he returns, he showers, because he knows that he won’t have that opportunity once he’s back in bed. Nino will leave by ten-thirty, and Ohno will lay in his spot and try to soak in what remains of his warmth until he has to rush to work.
There are pretty little black-and-blue bruises where Nino’s teeth and lips had marked his hips, and he avoids washing them in the shower, as if afraid that soap and water will be the reason they fade away. Yet, he can’t bring himself to look at them for too long, in case they disappear under his gaze like figments of his overactive imagination.
He doesn’t bother properly putting a shirt on, toweling off lightly and climbing back into bed beside Nino. Nino continues to face in the opposite direction, and Ohno pretends that it doesn’t bother him for a while. After a half of an hour, Nino finally turns over, resting an arm across Ohno’s stomach. He’s looking at Ohno with dark eyes that are completely inscrutable.
“I brought back some breakfast,” Ohno whispers, tentatively reaching across the gap between them to thread his fingers into Nino’s hair.
Nino just nods, and silently presses closer, and when it’s time for him to leave, he eats the breakfast that Ohno had bought for him and doesn’t throw the toothbrush away.
It’s not much, but it’s somehow an apology, and therefore better than nothing.
i’ll never let you go but i don’t have the words to tell you.
now.
When they touch, it’s never on purpose, and Nino shoots away with a terrified, angry expression half-hidden by his fringe. Ohno has worked hard to solidify himself against the agony screaming through every nerve ending in his body. He’s done this. It’s his fault. And now, he’s paying the price for it.
The air around them is thick with tension; everyone tiptoes, though they try to ignore it, in the beginning. Nino’s snark is part of his charm until it oversteps all of the boundaries, and his sharp tongue sends even the most innocent people running for cover. For a while, he flashes bright-white smiles that soothe over the rough words, but it doesn’t take long for the people who know him best to see straight through that.
Ohno’s not doing much better. His bed is too big, and too cold, and that’s likely because it’s just too empty. There are no remnants of pockmarks on his skin; they’ve receded into his marrow. He trains himself to quit reaching a hand toward the small of Nino’s back when they’re close enough, and soon, they stop standing that close anyway. All of it is a burning ache lashing against the back of his throat, constant and wrenching at his heart.
He’s glad, though, that Nino knows how to be Ohmiya on camera, because he can’t even stand to be himself off-film right now; all he can do is follow Nino’s leads.
part two.
5 months ago.
“Am I not allowed to watch anything on my own television?”
Nino scrunches up his nose, clinging harder to the remote. “You don’t even like TV,” he points out, continuing to flip through channels, “and I don’t want to watch the fishing channel every time I come by, okay?”
“But that’s what I want to watch,” Ohno grumbles, making a brave dive for the control, “come on!”
Nino folds himself at the bottom of the couch, scooting desperately out of reach, but Ohno lands on top of him in spite of that. His body is warm and he smells fresh and clean, like something citrus that Nino can’t seem to find in Ohno’s shower. It makes Nino shiver. “Hey!” He yelps, helplessly, squirming away from the elegant fingers digging into his sides. “Satoshi, no- don’t-”
Ohno grins down at him, using Nino’s ticklish sides as an unfair tactical advantage to pin a knee on each side of him. “I told you,” he says, mouth twisting into a smirk, “I want to watch fishing.” He renews his attack until Nino is laughing hysterically, trying to curse between his laughter but he can’t get enough air into his lungs to do so.
Nino grabs for his hands, gasping, until Ohno relents in favor of snatching the remote control out of Nino’s loosened grip. “You suck,” Nino announces, breathless, but he looks up in confusion when Ohno doesn’t move to get off of him. The expression on Ohno’s face is serious now, contemplative, and Nino drops his hands to Ohno’s thighs to conceal the tremors in his fingers. “What? Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Because,” Ohno murmurs, “you are just so attractive.”
It makes Nino’s face heat up to a degree that is surreal, and he can’t look Ohno in the eye. “Don’t,” he says, words tumbling out quietly, “I’m not, stupid.”
Leaning down, Ohno cups his palms around Nino’s scalding cheeks, and kisses him slowly. “You are to me,” Ohno says against his mouth, and Nino wants to shrink away and make him stop because Ohno can’t understand what an ugly person Nino is.
He’s mean and stubborn and takes all of this for granted, and Ohno deserves so much more. Because it isn’t all just kissing and sex; there are actual feelings involved here, real, true feelings that Nino can’t hide from forever but god knows he’ll try. He can brush it off for a while, say they only do what feels good, but Ohno pushes further on a daily basis and Nino turns away because he’s too much of a fucking coward to do much else.
And because, secretly, he knows that Ohno’s love is wasted on someone like him. But Nino presses harder into the kiss anyway, avoids thinking about the gentle touch on his cheeks, and Ohno lets Nino be rough so he won’t have to care so much.
i’m so hollow, baby.
now.
They’re shooting for VS Arashi when something finally gives.
When they’re not playing a game, they’re seated beside one another on the top half of the benches and it’s too crowded and stuffy. The place where Nino’s hip repeatedly brushes against Ohno’s is beginning to burn, and no matter how he slides away, he can’t escape. He’s so incredibly grateful when Ohno stands for Pinball Runner that he audibly sighs in relief, until he catches Sho’s eye and forces himself to avert his gaze in embarrassment.
Ohno’s still and patient while they strap the basket around him; everyone prepares themselves, they fall into the usual banter, but Nino doesn’t open his mouth once. People are staring at him, expectations high, but he bites down on his tongue and crosses his arms tightly across his chest, only him and Jun left on the benches.
He’s not going to let something as silly as expectations bother him. When the buzzer blares and the game begins, he watches with a detached air, like a fellow audience member with no interest in the outcome. But Ohno is paying him no attention anyway, and he catches whichever ball he can reach first, performing as normally as every other day.
Until his foot catches, and he stumbles ungracefully off of the belt with a noise that makes Nino’s stomach crash louder than Ohno’s body when it hits the floor. Ohno rolls over, knocking the balls free, but he’s fingers are clutching at his ankle and Nino’s up before he has any coherent thought as to what he’s doing.
“Oh-chan!” He calls, the first one, as always, to reach Ohno’s side. “Oh-chan, are you okay? Let me see,” he demands, trying to unsnap the basket to get it out of the way. His hand is halfway to Ohno’s ankle when Ohno sits up abruptly, violently putting himself out of range of Nino’s fingertips.
“I’m fine!” Ohno grinds out, eyes flashing. His cheeks are flushed from the exerted effort but his hands are trembling and his ankle is swelling and he’s glaring at Nino as if Nino had pushed him off of the belt himself. “Don’t-” he says, his voice high, and Nino’s hand falls as he swallows bile, “don’t touch me. Leave me alone, I’m just fine.”
Nino doesn’t touch him. Not even when everyone else fusses and throws him baffled glances, or when they wrap Ohno’s ankle in ice until the swelling goes down, not even when the director announces that they’ll reshoot tomorrow if Ohno’s feeling well enough.
Nino leaves without saying a word to anyone, dazed, and wishing he could just be the person that Ohno had always wanted him to be. Because then, perhaps, neither of them would be going home alone.
part three.
4 months ago.
Ohno doesn’t like to label himself as a person who becomes jealous easily. He’s very good at not jumping to conclusions, and at controlling his emotions, and dating only people that he trusts the most with his heart. Nino, though ‘dating’ may not be the correct term for what they are and what they do, is no exception to this.
But Ohno knows that he must be in incredibly over his head when Nino comes by one day after a week of filming in Kyoto, and mentions the kiss with Nakamura Aoi. He knows he’s in trouble because his heart shrinks in his chest and palpitates even faster than usual, and his fingers curl into fists at his sides, and he thinks he might throw up. And when Nino looks at him, he has to hide the hideous expression on his face, because he doesn’t understand why his body is reacting in a way that his mind doesn’t quite have a word for- yet.
“What’s wrong?” Nino asks, setting take-out bags on the table in front of Ohno. He leans in close, inspecting Ohno’s face with squinty eyes, and pinches his cheek before turning to grab some plates. “Did I say something? I’ve been rambling about my week, sorry. How’s everything been?”
He shouldn’t ask, he shouldn’t say it, but that doesn’t stop it from escaping his lips anyway. “What was it like, kissing another guy…that isn’t me?”
Nino freezes, back to Ohno, and is so completely silent for a few moments that Ohno wonders if he can escape this situation unscathed if he just gets up and leaves now.
“It’s just,” he tries, in an attempt to sooth over the damage before it becomes irreparable, “it’s not the first time you’ve had to do it since we started- this. And I didn’t ask before, so I was curious.”
“You’re jealous,” Nino says, slowly, and Ohno stops considering a way out at the sound of awe in Nino’s voice. He turns around, wide-eyed, and Ohno slumps down into his seat. “I can’t believe it. You, Ohno Satoshi, you’re jealous! You’re jealous that I’m off kissing other people even if it’s just for work!”
“That’s not it!” Ohno groans; he crosses his arms over the tabletop and drops his head down on top of them, effectively burying his face so he doesn’t have to meet Nino’s eyes. “I was just- you’re so impossible!”
Silence falls across the kitchen but Ohno doesn’t dare lift his head, not even when he can hear the soft padding of socked feet against the tiled floor. The steps come closer until they’re right beside his chair, and then stubby fingers knot into the hair at the nape of his neck. “I know,” Nino says from somewhere above his head, so quietly that it might as well be the Nino-voice in the back of his mind that occasionally puts in an appearance. “And so are you. Kissing someone for a film is not even close to the same thing as kissing you. It doesn’t even compare.”
Ohno peeks up at him, cautiously cracking an eyelid from the confined space between his arms, to find Nino smiling warmly at him. But beneath that smile is something sad that makes Ohno’s heart twist in his chest, because beneath that smile is something that is consistently putting barriers up between them. If he asks questions, or even says a word, this moment could end so suddenly it would be as if it hadn’t happened in the first place.
“Kissing you is completely different from kissing anyone else,” Nino whispers, and when he bends down, Ohno sits up to meet his lips and almost believes him.
i just want to save you while there’s still something left to save.
now.
When Ohno wakes up in the middle of the night, he’s still somewhat drunk from his night out with Aiba, and even more of a mess from the strange and unnatural direction his dreams have been taking. He knows that what he needs to do is take a few deep breaths, calm himself down, and not do anything irrational because it’s almost three in the morning but then it’s too late for rationale and he’s reaching for his phone with a fog settling into his brain.
He doesn’t intend for it, but he’s speed-dialing Nino’s number without any real thought, his fingers doing the work that the rest of him can’t stand to do. It’s a relapse. It’s the first one he’s had since they had ‘broken up’ or whatever one could call it, and he’s not going to be proud of this in the morning, especially not with all of the awkward surrounding their situation as it stands.
Nino answers, groggy, his voice dense as he fights back to wakefulness. “Do you understand what time it is?”
“It’s me,” Ohno says, while he still has the heart to say anything at all. There’s a rustle of movement on the opposite end, then nothing. At first, Ohno thinks maybe Nino fell back asleep.
But eventually, he says, “Satoshi. What’s wrong,” and it isn’t so much a question because it doesn’t really need to be. Ohno did call at a ridiculous hour, after all.
“I miss you,” he bursts out, which is so stupid of him. He wants Nino to see reason, to understand, to come over before the sun and kiss him again. “We had a time limit, right? But we don’t need to. We can just be together.” He doesn’t know which of them he’s trying to convince. “It doesn’t have to be-” the end.
“Ohno, stop it,” Nino cuts him off, an edge slicing through his tone. He’s fully awake now, alert, and Ohno is nervous because of it. “You’re not sober, are you? You’re going to regret making this call in the morning, if you even remember it. Since you can’t recall that you’re the one that left in the first place.”
That hurts, though Ohno doesn’t want to confess it, because Nino is right. “It is morning,” he finds himself arguing, despite that, and the ring of truth to Nino’s words. He did end it. He is drunk. He will regret this when he sobers up. “You have to listen to me,” he says instead.
“I’m going to hang up,” Nino mutters darkly, his voice reverberating down the line, buzzing in Ohno’s ears. In his head.
He can’t. Ohno can’t let him. “It’s important,” he begs, even if he doesn’t want to say it, even if Nino doesn’t want to hear it. “I lo-”
“Fuck, Satoshi!” Nino’s voice slashes through his, suddenly angry and frustrated. “I can’t hear that, okay? I can’t! You can’t call me at three in the morning and do this to me after we’ve already- we’re not- we aren’t anything, anymore, okay? Now go to sleep because we both have work early, and when you wake up in the morning, we’ll just be polite and awkward voices that dance around each other and become shadows in one another’s lives. We’ll say good morning like we do every day, like we don’t want to because it hurts so bad, and pretend you never made this call because this isn’t what you want. In the end, you’ll get over it, and you’ll be better for it. Okay? Done.”
Ohno can’t stop shaking. He’s clutching the phone so hard that his knuckles are sliding into different shades of milky grey and pale, bright white when the moonlight peeks in through the window. He can hear Nino’s raspy breathing, evening out after a few minutes, and his own sharp inhales and exhales. All he can think of is how wrong Nino is; how he could never be better without him. But he’s too tired and jaded to tell him as much. “I wanted you to know,” he says, whisper-soft against the mouthpiece, “I wish things could have been different.”
It’s a very long time before Nino replies, just as quietly, “I wish I were different,” at the same time as Ohno slips back into sleep.
In the morning, he wakes up with his phone buried under his pillow and he checks his last call, confused to find that he’d been on the phone with Nino for a half hour. He remembers snippets of conversation, but nothing concrete, and when he goes into work, he ducks his head as he passes Nino and says Good morning even though he doesn’t want to say a word.
part four.
3 months ago.
Nino is forming a nervous tic above his eyebrow. He’s steadfastly ignoring Ohno’s voice as it tries to overcome the blare of noise from his iPod pulsating through his ears. Then Ohno is shaking at his shoulder and he can’t pretend as if he can’t hear him anymore, so he rips his headphones away with a groan. “What is it?” He demands, grabbing at the offensive hand clutching his shoulder.
Ohno fixes him with a pout and his most imploring eyes. “Something is wrong with my phone,” he says, pointedly, and Nino has been waiting for this since Ohno had gotten the new one. He has repeatedly told the older man that he would not be tutoring him on this one but Ohno is giving him the most helpless look he has and it’s doing strange and horrible things to his resolve, and to his knees.
“I told you to read the manual,” Nino grunts, snatching the phone away from him, “what do you need?”
“I want to set pictures for people,” Ohno says mournfully, “and I lost the manual.”
Nino feels justified in aiming a light smack at Ohno’s forehead. “I should have known,” he says, fiddling with the mobile, “but that has to be a record even for you.” He opens Ohno’s contacts, flicking through them, and ever so kindly aids him in setting up his pictures.
In the midst of doing so, a pop-up appears on the screen to inform him that Ohno has received new mail and he knows he shouldn’t do it but he opens it anyway. His teeth grit and he makes a noise of derision in the back of his throat that sounds terrifyingly like a growl.
It’s from that brat.
Wordlessly, he shoves the phone back into Ohno’s hands and climbs to his feet, stretching his limbs out coolly. It’ll be better if he doesn’t say anything, because he is horribly aware that deep down, he doesn’t really have the right to. He’s the one that started this as if it were an arrangement, and he can’t have it both ways- preserve his heart, or give it to Ohno. When Ohno glances at the screen, his eyes jump worriedly to Nino’s face but Nino just shrugs and says, “you should read it. Otherwise, I’ll never get anything done on there.”
Ohno opens his mouth; he might be on the verge of making an excuse or he might be ready to defend himself, but Nino doesn’t want Ohno to think that he cares. He doesn’t. He doesn’t. It doesn’t bother him one bit if Chinen Yuuri sends Ohno mail. It doesn’t.
He heads for the kitchen to grab something to drink and it takes Ohno a few minutes before he follows Nino in. “All set? I want to finish up on that and then find your manual so you can take care of stuff yourself from there,” he says, all feigned nonchalance that almost fools Ohno. He can tell the moment that it doesn’t work, because Ohno’s eyes flash and then he pushes Nino back against the countertop.
“Don’t let that drive you crazy,” he mutters, pinning him in place with his hips and a knee between Nino’s legs. Nino hates that he’s already weak enough to let Ohno do this.
“Make me forget about it,” he breathes, and Ohno crushes his mouth roughly to Nino’s, hands immediately stripping his belt away, the buckle cracking loudly on the floor, and proceeds to do just that.
i can love you for all of the things that you are and then hate you for all of the things you’re not.
now.
Nino doesn’t mean to walk in while Ohno is on the phone but the door to the green room isn’t closed all the way and Sho is on his heels anyway; for all of Sho’s smarts, he is especially versatile in being tactless. Once they’re in the room, Ohno’s voice drops and he stares blankly in the opposite direction but he doesn’t hang up, just continues to converse quietly with the person on the other end.
“We could go grab a drink,” Sho is saying, and Nino attempts to give him his undivided attention, because he shouldn’t let it bother him that Ohno is on the phone. It’s not a big deal; it’s probably his mother. “I have some free time after this, what about you?”
Ohno’s phone clicks shut and Sho, despite his awareness of the situation, turns to him.
“Do you want to come with us?”
Nino’s hand grips roughly at Sho’s elbow; a whisper of don’t make us do this in his touch. “I’m sure Ohno has something else going on,” he murmurs, near silence, against Sho’s ear.
Ohno offers Sho a smile- the problem isn’t with him, after all- and says, “I can’t tonight. I’m going out with a friend.”
A long time ago, when things between Ohno and Nino had changed, Nino noticed something strange. It’s the way that Ohno’s mouth twitches just at the corner when he’s talking vaguely about something he knows Nino won’t like. After a while, that twitch became customary for whenever Ohno had been discussing that brat but didn’t want Nino to know. Nino shakes, now, realizing that Ohno still can’t control that muscle movement.
“Ah, ah, okay, another time then,” Sho says, but he looks somewhat disappointed. “Have fun, okay?”
“He will,” Nino says, shards of ice splintering in each word. Ohno pretends not to hear, and when Nino leaves the room, he adds, “say hello to him for me.”
He doesn’t want Ohno to think he cares, but everyone has a breaking point.
part five.
2 months ago.
“This is a terrible idea,” Nino is muttering from beneath the cover of his hat, pushing his glasses up his nose. The movement is adorable, almost enough so that Ohno forgets how irritated Nino is with him right now. But then Nino reaches across the seat and pinches his arm and Ohno winces. “Didn’t you hear me?”
“Yes,” Ohno says with a heavy sigh, “I also heard you the first twelve-thousand-and-eighty-two times you said it. But it’s a Saturday, and it’ll be crowded, so no one will notice us.” Glancing around to be sure that no one on the bus is watching them too closely, Ohno slides his hand over the seat to link his fingers through Nino’s. “Besides, we had a deal. You said you’d come to the zoo with me if I bought you lunch.”
“You know that I did not mean ramen, you conniving bastard,” Nino snips, but he doesn’t pull his hand away and Ohno counts that as a small victory. “You are so sneaky.”
“I know,” Ohno agrees, with no little amount of pride.
By the time they reach their destination, Nino has relaxed enough to raise his head and watch the scenery flash by outside of their window; his fingers fit gently into Ohno’s, but he wriggles his hand away once they stand to depart from the bus. He keeps a reluctant distance between them as they make their way through the gates and Ohno tries not to drag them from one exhibit to the next with shockingly vast amounts of excitement.
They’re having fun, but Ohno knows that with their lives, nothing can go off without a hitch. It doesn’t take long for the reality to sink in and the moment that it does is the very moment that a high school girl turns to her friends and whispers something that Nino doesn’t see and can’t hear over the buzz of noise in front of the penguin exhibit. Ohno can’t hear it either, but he knows where this is going to land them.
“Nino,” he says, because if he stretches for Nino’s hand now, there will be hell to pay later.
He can see it in the rigid line of Nino’s back, the way that he turns and spots what has Ohno’s attention, and he hunches his shoulders. “We should go,” he informs Ohno, tugging uncomfortably on the brim of his hat, “before something actually happens.”
The girl looks like she might come over and say something, but then Nino turns on his heel and starts in the opposite direction and Ohno doesn’t follow too closely because though they aren’t doing anything wrong, or obvious even, the fact that they are here together in the first place is enough to do damage.
They don’t speak on the bus ride home, except for the split second before they reach their stop. Nino’s hand catches around Ohno’s wrist and he swallows his surprise at the intense look on his face. “You know,” Nino says, “I don’t always like it when I’m right.”
Ohno just nods.
i can hear your voice and i’m not afraid.
now.
Ohno is on the phone with his manager, listening carefully to him with hands that clutch the plastic of his mobile against his ear so tightly that his fingers are starting to lose feeling. “Is this going to be okay, if I get it?” He asks, as the others enter the green room. Bad timing. Ohno can’t find a safe route out.
“It’ll work out, won’t it? The way it did for Nino?” His manager is quick to point out, and something stabs crudely into Ohno’s chest. “For now, let’s just take this one step at a time. Do you want to go and give it a try?”
Aiba is saying something that Jun hits him for, and Sho is laughing and Nino is watching the chaos with dark, dark eyes and when they slide to Ohno, it barely lasts. “Yes,” Ohno says. He hates himself when he hangs up the phone and clears his throat to the other four people in the room.
“Sorry, were we too loud?” Aiba asks, guilt riding high in his voice, but it doesn’t chase away his smile.
“No, no, I just have something to say. If you guys have a few minutes to listen.” There are noises of agreement humming through the room; Sho drops his newspaper and Jun diverts his interest from hitting Aiba. Nino picks up his DS disinterestedly. “I was just offered an audition,” he begins. Grins explode to life around him but before anyone can shout congratulations at him, he continues, “in New York.”
Nino’s DS hits the carpet.
“Eh? But that’s-” Aiba’s smile doesn’t waver, “-that’s awesome! That’s a great opportunity, it’s really exciting!” His eyes widen suddenly and he sits down hard on the couch beside Sho. “Wait,” he adds.
“Ah,” Jun snorts, “it came: realization.” He himself looks the slightest bit downtrodden at the news but he smoothes over it quickly with a bright, glossy smile. “You know if you want to go for it, we’ll be right behind you, supporting you. You’ve already accepted audition, right?”
Ohno doesn’t know why, but he wishes Nino would look at him. Nino doesn’t; he ducks his head and fumbles for his fallen DS. “Well,” he says, but there is no use in biding his time, or in avoiding the response. “Yeah.”
“What’s going to happen if you get it? How long are you going to be gone?!” Aiba leaps back up and bolts to Ohno’s side, clutching his arm in a death grip. Ohno is accustomed to this so the pain doesn’t reach him, not even when the circulation is cut off.
“Masaki,” Sho sighs, “it’s Satoshi’s decision, it’s not like he’ll be gone forever.” He rises and comes over in an attempt to dislodge Aiba from Ohno’s arm, to no avail. Aiba seems to be trying to morph into Ohno’s body.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Ohno reassures him, petting lightly at his hair with his free hand, “I’m not sure yet. But it’ll work out, right? Just like when Nino went to California.” It’s hard to move his mouth around Nino’s name when he is pretty sure he hasn’t said it off-camera in weeks. “If I get the role. Maybe I won’t even get it.”
Ohno doesn’t know how much he wants it in the first place. What he knows is that he needs to be away, even if it’s just long enough to attend the audition, because the pressure threatening to combust beneath his ribs from seeing Nino on a near-daily basis is reaching a dangerous level. It’s like looking what he could have had in the face and knowing that he had watched it all fall apart at his feet instead. That he had led it to its destruction like a lamb to the slaughter.
“Somehow, I wish you’d have more faith in yourself,” Sho says, but Ohno can see that he knows. Sho usually knows. If he can’t see through Ohno, no one can, not even Nino.
Nino, who is shutting the lid of his DS with far more force than necessary, and saying, “Sho’s right, you know.” Nino, who keeps his head down, and leaves at the first possible opportunity. The resounding footsteps down the hall echo a furious cadence in Ohno’s chest, as if to say What more did you want from him? but Ohno doesn’t have the answer so he lets him go, just like Nino did when he left.
part six.
1 month ago.
Somewhere, a door slams.
Nino doesn’t breathe out a syllable, is utterly silent. This is it. It may very well be as far as Ohno gets when he crosses the threshold to Nino’s bedroom. He doesn’t say anything for so long that Nino is convinced he’s done an incredible impersonation of a sleeping person.
“We should have told him,” is where Ohno decides to begin, once Nino comes to the realization that he’s been caught.
And there it is, spilling between them, as certain as the blood pulsing in the beats at his wrists. “Why?” Nino wants to know. “There’s nothing to tell.” These are words he’s practiced in front of the mirror a thousand times over but he hadn’t expected them to break his own skin like he’s carving them in with pins and needles.
“I’m sure that’s not what Sho thought when he found us in the stairwell,” Ohno says. It’s true that he could have bitten it out like a curse, but he doesn’t. Too calm. Apparently, Nino has to be the sensible one yet again.
Sitting up, he shoves his sheets away from his body and kicks his legs over the edge of the bed. “What had you planned to tell him?”
“We weren’t careful enough.” Ohno takes one step back. Nino will take one forward. “I’m never going to win with you.”
“Finally,” Nino laughs, but there’s no humor in it, “you’ve discovered that, have you?” Everything has taken a sharp left turn, like maybe he’d been on the verge of figuring out whether or not he’s cut out for this but then the rest of the world had decided he’d been taking too long.
Ohno takes another step in the opposite direction. His heel lands on the threshold. “I need to know,” he says, “what this is to you. Because if it’s important, we should have told him. But you didn’t want him, or Aiba, or Jun to know. That should tell me something, right?”
He’s asking the wrong question. Nino doesn’t correct him. A step forward. “Maybe I need some time to find out for myself,” he says, but the words don’t fit him at all. He’s taken so much time away from them, what they could be, to do just that.
“Maybe I don’t have any time left,” Ohno hisses into the dark of Nino’s bedroom, silhouetted by the hall light. It paints his tan skin in patches of sickly yellow, throwing a shadow across his face. The half that’s still visible is set, prepared to go to war. “Maybe,” Ohno says, mouth twisting sourly, “I should give up. Maybe waiting for you to fucking figure it out is tiring and I don’t know if I can keep putting myself through it.”
Nino steps back this time. There is no other option. “Maybe,” he agrees, quietly, “you’re right. If all I’m doing is hurting you.”
“You could make me happy, you have before,” Ohno says, and it sounds enough like a last chance that Nino could take but his own path is too uncertain. “But-”
“-not anymore. Not like this,” Nino supplies, the hollows of his knees bumping into his mattress with his next step.
Ohno nods, accepts that as his answer, and does the same: backs into the hallway and turns away. Nino wants to change.
Somewhere, a door slams.
i didn’t know how much i’d miss you until you were gone.
now.
Ohno scans the board listing departures and paces in front of his carry-along. With each tilt of his wrist, his eyes catch the face of his watch and he crinkles his nose anxiously. Flying doesn’t frighten him; it rarely even fazes him. But in ten minutes, he’s going to be boarding a plane that’s going to take him an ocean out of Nino’s way. And he’s done this by his own choice. He wants it, maybe just a bit, but it doesn’t make it feel less like a fate worse than death.
His phone rings, a reminder that oh I need to turn that off before take-off that is hastily subdued by the name on the Caller ID. His stomach winds in on itself and his windpipe clogs when he picks up, coughing out some form of a greeting. “Nino- what-”
He catches his breath. There is a noise on the other end that Ohno is fairly positive Nino hasn’t made since around the time of their debut, when they had been shipped off to Hawaii and he had still been young enough to be homesick and terrified despite the brave face he put on for everyone else.
Nino actually sniffles. It sounds like a horrifying precursor to some new territory that Ohno is uneasy about exploring. “What is it?”
“Where are you right now?” Nino says; no hello, how are you, we haven’t talked on the phone in a while! or anything of the sort. His voice breaks mid-sentence. Ohno sits down, because that’s all his legs will allow him to do.
“Airport,” he mumbles, weakly. He has to set his reeling head back against the edge of the hard, plastic seat because when he thinks too much about it, it scares him to no end that Nino would be calling him, especially at this particular moment. “Nino. Is everything…” He can’t finish that question. Everything isn’t okay.
“Please,” Nino whispers, soft, static-laced like a brush of cloth over the mouthpiece, “I know it’s selfish. But don’t go.”
The phone slips in Ohno’s sweaty grip but he knows what he’s heard. A strange bubble of warmth bursts open in his chest, soaking through his quaking limbs, and he breathes, “Nino…even if I’m only going to be gone for a few days?”
Nino repeats, “don’t. I’m so selfish.” He coughs, his voice wavering. Ohno is so in love with him right now that it’s a physical ache. Running away over seas and mountains and hills and valleys isn’t going to save him. “Just- can you wait there? Until I get there?”
Ohno glances up at the listings. If he wanted this, really wanted it, he could get up and head for his departure gate. His flight is boarding. “I’ll be here,” he says, with a silent apology to his manager, but not a single regret when he clicks his phone shut.
As it turns out, he doesn’t have to wait very long. Nino must have been on his way when he’d called because he’s there not even twenty minutes later, with shaking hands but clear eyes and his voice is strong when he gets close enough to say Ohno’s name. Ohno doesn’t stand, for fear of looking far too eager when there is too much to be said between them, and Nino tries out a breathless, uncertain smile. “I should have gone after you,” he says in a rush, “I shouldn’t have just- allowed things to become this way. I’m such an idiot when it comes to this stuff.”
“How true,” Ohno offers wryly, but he leans forward. His heart is knocking at his ribs, trying to flee.
“Look,” Nino says.
Ohno waits. He’s been doing it for a while but if he can hold on a little bit longer, he knows that he’ll be happy he did. It’s something tight in his gut, a comforting weight, reassuring him that whatever comes next will be a welcome relief from everything he’d been trying to run from.
When Nino says it, it’s not as much of a shock as it should be. Even now, Ohno had never been foolish enough to expect to hear it, but somehow, he’s always known that there’s a possibility that it could be true.
“I love you,” Nino says.
Ohno bites back the ridiculous grin threatening to split his face in half. He regains his composure, and chews thoughtfully on his lower lip, putting on a very believable show of disbelief.
Nino grabs the front of his shirt and pulls Ohno up, tugging him within breathing space. “Didn’t you hear me?” He demands, nervous fingers fidgeting in the fabric of Ohno’s shirt.
“You are selfish,” Ohno says; Nino’s face falls until he catches sight of the smile tugging persistently at the corner of Ohno’s mouth and Ohno stops trying to hide it. “I heard you,” he confesses, untangling Nino’s hand from his shirt to take it in his own.
“Good,” Nino mutters, eyes downcast in clear embarrassment. His cheeks flush. “Are you- you’re not still going, right?”
“You made me miss my flight,” Ohno points out, airily, but he moves his hand to Nino’s elbow and guides him forward into the loop of Ohno’s arms. Nino doesn’t resist, mumbling an apology into the crook of Ohno’s neck, breath warm and heartbeat fluctuating between racing and steady depending on where Ohno moves his hands. “If you weren’t selfish, nothing would make sense anymore,” he adds, fondly.
Nino lays a light, inconspicuous kiss against the skin of Ohno’s neck and he shivers. “Make sure you get your money back for that ticket, that’s expensive,” he laughs, his tone considerably lighter, like this is all he needs and it makes Ohno feel invincible.
“If you let it go for right now and let me take care of it tomorrow, I’ll come home with you tonight. Deal?”
“No more deals,” Nino says, “just worry about it tomorrow and come home with me tonight anyway.”
Ohno has no objections to that.
pairing: ninomiya kazunari/ohno satoshi
rating: r
word count: 7,266 O_O
disclaimer: this is purely a work of fiction. i don't own! i just play with them
author's note: ah! AH~! i apologize. i have been working on writing so much lately yet not enough. i have been working (at my job, i mean) like crazy in the past month due to boatloads of drama. anyway, i think the flow of this one is a little odd because i started it at the end of june and kept dropping it and then picking it back up again, determined not to give up on it. the end is somewhat silly but, well, i admittedly rushed it in my desire to have it completed. but enjoy!! and thank you for reading! OH! AND HOW IS EVERYONE LOVING BOKU NO MITEIRU FUUKEI?
summary:
part one.
6 months ago.
The alarm blares to life, digital numbers glowing an evil red in the half-light of Ohno’s bedroom. He grumbles under his breath, untangling himself from the body-warm sheets of his bed to smack a palm flat onto the snooze button. He swings his legs over the edge of the mattress and stretches, cat-like, lithe limbs splayed in opposing directions.
When he stands, a hand shoots out from under the covers, small fingers gripping his wrist. A voice thick with slumber slurs, “y’promised,” and Ohno’s lips tilt upwards into a small grin.
He leans back over the bed, tugging the sheets down just enough to reveal dark eyes squinting at him beneath messy locks of black hair. “I didn’t forget,” he says, quietly, “I’ll be back in an hour.”
“You promised,” Nino repeats, with more conviction this time, a whine snaking through his tone. Ohno presses a comforting kiss to his forehead, between his brows. Nino’s fingers tighten. “We had a deal.”
Ohno knows. They always have a deal. He says, “we can’t sleep in past ten anyway, you have to go home and change before work.”
Nino’s face transforms from adorably sleepy to annoyed too quickly for Ohno to keep up. “The deal,” he reminds, “was that if I stayed the night, you’d sleep in with me. You know I hate it when you break your promises.” Before Ohno can really defend himself, Nino is rolling over again, releasing Ohno’s wrist in favor of covering his face with the bed sheets.
He can’t shrug it off, because Nino will bring it back later. It could happen in an hour, tonight, tomorrow, next week, next month. In a year. Nino doesn’t forget. Ohno hates it and loves him for it all at once, which is confusing in ways that make his head ache. It’s complicated.
But there isn’t anything about them that is simple.
People think that because Nino and Ohno are so close, their relationship comes easily, no matter what the relationship could be classified as. People are usually wrong. Ohno doesn’t understand them at all, and he has no idea why everyone else seems to. It’s ludicrous to him, that he knows the way Nino’s skin tastes beneath his tongue, the heat of his body when Ohno curls his fingers around his hips, the words he whispers when he comes, but Ohno has no idea what Nino is thinking, not ever. He doesn’t have a definition for them. If Ohno gets too close to telling Nino something that Nino doesn’t want to hear, his eyes shutter and he dodges away from the topic. If things get too serious, intimate in ways that Nino rarely allows, he runs.
It leaves Ohno trapped and craving, struggling to find Nino in moments of weakness where he will let them be normal. They don’t talk about what they want from each other. In place of that, they make deals.
Ohno wants Nino to spend the night, Nino wants him to stay in bed. They argue and discuss these things in code. I’ll stay if you sleep until ten. Ohno thinks that if he wants to hear Nino tell him he loves him, then he’s fallen in love with the wrong person.
He can’t sleep in until ten, it isn’t ingrained into his mental clock the way that it’s been imprinted into Nino’s head. It’s seven, and the sun is barely awake, streaming weak light through his blinds. It doesn’t stop him from running a few errands- milk, bread, another toothbrush for Nino because he repeatedly throws out the ones that Ohno leaves on the bathroom counter for him. When he returns, he showers, because he knows that he won’t have that opportunity once he’s back in bed. Nino will leave by ten-thirty, and Ohno will lay in his spot and try to soak in what remains of his warmth until he has to rush to work.
There are pretty little black-and-blue bruises where Nino’s teeth and lips had marked his hips, and he avoids washing them in the shower, as if afraid that soap and water will be the reason they fade away. Yet, he can’t bring himself to look at them for too long, in case they disappear under his gaze like figments of his overactive imagination.
He doesn’t bother properly putting a shirt on, toweling off lightly and climbing back into bed beside Nino. Nino continues to face in the opposite direction, and Ohno pretends that it doesn’t bother him for a while. After a half of an hour, Nino finally turns over, resting an arm across Ohno’s stomach. He’s looking at Ohno with dark eyes that are completely inscrutable.
“I brought back some breakfast,” Ohno whispers, tentatively reaching across the gap between them to thread his fingers into Nino’s hair.
Nino just nods, and silently presses closer, and when it’s time for him to leave, he eats the breakfast that Ohno had bought for him and doesn’t throw the toothbrush away.
It’s not much, but it’s somehow an apology, and therefore better than nothing.
i’ll never let you go but i don’t have the words to tell you.
now.
When they touch, it’s never on purpose, and Nino shoots away with a terrified, angry expression half-hidden by his fringe. Ohno has worked hard to solidify himself against the agony screaming through every nerve ending in his body. He’s done this. It’s his fault. And now, he’s paying the price for it.
The air around them is thick with tension; everyone tiptoes, though they try to ignore it, in the beginning. Nino’s snark is part of his charm until it oversteps all of the boundaries, and his sharp tongue sends even the most innocent people running for cover. For a while, he flashes bright-white smiles that soothe over the rough words, but it doesn’t take long for the people who know him best to see straight through that.
Ohno’s not doing much better. His bed is too big, and too cold, and that’s likely because it’s just too empty. There are no remnants of pockmarks on his skin; they’ve receded into his marrow. He trains himself to quit reaching a hand toward the small of Nino’s back when they’re close enough, and soon, they stop standing that close anyway. All of it is a burning ache lashing against the back of his throat, constant and wrenching at his heart.
He’s glad, though, that Nino knows how to be Ohmiya on camera, because he can’t even stand to be himself off-film right now; all he can do is follow Nino’s leads.
part two.
5 months ago.
“Am I not allowed to watch anything on my own television?”
Nino scrunches up his nose, clinging harder to the remote. “You don’t even like TV,” he points out, continuing to flip through channels, “and I don’t want to watch the fishing channel every time I come by, okay?”
“But that’s what I want to watch,” Ohno grumbles, making a brave dive for the control, “come on!”
Nino folds himself at the bottom of the couch, scooting desperately out of reach, but Ohno lands on top of him in spite of that. His body is warm and he smells fresh and clean, like something citrus that Nino can’t seem to find in Ohno’s shower. It makes Nino shiver. “Hey!” He yelps, helplessly, squirming away from the elegant fingers digging into his sides. “Satoshi, no- don’t-”
Ohno grins down at him, using Nino’s ticklish sides as an unfair tactical advantage to pin a knee on each side of him. “I told you,” he says, mouth twisting into a smirk, “I want to watch fishing.” He renews his attack until Nino is laughing hysterically, trying to curse between his laughter but he can’t get enough air into his lungs to do so.
Nino grabs for his hands, gasping, until Ohno relents in favor of snatching the remote control out of Nino’s loosened grip. “You suck,” Nino announces, breathless, but he looks up in confusion when Ohno doesn’t move to get off of him. The expression on Ohno’s face is serious now, contemplative, and Nino drops his hands to Ohno’s thighs to conceal the tremors in his fingers. “What? Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Because,” Ohno murmurs, “you are just so attractive.”
It makes Nino’s face heat up to a degree that is surreal, and he can’t look Ohno in the eye. “Don’t,” he says, words tumbling out quietly, “I’m not, stupid.”
Leaning down, Ohno cups his palms around Nino’s scalding cheeks, and kisses him slowly. “You are to me,” Ohno says against his mouth, and Nino wants to shrink away and make him stop because Ohno can’t understand what an ugly person Nino is.
He’s mean and stubborn and takes all of this for granted, and Ohno deserves so much more. Because it isn’t all just kissing and sex; there are actual feelings involved here, real, true feelings that Nino can’t hide from forever but god knows he’ll try. He can brush it off for a while, say they only do what feels good, but Ohno pushes further on a daily basis and Nino turns away because he’s too much of a fucking coward to do much else.
And because, secretly, he knows that Ohno’s love is wasted on someone like him. But Nino presses harder into the kiss anyway, avoids thinking about the gentle touch on his cheeks, and Ohno lets Nino be rough so he won’t have to care so much.
i’m so hollow, baby.
now.
They’re shooting for VS Arashi when something finally gives.
When they’re not playing a game, they’re seated beside one another on the top half of the benches and it’s too crowded and stuffy. The place where Nino’s hip repeatedly brushes against Ohno’s is beginning to burn, and no matter how he slides away, he can’t escape. He’s so incredibly grateful when Ohno stands for Pinball Runner that he audibly sighs in relief, until he catches Sho’s eye and forces himself to avert his gaze in embarrassment.
Ohno’s still and patient while they strap the basket around him; everyone prepares themselves, they fall into the usual banter, but Nino doesn’t open his mouth once. People are staring at him, expectations high, but he bites down on his tongue and crosses his arms tightly across his chest, only him and Jun left on the benches.
He’s not going to let something as silly as expectations bother him. When the buzzer blares and the game begins, he watches with a detached air, like a fellow audience member with no interest in the outcome. But Ohno is paying him no attention anyway, and he catches whichever ball he can reach first, performing as normally as every other day.
Until his foot catches, and he stumbles ungracefully off of the belt with a noise that makes Nino’s stomach crash louder than Ohno’s body when it hits the floor. Ohno rolls over, knocking the balls free, but he’s fingers are clutching at his ankle and Nino’s up before he has any coherent thought as to what he’s doing.
“Oh-chan!” He calls, the first one, as always, to reach Ohno’s side. “Oh-chan, are you okay? Let me see,” he demands, trying to unsnap the basket to get it out of the way. His hand is halfway to Ohno’s ankle when Ohno sits up abruptly, violently putting himself out of range of Nino’s fingertips.
“I’m fine!” Ohno grinds out, eyes flashing. His cheeks are flushed from the exerted effort but his hands are trembling and his ankle is swelling and he’s glaring at Nino as if Nino had pushed him off of the belt himself. “Don’t-” he says, his voice high, and Nino’s hand falls as he swallows bile, “don’t touch me. Leave me alone, I’m just fine.”
Nino doesn’t touch him. Not even when everyone else fusses and throws him baffled glances, or when they wrap Ohno’s ankle in ice until the swelling goes down, not even when the director announces that they’ll reshoot tomorrow if Ohno’s feeling well enough.
Nino leaves without saying a word to anyone, dazed, and wishing he could just be the person that Ohno had always wanted him to be. Because then, perhaps, neither of them would be going home alone.
part three.
4 months ago.
Ohno doesn’t like to label himself as a person who becomes jealous easily. He’s very good at not jumping to conclusions, and at controlling his emotions, and dating only people that he trusts the most with his heart. Nino, though ‘dating’ may not be the correct term for what they are and what they do, is no exception to this.
But Ohno knows that he must be in incredibly over his head when Nino comes by one day after a week of filming in Kyoto, and mentions the kiss with Nakamura Aoi. He knows he’s in trouble because his heart shrinks in his chest and palpitates even faster than usual, and his fingers curl into fists at his sides, and he thinks he might throw up. And when Nino looks at him, he has to hide the hideous expression on his face, because he doesn’t understand why his body is reacting in a way that his mind doesn’t quite have a word for- yet.
“What’s wrong?” Nino asks, setting take-out bags on the table in front of Ohno. He leans in close, inspecting Ohno’s face with squinty eyes, and pinches his cheek before turning to grab some plates. “Did I say something? I’ve been rambling about my week, sorry. How’s everything been?”
He shouldn’t ask, he shouldn’t say it, but that doesn’t stop it from escaping his lips anyway. “What was it like, kissing another guy…that isn’t me?”
Nino freezes, back to Ohno, and is so completely silent for a few moments that Ohno wonders if he can escape this situation unscathed if he just gets up and leaves now.
“It’s just,” he tries, in an attempt to sooth over the damage before it becomes irreparable, “it’s not the first time you’ve had to do it since we started- this. And I didn’t ask before, so I was curious.”
“You’re jealous,” Nino says, slowly, and Ohno stops considering a way out at the sound of awe in Nino’s voice. He turns around, wide-eyed, and Ohno slumps down into his seat. “I can’t believe it. You, Ohno Satoshi, you’re jealous! You’re jealous that I’m off kissing other people even if it’s just for work!”
“That’s not it!” Ohno groans; he crosses his arms over the tabletop and drops his head down on top of them, effectively burying his face so he doesn’t have to meet Nino’s eyes. “I was just- you’re so impossible!”
Silence falls across the kitchen but Ohno doesn’t dare lift his head, not even when he can hear the soft padding of socked feet against the tiled floor. The steps come closer until they’re right beside his chair, and then stubby fingers knot into the hair at the nape of his neck. “I know,” Nino says from somewhere above his head, so quietly that it might as well be the Nino-voice in the back of his mind that occasionally puts in an appearance. “And so are you. Kissing someone for a film is not even close to the same thing as kissing you. It doesn’t even compare.”
Ohno peeks up at him, cautiously cracking an eyelid from the confined space between his arms, to find Nino smiling warmly at him. But beneath that smile is something sad that makes Ohno’s heart twist in his chest, because beneath that smile is something that is consistently putting barriers up between them. If he asks questions, or even says a word, this moment could end so suddenly it would be as if it hadn’t happened in the first place.
“Kissing you is completely different from kissing anyone else,” Nino whispers, and when he bends down, Ohno sits up to meet his lips and almost believes him.
i just want to save you while there’s still something left to save.
now.
When Ohno wakes up in the middle of the night, he’s still somewhat drunk from his night out with Aiba, and even more of a mess from the strange and unnatural direction his dreams have been taking. He knows that what he needs to do is take a few deep breaths, calm himself down, and not do anything irrational because it’s almost three in the morning but then it’s too late for rationale and he’s reaching for his phone with a fog settling into his brain.
He doesn’t intend for it, but he’s speed-dialing Nino’s number without any real thought, his fingers doing the work that the rest of him can’t stand to do. It’s a relapse. It’s the first one he’s had since they had ‘broken up’ or whatever one could call it, and he’s not going to be proud of this in the morning, especially not with all of the awkward surrounding their situation as it stands.
Nino answers, groggy, his voice dense as he fights back to wakefulness. “Do you understand what time it is?”
“It’s me,” Ohno says, while he still has the heart to say anything at all. There’s a rustle of movement on the opposite end, then nothing. At first, Ohno thinks maybe Nino fell back asleep.
But eventually, he says, “Satoshi. What’s wrong,” and it isn’t so much a question because it doesn’t really need to be. Ohno did call at a ridiculous hour, after all.
“I miss you,” he bursts out, which is so stupid of him. He wants Nino to see reason, to understand, to come over before the sun and kiss him again. “We had a time limit, right? But we don’t need to. We can just be together.” He doesn’t know which of them he’s trying to convince. “It doesn’t have to be-” the end.
“Ohno, stop it,” Nino cuts him off, an edge slicing through his tone. He’s fully awake now, alert, and Ohno is nervous because of it. “You’re not sober, are you? You’re going to regret making this call in the morning, if you even remember it. Since you can’t recall that you’re the one that left in the first place.”
That hurts, though Ohno doesn’t want to confess it, because Nino is right. “It is morning,” he finds himself arguing, despite that, and the ring of truth to Nino’s words. He did end it. He is drunk. He will regret this when he sobers up. “You have to listen to me,” he says instead.
“I’m going to hang up,” Nino mutters darkly, his voice reverberating down the line, buzzing in Ohno’s ears. In his head.
He can’t. Ohno can’t let him. “It’s important,” he begs, even if he doesn’t want to say it, even if Nino doesn’t want to hear it. “I lo-”
“Fuck, Satoshi!” Nino’s voice slashes through his, suddenly angry and frustrated. “I can’t hear that, okay? I can’t! You can’t call me at three in the morning and do this to me after we’ve already- we’re not- we aren’t anything, anymore, okay? Now go to sleep because we both have work early, and when you wake up in the morning, we’ll just be polite and awkward voices that dance around each other and become shadows in one another’s lives. We’ll say good morning like we do every day, like we don’t want to because it hurts so bad, and pretend you never made this call because this isn’t what you want. In the end, you’ll get over it, and you’ll be better for it. Okay? Done.”
Ohno can’t stop shaking. He’s clutching the phone so hard that his knuckles are sliding into different shades of milky grey and pale, bright white when the moonlight peeks in through the window. He can hear Nino’s raspy breathing, evening out after a few minutes, and his own sharp inhales and exhales. All he can think of is how wrong Nino is; how he could never be better without him. But he’s too tired and jaded to tell him as much. “I wanted you to know,” he says, whisper-soft against the mouthpiece, “I wish things could have been different.”
It’s a very long time before Nino replies, just as quietly, “I wish I were different,” at the same time as Ohno slips back into sleep.
In the morning, he wakes up with his phone buried under his pillow and he checks his last call, confused to find that he’d been on the phone with Nino for a half hour. He remembers snippets of conversation, but nothing concrete, and when he goes into work, he ducks his head as he passes Nino and says Good morning even though he doesn’t want to say a word.
part four.
3 months ago.
Nino is forming a nervous tic above his eyebrow. He’s steadfastly ignoring Ohno’s voice as it tries to overcome the blare of noise from his iPod pulsating through his ears. Then Ohno is shaking at his shoulder and he can’t pretend as if he can’t hear him anymore, so he rips his headphones away with a groan. “What is it?” He demands, grabbing at the offensive hand clutching his shoulder.
Ohno fixes him with a pout and his most imploring eyes. “Something is wrong with my phone,” he says, pointedly, and Nino has been waiting for this since Ohno had gotten the new one. He has repeatedly told the older man that he would not be tutoring him on this one but Ohno is giving him the most helpless look he has and it’s doing strange and horrible things to his resolve, and to his knees.
“I told you to read the manual,” Nino grunts, snatching the phone away from him, “what do you need?”
“I want to set pictures for people,” Ohno says mournfully, “and I lost the manual.”
Nino feels justified in aiming a light smack at Ohno’s forehead. “I should have known,” he says, fiddling with the mobile, “but that has to be a record even for you.” He opens Ohno’s contacts, flicking through them, and ever so kindly aids him in setting up his pictures.
In the midst of doing so, a pop-up appears on the screen to inform him that Ohno has received new mail and he knows he shouldn’t do it but he opens it anyway. His teeth grit and he makes a noise of derision in the back of his throat that sounds terrifyingly like a growl.
It’s from that brat.
Wordlessly, he shoves the phone back into Ohno’s hands and climbs to his feet, stretching his limbs out coolly. It’ll be better if he doesn’t say anything, because he is horribly aware that deep down, he doesn’t really have the right to. He’s the one that started this as if it were an arrangement, and he can’t have it both ways- preserve his heart, or give it to Ohno. When Ohno glances at the screen, his eyes jump worriedly to Nino’s face but Nino just shrugs and says, “you should read it. Otherwise, I’ll never get anything done on there.”
Ohno opens his mouth; he might be on the verge of making an excuse or he might be ready to defend himself, but Nino doesn’t want Ohno to think that he cares. He doesn’t. He doesn’t. It doesn’t bother him one bit if Chinen Yuuri sends Ohno mail. It doesn’t.
He heads for the kitchen to grab something to drink and it takes Ohno a few minutes before he follows Nino in. “All set? I want to finish up on that and then find your manual so you can take care of stuff yourself from there,” he says, all feigned nonchalance that almost fools Ohno. He can tell the moment that it doesn’t work, because Ohno’s eyes flash and then he pushes Nino back against the countertop.
“Don’t let that drive you crazy,” he mutters, pinning him in place with his hips and a knee between Nino’s legs. Nino hates that he’s already weak enough to let Ohno do this.
“Make me forget about it,” he breathes, and Ohno crushes his mouth roughly to Nino’s, hands immediately stripping his belt away, the buckle cracking loudly on the floor, and proceeds to do just that.
i can love you for all of the things that you are and then hate you for all of the things you’re not.
now.
Nino doesn’t mean to walk in while Ohno is on the phone but the door to the green room isn’t closed all the way and Sho is on his heels anyway; for all of Sho’s smarts, he is especially versatile in being tactless. Once they’re in the room, Ohno’s voice drops and he stares blankly in the opposite direction but he doesn’t hang up, just continues to converse quietly with the person on the other end.
“We could go grab a drink,” Sho is saying, and Nino attempts to give him his undivided attention, because he shouldn’t let it bother him that Ohno is on the phone. It’s not a big deal; it’s probably his mother. “I have some free time after this, what about you?”
Ohno’s phone clicks shut and Sho, despite his awareness of the situation, turns to him.
“Do you want to come with us?”
Nino’s hand grips roughly at Sho’s elbow; a whisper of don’t make us do this in his touch. “I’m sure Ohno has something else going on,” he murmurs, near silence, against Sho’s ear.
Ohno offers Sho a smile- the problem isn’t with him, after all- and says, “I can’t tonight. I’m going out with a friend.”
A long time ago, when things between Ohno and Nino had changed, Nino noticed something strange. It’s the way that Ohno’s mouth twitches just at the corner when he’s talking vaguely about something he knows Nino won’t like. After a while, that twitch became customary for whenever Ohno had been discussing that brat but didn’t want Nino to know. Nino shakes, now, realizing that Ohno still can’t control that muscle movement.
“Ah, ah, okay, another time then,” Sho says, but he looks somewhat disappointed. “Have fun, okay?”
“He will,” Nino says, shards of ice splintering in each word. Ohno pretends not to hear, and when Nino leaves the room, he adds, “say hello to him for me.”
He doesn’t want Ohno to think he cares, but everyone has a breaking point.
part five.
2 months ago.
“This is a terrible idea,” Nino is muttering from beneath the cover of his hat, pushing his glasses up his nose. The movement is adorable, almost enough so that Ohno forgets how irritated Nino is with him right now. But then Nino reaches across the seat and pinches his arm and Ohno winces. “Didn’t you hear me?”
“Yes,” Ohno says with a heavy sigh, “I also heard you the first twelve-thousand-and-eighty-two times you said it. But it’s a Saturday, and it’ll be crowded, so no one will notice us.” Glancing around to be sure that no one on the bus is watching them too closely, Ohno slides his hand over the seat to link his fingers through Nino’s. “Besides, we had a deal. You said you’d come to the zoo with me if I bought you lunch.”
“You know that I did not mean ramen, you conniving bastard,” Nino snips, but he doesn’t pull his hand away and Ohno counts that as a small victory. “You are so sneaky.”
“I know,” Ohno agrees, with no little amount of pride.
By the time they reach their destination, Nino has relaxed enough to raise his head and watch the scenery flash by outside of their window; his fingers fit gently into Ohno’s, but he wriggles his hand away once they stand to depart from the bus. He keeps a reluctant distance between them as they make their way through the gates and Ohno tries not to drag them from one exhibit to the next with shockingly vast amounts of excitement.
They’re having fun, but Ohno knows that with their lives, nothing can go off without a hitch. It doesn’t take long for the reality to sink in and the moment that it does is the very moment that a high school girl turns to her friends and whispers something that Nino doesn’t see and can’t hear over the buzz of noise in front of the penguin exhibit. Ohno can’t hear it either, but he knows where this is going to land them.
“Nino,” he says, because if he stretches for Nino’s hand now, there will be hell to pay later.
He can see it in the rigid line of Nino’s back, the way that he turns and spots what has Ohno’s attention, and he hunches his shoulders. “We should go,” he informs Ohno, tugging uncomfortably on the brim of his hat, “before something actually happens.”
The girl looks like she might come over and say something, but then Nino turns on his heel and starts in the opposite direction and Ohno doesn’t follow too closely because though they aren’t doing anything wrong, or obvious even, the fact that they are here together in the first place is enough to do damage.
They don’t speak on the bus ride home, except for the split second before they reach their stop. Nino’s hand catches around Ohno’s wrist and he swallows his surprise at the intense look on his face. “You know,” Nino says, “I don’t always like it when I’m right.”
Ohno just nods.
i can hear your voice and i’m not afraid.
now.
Ohno is on the phone with his manager, listening carefully to him with hands that clutch the plastic of his mobile against his ear so tightly that his fingers are starting to lose feeling. “Is this going to be okay, if I get it?” He asks, as the others enter the green room. Bad timing. Ohno can’t find a safe route out.
“It’ll work out, won’t it? The way it did for Nino?” His manager is quick to point out, and something stabs crudely into Ohno’s chest. “For now, let’s just take this one step at a time. Do you want to go and give it a try?”
Aiba is saying something that Jun hits him for, and Sho is laughing and Nino is watching the chaos with dark, dark eyes and when they slide to Ohno, it barely lasts. “Yes,” Ohno says. He hates himself when he hangs up the phone and clears his throat to the other four people in the room.
“Sorry, were we too loud?” Aiba asks, guilt riding high in his voice, but it doesn’t chase away his smile.
“No, no, I just have something to say. If you guys have a few minutes to listen.” There are noises of agreement humming through the room; Sho drops his newspaper and Jun diverts his interest from hitting Aiba. Nino picks up his DS disinterestedly. “I was just offered an audition,” he begins. Grins explode to life around him but before anyone can shout congratulations at him, he continues, “in New York.”
Nino’s DS hits the carpet.
“Eh? But that’s-” Aiba’s smile doesn’t waver, “-that’s awesome! That’s a great opportunity, it’s really exciting!” His eyes widen suddenly and he sits down hard on the couch beside Sho. “Wait,” he adds.
“Ah,” Jun snorts, “it came: realization.” He himself looks the slightest bit downtrodden at the news but he smoothes over it quickly with a bright, glossy smile. “You know if you want to go for it, we’ll be right behind you, supporting you. You’ve already accepted audition, right?”
Ohno doesn’t know why, but he wishes Nino would look at him. Nino doesn’t; he ducks his head and fumbles for his fallen DS. “Well,” he says, but there is no use in biding his time, or in avoiding the response. “Yeah.”
“What’s going to happen if you get it? How long are you going to be gone?!” Aiba leaps back up and bolts to Ohno’s side, clutching his arm in a death grip. Ohno is accustomed to this so the pain doesn’t reach him, not even when the circulation is cut off.
“Masaki,” Sho sighs, “it’s Satoshi’s decision, it’s not like he’ll be gone forever.” He rises and comes over in an attempt to dislodge Aiba from Ohno’s arm, to no avail. Aiba seems to be trying to morph into Ohno’s body.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Ohno reassures him, petting lightly at his hair with his free hand, “I’m not sure yet. But it’ll work out, right? Just like when Nino went to California.” It’s hard to move his mouth around Nino’s name when he is pretty sure he hasn’t said it off-camera in weeks. “If I get the role. Maybe I won’t even get it.”
Ohno doesn’t know how much he wants it in the first place. What he knows is that he needs to be away, even if it’s just long enough to attend the audition, because the pressure threatening to combust beneath his ribs from seeing Nino on a near-daily basis is reaching a dangerous level. It’s like looking what he could have had in the face and knowing that he had watched it all fall apart at his feet instead. That he had led it to its destruction like a lamb to the slaughter.
“Somehow, I wish you’d have more faith in yourself,” Sho says, but Ohno can see that he knows. Sho usually knows. If he can’t see through Ohno, no one can, not even Nino.
Nino, who is shutting the lid of his DS with far more force than necessary, and saying, “Sho’s right, you know.” Nino, who keeps his head down, and leaves at the first possible opportunity. The resounding footsteps down the hall echo a furious cadence in Ohno’s chest, as if to say What more did you want from him? but Ohno doesn’t have the answer so he lets him go, just like Nino did when he left.
part six.
1 month ago.
Somewhere, a door slams.
Nino doesn’t breathe out a syllable, is utterly silent. This is it. It may very well be as far as Ohno gets when he crosses the threshold to Nino’s bedroom. He doesn’t say anything for so long that Nino is convinced he’s done an incredible impersonation of a sleeping person.
“We should have told him,” is where Ohno decides to begin, once Nino comes to the realization that he’s been caught.
And there it is, spilling between them, as certain as the blood pulsing in the beats at his wrists. “Why?” Nino wants to know. “There’s nothing to tell.” These are words he’s practiced in front of the mirror a thousand times over but he hadn’t expected them to break his own skin like he’s carving them in with pins and needles.
“I’m sure that’s not what Sho thought when he found us in the stairwell,” Ohno says. It’s true that he could have bitten it out like a curse, but he doesn’t. Too calm. Apparently, Nino has to be the sensible one yet again.
Sitting up, he shoves his sheets away from his body and kicks his legs over the edge of the bed. “What had you planned to tell him?”
“We weren’t careful enough.” Ohno takes one step back. Nino will take one forward. “I’m never going to win with you.”
“Finally,” Nino laughs, but there’s no humor in it, “you’ve discovered that, have you?” Everything has taken a sharp left turn, like maybe he’d been on the verge of figuring out whether or not he’s cut out for this but then the rest of the world had decided he’d been taking too long.
Ohno takes another step in the opposite direction. His heel lands on the threshold. “I need to know,” he says, “what this is to you. Because if it’s important, we should have told him. But you didn’t want him, or Aiba, or Jun to know. That should tell me something, right?”
He’s asking the wrong question. Nino doesn’t correct him. A step forward. “Maybe I need some time to find out for myself,” he says, but the words don’t fit him at all. He’s taken so much time away from them, what they could be, to do just that.
“Maybe I don’t have any time left,” Ohno hisses into the dark of Nino’s bedroom, silhouetted by the hall light. It paints his tan skin in patches of sickly yellow, throwing a shadow across his face. The half that’s still visible is set, prepared to go to war. “Maybe,” Ohno says, mouth twisting sourly, “I should give up. Maybe waiting for you to fucking figure it out is tiring and I don’t know if I can keep putting myself through it.”
Nino steps back this time. There is no other option. “Maybe,” he agrees, quietly, “you’re right. If all I’m doing is hurting you.”
“You could make me happy, you have before,” Ohno says, and it sounds enough like a last chance that Nino could take but his own path is too uncertain. “But-”
“-not anymore. Not like this,” Nino supplies, the hollows of his knees bumping into his mattress with his next step.
Ohno nods, accepts that as his answer, and does the same: backs into the hallway and turns away. Nino wants to change.
Somewhere, a door slams.
i didn’t know how much i’d miss you until you were gone.
now.
Ohno scans the board listing departures and paces in front of his carry-along. With each tilt of his wrist, his eyes catch the face of his watch and he crinkles his nose anxiously. Flying doesn’t frighten him; it rarely even fazes him. But in ten minutes, he’s going to be boarding a plane that’s going to take him an ocean out of Nino’s way. And he’s done this by his own choice. He wants it, maybe just a bit, but it doesn’t make it feel less like a fate worse than death.
His phone rings, a reminder that oh I need to turn that off before take-off that is hastily subdued by the name on the Caller ID. His stomach winds in on itself and his windpipe clogs when he picks up, coughing out some form of a greeting. “Nino- what-”
He catches his breath. There is a noise on the other end that Ohno is fairly positive Nino hasn’t made since around the time of their debut, when they had been shipped off to Hawaii and he had still been young enough to be homesick and terrified despite the brave face he put on for everyone else.
Nino actually sniffles. It sounds like a horrifying precursor to some new territory that Ohno is uneasy about exploring. “What is it?”
“Where are you right now?” Nino says; no hello, how are you, we haven’t talked on the phone in a while! or anything of the sort. His voice breaks mid-sentence. Ohno sits down, because that’s all his legs will allow him to do.
“Airport,” he mumbles, weakly. He has to set his reeling head back against the edge of the hard, plastic seat because when he thinks too much about it, it scares him to no end that Nino would be calling him, especially at this particular moment. “Nino. Is everything…” He can’t finish that question. Everything isn’t okay.
“Please,” Nino whispers, soft, static-laced like a brush of cloth over the mouthpiece, “I know it’s selfish. But don’t go.”
The phone slips in Ohno’s sweaty grip but he knows what he’s heard. A strange bubble of warmth bursts open in his chest, soaking through his quaking limbs, and he breathes, “Nino…even if I’m only going to be gone for a few days?”
Nino repeats, “don’t. I’m so selfish.” He coughs, his voice wavering. Ohno is so in love with him right now that it’s a physical ache. Running away over seas and mountains and hills and valleys isn’t going to save him. “Just- can you wait there? Until I get there?”
Ohno glances up at the listings. If he wanted this, really wanted it, he could get up and head for his departure gate. His flight is boarding. “I’ll be here,” he says, with a silent apology to his manager, but not a single regret when he clicks his phone shut.
As it turns out, he doesn’t have to wait very long. Nino must have been on his way when he’d called because he’s there not even twenty minutes later, with shaking hands but clear eyes and his voice is strong when he gets close enough to say Ohno’s name. Ohno doesn’t stand, for fear of looking far too eager when there is too much to be said between them, and Nino tries out a breathless, uncertain smile. “I should have gone after you,” he says in a rush, “I shouldn’t have just- allowed things to become this way. I’m such an idiot when it comes to this stuff.”
“How true,” Ohno offers wryly, but he leans forward. His heart is knocking at his ribs, trying to flee.
“Look,” Nino says.
Ohno waits. He’s been doing it for a while but if he can hold on a little bit longer, he knows that he’ll be happy he did. It’s something tight in his gut, a comforting weight, reassuring him that whatever comes next will be a welcome relief from everything he’d been trying to run from.
When Nino says it, it’s not as much of a shock as it should be. Even now, Ohno had never been foolish enough to expect to hear it, but somehow, he’s always known that there’s a possibility that it could be true.
“I love you,” Nino says.
Ohno bites back the ridiculous grin threatening to split his face in half. He regains his composure, and chews thoughtfully on his lower lip, putting on a very believable show of disbelief.
Nino grabs the front of his shirt and pulls Ohno up, tugging him within breathing space. “Didn’t you hear me?” He demands, nervous fingers fidgeting in the fabric of Ohno’s shirt.
“You are selfish,” Ohno says; Nino’s face falls until he catches sight of the smile tugging persistently at the corner of Ohno’s mouth and Ohno stops trying to hide it. “I heard you,” he confesses, untangling Nino’s hand from his shirt to take it in his own.
“Good,” Nino mutters, eyes downcast in clear embarrassment. His cheeks flush. “Are you- you’re not still going, right?”
“You made me miss my flight,” Ohno points out, airily, but he moves his hand to Nino’s elbow and guides him forward into the loop of Ohno’s arms. Nino doesn’t resist, mumbling an apology into the crook of Ohno’s neck, breath warm and heartbeat fluctuating between racing and steady depending on where Ohno moves his hands. “If you weren’t selfish, nothing would make sense anymore,” he adds, fondly.
Nino lays a light, inconspicuous kiss against the skin of Ohno’s neck and he shivers. “Make sure you get your money back for that ticket, that’s expensive,” he laughs, his tone considerably lighter, like this is all he needs and it makes Ohno feel invincible.
“If you let it go for right now and let me take care of it tomorrow, I’ll come home with you tonight. Deal?”
“No more deals,” Nino says, “just worry about it tomorrow and come home with me tonight anyway.”
Ohno has no objections to that.