#28: fic: The Subtle Courtship of Sakurai Sho By One Ninomiya Kazunari, PG-13
Title: The Subtle Courtship of Sakurai Sho By One Ninomiya Kazunari
Fandom: Arashi
Pairing: Sho/Nino
Rating: PG-13
Summary: In which Sho and Inoue Mao star in a drama together, and Nino is crafty.
Notes: Hugest thanks to forochel, amazing beta reader. Mao-chan's fictional dramas with Arashi came about during a conversation with darong. ♥ This won first place at the Shoneen Club March Contest and was originally posted here.
Sho walks into the green room one morning to find Nino standing with his arms around Ohno.
"Dearest," declaims Nino, "don't go."
"I must," Ohno sighs, twisting round in Nino's embrace. "Duty calls."
"But your omurice is waiting on the table, beloved wife," Nino continues, "complete with my ketchup heart-shape of devotion."
Sho has no patience for this; he is running on one hour of sleep and has just discovered that someone has eaten the last of his morning yoghurt.
"Right," he says, "I'll just come back when you two are done making fun of other people's dramas."
---
They refer to it as Yukie-chan because The Incredible Adventures of Super-Spy Yamamoto Yukie is a bit of a mouthful to say at press conferences and talk shows. Sho has only filmed two episodes and there is still a little time till it airs, but people are already asking him what it is like to play the long-suffering house husband to Inoue Mao's international super-spy.
"It's all rather interesting," Sho tells the first group of reporters, and goes on to talk about his views on whether gender roles in Japanese society have truly undergone a shift.
"You do realise," Nino tells him over the phone, "that the reason why Yamamoto Yukie's husband stays home and makes her miso soup is less a matter of gender issues and more because they wanted to put you in an apron, right?"
"You," says Sho, "are a very cynical young man."
"Glad you noticed."
---
He's on Waratte Iitomo when somebody brings it up again.
"Your latest role is rather unusual, isn't it?" asks Tamori, "As the heroine's husband."
"Well," says Sho, "I personally feel that the apron is rather fetching."
---
Mao-chan is as lovely as Jun had suggested she would be; cheery, slightly strange, and rather easy to tease. In between scenes, they sit around and play tic-tac-toe on napkins. Sho likes the way her nose scrunches up when she loses.
"I'm the third Arashi member you've worked with, aren't I?" Sho asks her over their lunch bentos one afternoon.
"That's right," says Mao-chan, while skillfully stealing a piece of karaage from Sho's box. (She only succeeds, Sho notes, because he lets her.) "Although Ninomiya-kun didn't really count. We only filmed for two days."
They spend the rest of the shoot thinking up crazy ideas for dramas Arashi and Mao-chan could star in. There's the one where all of them are heart surgeons at a university hospital; sort of like Code Blue but minus the helicopters and Yamapi. And then there's Ohno and Mao-chan as private investigators, where Ohno does nothing but sit around eating red bean manju while Mao-chan runs about solving cases and punching people.
"I've identified one area that you shouldn't attempt to branch out into," Nino tells Sho, after he mysteriously materialises in Sho's apartment and has to endure ten minutes of Sho's slightly incoherent narration.
"And what is that?"
"Scriptwriting."
"You clearly have no imagination," Sho informs him. "And have I told you about the one in which Aiba can walk through walls-"
---
Arashi has a drinking party on Friday night to celebrate, as Aiba puts it, "Sho-chan's amazing drama and everyone else's hard work singing songs."
"Is he drunk already?" Jun asks, but Nino and Sho ignore him in favour of making plans to con Ohno into paying for their beers.
They end up making repeated toasts to Arashi and the management and to Mao-chan, and later, when all of them are extremely wasted and Nino and Ohno are attempting to comfort a weeping Aiba by pouring copious amounts of beer on his hand rather than into his cup, "the heart surgeon drama we will never star in" and "emperor penguins".
Sho remembers having a shouted conversation in the taxi with Jun about how it's so weird that they can get so drunk when it's just beer while the taxi driver mutters under his breath and keeps treading jerkily on the accelerator, and later Ohno patting him on the head and telling him to "take care of Kazu-chan".
He thinks he might also remember Nino poking him determinedly in the arm and mumbling, "Sho-chan is so lovely," but by that time his first priority is getting them into his apartment without breaking any limbs, so he thinks nothing of it.
Later, much later, after Sho makes it to bed (it takes a few attempts; at first he gets under the covers without taking off his shoes) and temporarily loses consciousness, he awakens to find a dark shadow crouching above him and making snuffling noises.
It takes him a moment to notice that the dark shadow is rather heavy. It takes him another moment to realise that said dark shadow is actually Nino with the hood of his pullover tugged far over his head, about to make (what Sho thinks might be) a sexual advance.
"What are you doing?" asks Sho, proud to note that he has the presence of mind even when drunk to inquire after the nature of Nino's intentions.
Nino looks up from where he is poised to press a kiss to the juncture of Sho's neck and shoulder. "Making overtures of friendship."
"Friendship?" Sho repeats.
"With benefits," says Nino, and bites him.
---
"This," says Sho the next morning, after they've loaded the washing machine and he's found a new set of clothes for Nino to wear temporarily, "is the sort of thing we will laugh about in five years' time."
"I was going to suggest forgetting about it entirely, actually," Nino replies from where he is curled up on Sho's couch, his pullover worn the wrong way round in an effort to shield his eyes from the sunlight.
"I am not about to forget having to clean vomit off my sheets at six-thirty in the morning," Sho tells him. "Just so you know."
---
When it comes to the issue of weird Nino moments, there is no better person to consult than Ohno Satoshi. Or so Sho thinks, until he actually talks to the man.
"What exactly do you mean by weird?" asks Ohno. "Because when you say weird I always think of... extra-terrestrials and things."
"Weird in the sense of inexplicable sexual tension?" Sho offers.
"Oh," says Ohno. "Care to elaborate?"
"Like when you're both drunk," Sho explains, wondering why on earth he's even bothered to ask Ohno, "and he crawls into your bed and bites you. Things like that."
"Okay," says Ohno.
"So?" Sho looks at him expectantly.
Ohno considers this for a moment. Finally, he shrugs. "Never happened to me before."
He tries Jun next, because Jun is supposed to be perceptive and good at giving advice.
"Wait," Jun interrupts for the fifth time during their conversation, "I still can't get over the fact that he bit you."
"So you've mentioned."
"Like a spider. He bit you like a spider."
"No, he bit me like a very wasted Nino," says Sho exasperatedly. "Now can we move on to other weird Nino moments you might have had?"
"I've had plenty of weird Nino moments," Jun replies. "It's a hazard of being friends with him."
"Right," says Sho, feeling slightly relieved. "So it's normal that he calls you at two in the morning to talk about the game he's just finished and to ask you about your day?"
"...that is rather weird."
Aiba volunteers his weird Nino moment without Sho asking for it, when they're having a water break during dance practice.
"There was one night he was bored and he came over to my place," Aiba says in hushed tones.
"And?" asks Sho, in a mix of curiosity and foreboding.
"And then," Aiba says, pausing dramatically, "we watched porn."
"Right," says Sho, turning away because he knows exactly where this is going.
"We were watching the good stuff, you know - the sort Ohno has," Aiba continues, ignoring Sho's reaction, "and it's really funny, because Nino fell asleep."
"How is that considered a weird Nino moment?" Sho demands.
Aiba looks at Sho quizzically. "Is that what we were talking about?"
---
The mandatory Arashi cameo happens during the ninth episode, the one in which Yamamoto Yukie has a fight with her husband and later discovers that he has been taken hostage by a group of Peruvian terrorists. Nino appears briefly as the convenience store cashier who sells Yamamoto Yukie her onigiri of loneliness when she is husbandless and therefore dinnerless.
Technically, their schedules don't coincide, but when Sho gets into the car at the end of the day he finds Nino already inside, fast asleep with Sho's extra-fluffy comfort blanket wrapped around his shoulders. When questioned, Sho's driver gives him an eloquent look of confusion.
"What are you doing?" asks Sho, shaking Nino gently.
"Sleeping in your car," Nino mumbles, irritable even in slumber. "Can't you see?"
Sho lets himself be driven home with Nino's head bobbing against his shoulder; stares out of the window and tries not to wonder if Nino's doing this on purpose.
When the car comes to a halt outside Sho's apartment block, Sho climbs out of the door and turns round to look at Nino. "I suppose you're coming up, then? To eat all my yoghurt and steal my Keio pullovers."
"Well," says Nino, thoroughly awake now, "since you've asked so nicely."
---
There is some kind of Godzilla rerun marathon happening on television so they watch that with the sound down while eating the warmed-up leftovers that Sho fastidiously packs over the week but never gets round to consuming.
Godzilla is emerging from Tokyo Bay when Nino gives a faint snore next to Sho, and a quick glance confirms that he's asleep again.
"What are you doing?" asks Sho, after a long moment in which he just watches the way Nino's mouth has fallen slightly open. He's not expecting a reply.
Nino stirs a bit. "Don't know."
"Right, well, tell me when you figure it out, then," Sho says, and gets up to clear their plates.
---
Sho's favourite scene in the entire drama is the last scene of the last episode, where Yamamoto Yukie stays home one morning and eats instant yakisoba with her husband instead of jetting off to Scandinavia like she's supposed to.
"I love that they specify that the yakisoba is instant - these are busy people, after all," he tells Mao-chan, when the cast and crew go out for a brief celebratory dinner.
"It must be nice, having someone with whom you can casually eat instant yakisoba," Mao-chan says, somewhat wistfully.
Someone else asks her teasingly if she has anybody in mind, sending the table into a flurry of discussion. Sho, in the meantime, checks his cellphone under the table.
If you're reading this message, Nino has texted, it means that you compulsively check your inbox.
You must be very bored, Sho taps back.
Quite the contrary, Nino replies, and remains silent for the rest of the night.
---
"I think," Jun announces one evening, "that the two of you have entered some sort of incredible stalemate."
Sho glances at him for further elaboration, but Jun merely sits back and looks satisfied.
"What are you talking about?" he asks eventually, like Jun obviously means him to.
"You and Nino," Jun tells him. "There he is, all subtle and retarded, trying not to let on that he wants to let on that he's-"
"Don't finish that sentence," says Sho warningly.
"Right."
"Thank you," says Sho.
"He's being Nino," Jun continues, after a moment. "And you're Sho, and the entire basis of your friendship is this maddening sort of stability in which you eat leftovers and watch television together."
"Wait - how did you know that?" Sho asks.
"I communicate," Jun tells him, voice prim. "And unless you pick up that useful skill at some point in the near future, I suspect that nothing short of a house fire or Aiba joining a nudist colony will help your situation."
"What situation?" Sho demands. "And that is a truly terrible thought."
---
What Sho means to say to Nino the next time he comes over is, "Matsujun said that we need to talk." He's already anticipated Nino's response (vague confusion; or maybe he'll even have seen it coming) and he knows that at some point he will end up asking, so do you or do you not, communication in its most direct form.
Except that he doesn't. The next time Nino comes over, they reheat a box of shellfish pasta from that restaurant in Yokohama that Mao-chan recommended and watch documentaries about migratory birds. Sho mentions nothing about Jun's roundabout advice.
His discomfort must be evident, however, because Nino looks up from spearing a mushroom to ask, "So what is it?"
"What?"
"You've been neurotic all evening," Nino tells him.
"Have I?" asks Sho.
"Yes," says Nino. "And if this is about Matsujun then yes, I am aware that there's something going on between us but I cannot, for the life of me, be bothered to talk about my feelings."
"Okay," Sho says.
"Great," Nino replies.
Sho opens his mouth to say something else, but Nino has already turned back to the programme, evidently considering the conversation closed.
Later, after they've finished their dinner and Sho's put away their plates, Nino shifts in his seat so he can rest his feet in Sho's lap. It make Sho smile a little bit.
---
They've just finished filming for the week's Shukudai-kun when Ohno taps Sho on the shoulder. "How did it go?"
"How did what go?" Sho asks.
"You and Nino," says Ohno, "communicating."
"What, so you and Matsujun have formed a General Council now?"
"Grand Council, actually," says Aiba, appearing at Sho's elbow. "And I'm Secretary."
---
"Our friends," says Sho, "are insane."
"Friends?" asks Nino in tones of incredulity. "What friends?"
---
The final episode of Yukie-chan airs the same night Sho returns from a brief News Zero-related sojourn in South Korea. The first call he gets upon landing is his mother, informing him that it made his father cry.
Good job, reads Jun's text message, brief and to the point in sharp contrast to Aiba's, which is filled with emoticons and random vowels of delight. (Ohno's text, Sho suspects, will come approximately two days later.)
When he returns to his apartment Nino is in his living room playing Super Mario.
"I can't help but notice that you seem to have moved in permanently," Sho says, by way of greeting.
"Oh, hello," Nino says. "I couldn't finish my dinner so you can have the rest of it."
"That's very kind of you," says Sho dryly. When he enters the kitchen and takes the aluminium foil off Nino's plate, however, his heart does a little leap despite himself.
"It's instant yakisoba," he murmurs, looking at the half-eaten noodles.
Outside, Nino levels up, his eyes fixed studiously on the television screen.
---
"What are you doing?" asks Nino much later, when Sho slides in next to him on the couch and makes several abortive attempts to casually put his arm around his shoulders.
"Making overtures of friendship," says Sho, well aware that his face is turning red.
"Well tough luck," Nino tells him, "you'll have to wait for me to finish this level."
"All right," says Sho.
"If it helps," Nino adds, furrowing his brow in concentration while he decimates an entire row of nokonokos, "I won't take very long."
When Sho opens his eyes again it is to the sound of his alarm clock ringing the next morning.
"You fell asleep," Nino says, and Sho jumps when he turns to see him standing next to the sofa, already changed and ready to leave the house.
"Would it be safe for me to assume that we'll be skipping the confessing and the awkwardness?" asks Sho, quite ready to use the fact that he's just awoken as an excuse. "Because it seems to me like I haven't asked a question and you've already said yes."
"Don't think you can get away with a line like that even if you've just woken up," Nino tells Sho warningly. But he doesn't say no.
"Okay," says Sho, scrambling off the sofa so he's standing in front of Nino. "So... could I-"
"I see we're not skipping the awkwardness," Nino begins, but Sho has already leaned in to press a kiss to Nino's chin, bumping his nose against Nino's face almost painfully.
"No," says Sho, embarrassed, "I guess not."
---
Sho is putting on his shoes one morning when Nino appears and puts his arms around him.
"Dearest," declaims Nino, "don't go."
"What on earth are you doing?"
"But your omurice is waiting on the table, beloved wife," Nino continues blithely, "complete with my ketchup heart-shape of devotion."
"Oh, do shut up."
Fandom: Arashi
Pairing: Sho/Nino
Rating: PG-13
Summary: In which Sho and Inoue Mao star in a drama together, and Nino is crafty.
Notes: Hugest thanks to forochel, amazing beta reader. Mao-chan's fictional dramas with Arashi came about during a conversation with darong. ♥ This won first place at the Shoneen Club March Contest and was originally posted here.
Sho walks into the green room one morning to find Nino standing with his arms around Ohno.
"Dearest," declaims Nino, "don't go."
"I must," Ohno sighs, twisting round in Nino's embrace. "Duty calls."
"But your omurice is waiting on the table, beloved wife," Nino continues, "complete with my ketchup heart-shape of devotion."
Sho has no patience for this; he is running on one hour of sleep and has just discovered that someone has eaten the last of his morning yoghurt.
"Right," he says, "I'll just come back when you two are done making fun of other people's dramas."
---
They refer to it as Yukie-chan because The Incredible Adventures of Super-Spy Yamamoto Yukie is a bit of a mouthful to say at press conferences and talk shows. Sho has only filmed two episodes and there is still a little time till it airs, but people are already asking him what it is like to play the long-suffering house husband to Inoue Mao's international super-spy.
"It's all rather interesting," Sho tells the first group of reporters, and goes on to talk about his views on whether gender roles in Japanese society have truly undergone a shift.
"You do realise," Nino tells him over the phone, "that the reason why Yamamoto Yukie's husband stays home and makes her miso soup is less a matter of gender issues and more because they wanted to put you in an apron, right?"
"You," says Sho, "are a very cynical young man."
"Glad you noticed."
---
He's on Waratte Iitomo when somebody brings it up again.
"Your latest role is rather unusual, isn't it?" asks Tamori, "As the heroine's husband."
"Well," says Sho, "I personally feel that the apron is rather fetching."
---
Mao-chan is as lovely as Jun had suggested she would be; cheery, slightly strange, and rather easy to tease. In between scenes, they sit around and play tic-tac-toe on napkins. Sho likes the way her nose scrunches up when she loses.
"I'm the third Arashi member you've worked with, aren't I?" Sho asks her over their lunch bentos one afternoon.
"That's right," says Mao-chan, while skillfully stealing a piece of karaage from Sho's box. (She only succeeds, Sho notes, because he lets her.) "Although Ninomiya-kun didn't really count. We only filmed for two days."
They spend the rest of the shoot thinking up crazy ideas for dramas Arashi and Mao-chan could star in. There's the one where all of them are heart surgeons at a university hospital; sort of like Code Blue but minus the helicopters and Yamapi. And then there's Ohno and Mao-chan as private investigators, where Ohno does nothing but sit around eating red bean manju while Mao-chan runs about solving cases and punching people.
"I've identified one area that you shouldn't attempt to branch out into," Nino tells Sho, after he mysteriously materialises in Sho's apartment and has to endure ten minutes of Sho's slightly incoherent narration.
"And what is that?"
"Scriptwriting."
"You clearly have no imagination," Sho informs him. "And have I told you about the one in which Aiba can walk through walls-"
---
Arashi has a drinking party on Friday night to celebrate, as Aiba puts it, "Sho-chan's amazing drama and everyone else's hard work singing songs."
"Is he drunk already?" Jun asks, but Nino and Sho ignore him in favour of making plans to con Ohno into paying for their beers.
They end up making repeated toasts to Arashi and the management and to Mao-chan, and later, when all of them are extremely wasted and Nino and Ohno are attempting to comfort a weeping Aiba by pouring copious amounts of beer on his hand rather than into his cup, "the heart surgeon drama we will never star in" and "emperor penguins".
Sho remembers having a shouted conversation in the taxi with Jun about how it's so weird that they can get so drunk when it's just beer while the taxi driver mutters under his breath and keeps treading jerkily on the accelerator, and later Ohno patting him on the head and telling him to "take care of Kazu-chan".
He thinks he might also remember Nino poking him determinedly in the arm and mumbling, "Sho-chan is so lovely," but by that time his first priority is getting them into his apartment without breaking any limbs, so he thinks nothing of it.
Later, much later, after Sho makes it to bed (it takes a few attempts; at first he gets under the covers without taking off his shoes) and temporarily loses consciousness, he awakens to find a dark shadow crouching above him and making snuffling noises.
It takes him a moment to notice that the dark shadow is rather heavy. It takes him another moment to realise that said dark shadow is actually Nino with the hood of his pullover tugged far over his head, about to make (what Sho thinks might be) a sexual advance.
"What are you doing?" asks Sho, proud to note that he has the presence of mind even when drunk to inquire after the nature of Nino's intentions.
Nino looks up from where he is poised to press a kiss to the juncture of Sho's neck and shoulder. "Making overtures of friendship."
"Friendship?" Sho repeats.
"With benefits," says Nino, and bites him.
---
"This," says Sho the next morning, after they've loaded the washing machine and he's found a new set of clothes for Nino to wear temporarily, "is the sort of thing we will laugh about in five years' time."
"I was going to suggest forgetting about it entirely, actually," Nino replies from where he is curled up on Sho's couch, his pullover worn the wrong way round in an effort to shield his eyes from the sunlight.
"I am not about to forget having to clean vomit off my sheets at six-thirty in the morning," Sho tells him. "Just so you know."
---
When it comes to the issue of weird Nino moments, there is no better person to consult than Ohno Satoshi. Or so Sho thinks, until he actually talks to the man.
"What exactly do you mean by weird?" asks Ohno. "Because when you say weird I always think of... extra-terrestrials and things."
"Weird in the sense of inexplicable sexual tension?" Sho offers.
"Oh," says Ohno. "Care to elaborate?"
"Like when you're both drunk," Sho explains, wondering why on earth he's even bothered to ask Ohno, "and he crawls into your bed and bites you. Things like that."
"Okay," says Ohno.
"So?" Sho looks at him expectantly.
Ohno considers this for a moment. Finally, he shrugs. "Never happened to me before."
He tries Jun next, because Jun is supposed to be perceptive and good at giving advice.
"Wait," Jun interrupts for the fifth time during their conversation, "I still can't get over the fact that he bit you."
"So you've mentioned."
"Like a spider. He bit you like a spider."
"No, he bit me like a very wasted Nino," says Sho exasperatedly. "Now can we move on to other weird Nino moments you might have had?"
"I've had plenty of weird Nino moments," Jun replies. "It's a hazard of being friends with him."
"Right," says Sho, feeling slightly relieved. "So it's normal that he calls you at two in the morning to talk about the game he's just finished and to ask you about your day?"
"...that is rather weird."
Aiba volunteers his weird Nino moment without Sho asking for it, when they're having a water break during dance practice.
"There was one night he was bored and he came over to my place," Aiba says in hushed tones.
"And?" asks Sho, in a mix of curiosity and foreboding.
"And then," Aiba says, pausing dramatically, "we watched porn."
"Right," says Sho, turning away because he knows exactly where this is going.
"We were watching the good stuff, you know - the sort Ohno has," Aiba continues, ignoring Sho's reaction, "and it's really funny, because Nino fell asleep."
"How is that considered a weird Nino moment?" Sho demands.
Aiba looks at Sho quizzically. "Is that what we were talking about?"
---
The mandatory Arashi cameo happens during the ninth episode, the one in which Yamamoto Yukie has a fight with her husband and later discovers that he has been taken hostage by a group of Peruvian terrorists. Nino appears briefly as the convenience store cashier who sells Yamamoto Yukie her onigiri of loneliness when she is husbandless and therefore dinnerless.
Technically, their schedules don't coincide, but when Sho gets into the car at the end of the day he finds Nino already inside, fast asleep with Sho's extra-fluffy comfort blanket wrapped around his shoulders. When questioned, Sho's driver gives him an eloquent look of confusion.
"What are you doing?" asks Sho, shaking Nino gently.
"Sleeping in your car," Nino mumbles, irritable even in slumber. "Can't you see?"
Sho lets himself be driven home with Nino's head bobbing against his shoulder; stares out of the window and tries not to wonder if Nino's doing this on purpose.
When the car comes to a halt outside Sho's apartment block, Sho climbs out of the door and turns round to look at Nino. "I suppose you're coming up, then? To eat all my yoghurt and steal my Keio pullovers."
"Well," says Nino, thoroughly awake now, "since you've asked so nicely."
---
There is some kind of Godzilla rerun marathon happening on television so they watch that with the sound down while eating the warmed-up leftovers that Sho fastidiously packs over the week but never gets round to consuming.
Godzilla is emerging from Tokyo Bay when Nino gives a faint snore next to Sho, and a quick glance confirms that he's asleep again.
"What are you doing?" asks Sho, after a long moment in which he just watches the way Nino's mouth has fallen slightly open. He's not expecting a reply.
Nino stirs a bit. "Don't know."
"Right, well, tell me when you figure it out, then," Sho says, and gets up to clear their plates.
---
Sho's favourite scene in the entire drama is the last scene of the last episode, where Yamamoto Yukie stays home one morning and eats instant yakisoba with her husband instead of jetting off to Scandinavia like she's supposed to.
"I love that they specify that the yakisoba is instant - these are busy people, after all," he tells Mao-chan, when the cast and crew go out for a brief celebratory dinner.
"It must be nice, having someone with whom you can casually eat instant yakisoba," Mao-chan says, somewhat wistfully.
Someone else asks her teasingly if she has anybody in mind, sending the table into a flurry of discussion. Sho, in the meantime, checks his cellphone under the table.
If you're reading this message, Nino has texted, it means that you compulsively check your inbox.
You must be very bored, Sho taps back.
Quite the contrary, Nino replies, and remains silent for the rest of the night.
---
"I think," Jun announces one evening, "that the two of you have entered some sort of incredible stalemate."
Sho glances at him for further elaboration, but Jun merely sits back and looks satisfied.
"What are you talking about?" he asks eventually, like Jun obviously means him to.
"You and Nino," Jun tells him. "There he is, all subtle and retarded, trying not to let on that he wants to let on that he's-"
"Don't finish that sentence," says Sho warningly.
"Right."
"Thank you," says Sho.
"He's being Nino," Jun continues, after a moment. "And you're Sho, and the entire basis of your friendship is this maddening sort of stability in which you eat leftovers and watch television together."
"Wait - how did you know that?" Sho asks.
"I communicate," Jun tells him, voice prim. "And unless you pick up that useful skill at some point in the near future, I suspect that nothing short of a house fire or Aiba joining a nudist colony will help your situation."
"What situation?" Sho demands. "And that is a truly terrible thought."
---
What Sho means to say to Nino the next time he comes over is, "Matsujun said that we need to talk." He's already anticipated Nino's response (vague confusion; or maybe he'll even have seen it coming) and he knows that at some point he will end up asking, so do you or do you not, communication in its most direct form.
Except that he doesn't. The next time Nino comes over, they reheat a box of shellfish pasta from that restaurant in Yokohama that Mao-chan recommended and watch documentaries about migratory birds. Sho mentions nothing about Jun's roundabout advice.
His discomfort must be evident, however, because Nino looks up from spearing a mushroom to ask, "So what is it?"
"What?"
"You've been neurotic all evening," Nino tells him.
"Have I?" asks Sho.
"Yes," says Nino. "And if this is about Matsujun then yes, I am aware that there's something going on between us but I cannot, for the life of me, be bothered to talk about my feelings."
"Okay," Sho says.
"Great," Nino replies.
Sho opens his mouth to say something else, but Nino has already turned back to the programme, evidently considering the conversation closed.
Later, after they've finished their dinner and Sho's put away their plates, Nino shifts in his seat so he can rest his feet in Sho's lap. It make Sho smile a little bit.
---
They've just finished filming for the week's Shukudai-kun when Ohno taps Sho on the shoulder. "How did it go?"
"How did what go?" Sho asks.
"You and Nino," says Ohno, "communicating."
"What, so you and Matsujun have formed a General Council now?"
"Grand Council, actually," says Aiba, appearing at Sho's elbow. "And I'm Secretary."
---
"Our friends," says Sho, "are insane."
"Friends?" asks Nino in tones of incredulity. "What friends?"
---
The final episode of Yukie-chan airs the same night Sho returns from a brief News Zero-related sojourn in South Korea. The first call he gets upon landing is his mother, informing him that it made his father cry.
Good job, reads Jun's text message, brief and to the point in sharp contrast to Aiba's, which is filled with emoticons and random vowels of delight. (Ohno's text, Sho suspects, will come approximately two days later.)
When he returns to his apartment Nino is in his living room playing Super Mario.
"I can't help but notice that you seem to have moved in permanently," Sho says, by way of greeting.
"Oh, hello," Nino says. "I couldn't finish my dinner so you can have the rest of it."
"That's very kind of you," says Sho dryly. When he enters the kitchen and takes the aluminium foil off Nino's plate, however, his heart does a little leap despite himself.
"It's instant yakisoba," he murmurs, looking at the half-eaten noodles.
Outside, Nino levels up, his eyes fixed studiously on the television screen.
---
"What are you doing?" asks Nino much later, when Sho slides in next to him on the couch and makes several abortive attempts to casually put his arm around his shoulders.
"Making overtures of friendship," says Sho, well aware that his face is turning red.
"Well tough luck," Nino tells him, "you'll have to wait for me to finish this level."
"All right," says Sho.
"If it helps," Nino adds, furrowing his brow in concentration while he decimates an entire row of nokonokos, "I won't take very long."
When Sho opens his eyes again it is to the sound of his alarm clock ringing the next morning.
"You fell asleep," Nino says, and Sho jumps when he turns to see him standing next to the sofa, already changed and ready to leave the house.
"Would it be safe for me to assume that we'll be skipping the confessing and the awkwardness?" asks Sho, quite ready to use the fact that he's just awoken as an excuse. "Because it seems to me like I haven't asked a question and you've already said yes."
"Don't think you can get away with a line like that even if you've just woken up," Nino tells Sho warningly. But he doesn't say no.
"Okay," says Sho, scrambling off the sofa so he's standing in front of Nino. "So... could I-"
"I see we're not skipping the awkwardness," Nino begins, but Sho has already leaned in to press a kiss to Nino's chin, bumping his nose against Nino's face almost painfully.
"No," says Sho, embarrassed, "I guess not."
---
Sho is putting on his shoes one morning when Nino appears and puts his arms around him.
"Dearest," declaims Nino, "don't go."
"What on earth are you doing?"
"But your omurice is waiting on the table, beloved wife," Nino continues blithely, "complete with my ketchup heart-shape of devotion."
"Oh, do shut up."