(no subject)
Title: Harmony of December
Pairing: sho/Nino
Rating: light R
Summary: They run into each other on a rainy day, only it’s not so much of a coincidence as it seems AU
A/n: Title shamelessly stolen from Kinki song because the song itself is inspiration, and well♥ Also, note, if you will, the use of quotation marks. FIRST EVER, YO. Also, this is for turtle_ai , who I hate with a passion. And this means she has to write me fic 8D
-
‘I’m sorry’
The words hang in the air between them, floating about and coating the room with cold, cold chills that make them want to scream, or cry, or laugh, perhaps. Anything to take away the sinking lump that grabs onto their hearts and refuses to let go.
-
They run into each other on a rainy day. Sho’s coffee ends up on Nino’s shirt, and Nino’s yoghurt ends up on Sho’s pants. Somehow, when Nino looks up, he sees someone he’s sure he’s known before. Maybe it’s the eyes, warm and slightly panicked, or the smooth, clear voice that comes out rather high pitched.
‘I’m sorry, he says, I didn’t see you’. And it’s true, although Nino thinks that it’s a good thing they’d bumped, because he wouldn’t be standing with the stranger under his umbrella otherwise. And that would be a pity.
The stranger shakes his head, ‘I wasn’t looking either’, he says. A pause. ‘I don’t suppose you have a spare umbrella, do you?’
Nino grabs onto the chance, because one doesn’t meet someone special every day.’ I don’t have one right now, he says, but my house is just there, I could get you one’. The stranger smiles and Nino sees crinkled eyes and a row of bright, white teeth. ‘Thank you, I’ll accept’, the stranger says, ‘the rain’s getting heavier.’
-
‘Why?’
The answer lodges itself in his throat, trying to claw its way out in the form of a lie. It should be easy, but it isn’t, and he doesn’t understand it.
-
Sho sits in Ninomiya’s living room, perched on the couch gingerly because he doesn’t want to wet the cushions. It’s a rough place, basic furniture, and clean, sharp colours in black and white. Atop the grand piano sits a pile of sheet music and five photo frames; one for each year that Nino’s won the musician of the year.
‘I write music’, says Nino, handing Sho a mug of tea.
‘I know’, says Sho, without thinking. ‘Because of that’, he adds, pointing at the piano, when Nino looks at him questioningly.
Sho watches Nino’s face soften a little as he follows Sho’s finger to his piano. Sho recognises love, a true, true love for what he’s doing, and wishes he could find something to love like that too. Nino looks at him. ‘I’ll get the umbrella for you’, he says.
The ‘wait’ is on the tip of Sho’s tongue, but it doesn’t fall out as Nino rummages in his cupboard. Sho shuts his eyes and drinks his tea slowly, enjoying the slow burn that spreads across his tongue. When he sets the mug down, Nino is sitting on the chair across from him, holding an umbrella. Nino is looking at Sho, as though he wants Sho to say something. Sho recognises the loneliness that lingers in Nino’s eyes, but there is something else there, something that Sho can’t quite understand. He knows that it’s time to leave; he’s gotten what he came for anyway.
-
‘Leave’
And he should, because he has no right to do anything else but obey. His feet weigh him down, he want to sit, sleep, dream away everything and wake up in a place where all the wrongs are right.
-
The stranger, Sakurai, leaves. Nino watches him hurry down the streets with Nino’s obnoxious yellow umbrella with a sour taste of regret on his tongue. He supposes that he shouldn’t have expected anything else but that; not everyone can sense it when someone is attracted to them, but he’s disappointed, because there is something about Sho that draws Nino to him.
Nino sits at his piano and plays his thought away; keeping stuff inside isn’t good after all. He keeps one song for Sakurai Sho, the special men he ran into on the streets. Then, he remembers that he has a deadline to work with, and Sho flies out of the (working) part of his brain.
-
‘No’
It’s laced with determination, ungrounded, but unmoving. He won’t leave, he decides, because he has so much he wants to say. Eyes, confused and angry stare at him, and he shuts his eyes to block them out. But even then, he can feel the gaze, brushing against his eyelids, fighting to get in and understand all his secrets.
-
Sho rings the doorbell to Nino’s house exactly one week and three days after their first encounter. He enjoys seeing the surprise on Nino’s face; pleasant surprise which just confirms what he’s expected. ‘Your umbrella’, Sho says, and holds it out. Nino smiles.
When their fingers brush as he hands the umbrella over, Sho has to bite his lip at the tingles that spread across his fingertips and dance along his arms, right till they reach his heart. He only half listens as Nino tells him about his latest work, about how he thinks it’s the best yet. He should be listening, but he watches the movement of Nino’s collarbones instead, peeking out from a huge shirt covered with pencil marks.
But he came with a purpose in mind, a definite one that he knows he has to act out with no hesitation at all. When Nino bends down to set Sho’s mug on the coffee table, Sho reaches out and pulls Nino in and kisses him.
-
‘Why’
There’s that question again, only he’s the one asking instead. He isn’t quite sure what he wants to know; only that there are things that he can’t figure out, and it’s killing him on the inside.
-
They don’t make it off the couch. Sho’s hands are warm and gentle; a little like his mother’s, only wandering towards places in ways that are completely different at the same time. Nino relaxes into Sho; perhaps he won’t be so lonely after this.
When Nino kisses Sho, he can feel Sho smile into the kiss, a nibble here and there, and a nose brushing across a cheek. Nino’s fingers stroke Sho’s back, almost trusting and full of want before they press down hard, nails digging into bare skin as Sho mouths his way down Nino’s chest.
It’s absolutely wonderful; Nino hasn’t been with anyone for months now; not since Jun claimed Ohno for himself, and his girlfriend told him he was a jerk and left for good. Sho feels like fresh release; he feels special. Nino’s pretty sure that Sho feels it too.
As he comes with a breathy sigh, contented and sleepy, he feels Sho whisper a quick ‘go to sleep’ in his ear, soft hands tucking a blanket over him and warm heat settling in beside him before he shuts his eyes and lets sleep take him.
-
‘ask yourself’
He shakes his head, because he can’t; he’s tried. But all the reasons he’s so good at producing don’t seem to be moving anywhere. They’re all stuck somewhere, leaving him bare and exposed, trembling because there is no excuse for hurting someone special to you.
-
Sho looks up at Nino’s kitchen window from the streets. The lights are still turned on from when he’d gotten hot water for the hot water bottle he’d tucked in with Nino. The bag in his hand is heavy; his arm feels dead; as though he’s holding a ton of bricks. And he may as well be. It’s raining, in his other hand is one bright yellow umbrella. He wonders if Nino will find his note.
Sho walks down the street away from Nino’s house knowing that he will regret doing this. He can see Nino’s face, hurt and torn between anger and tears. The knowledge that it’s him tears at his heart, even though it’s not the first time, but Sho keeps on walking. Sheets of rain fall onto the umbrella and drip down onto the pavement. Sho’s fingers tighten on the handles, of both his bag and the umbrella. He’ll regret, and it’s not too late to turn back, but he won’t; he’s known that he won’t since the start; he’s a coward after all.
-
Nino wakes up the next day alone. A cold bottle of water is sticking into his back, and the yellow umbrella he’s put on the coffee table is gone. The room is empty, noiseless and Nino feels loneliness flood back in all over again. He shivers; even the blanket seems to have frozen over. His toes feel like ice as he sits up and walks over to his piano; his baby, the one that lets him forget.
The sting hurts more this time, he’d really felt a connection, a mutual one. Nino rests his hands on the cold black of his piano and rests his forehead on the keys, letting the noises fill his head. Then he looks up, panic filling him as he stares at where his hand is lying, right next to his five certificates. And next to his pinky sits a post it, yellow like the colour of happiness and umbrellas. The words blur, but Nino reads it as what it is, ‘I’m sorry’. Nino shuts his eyes; the world won’t stop spinning as the things he thought to be right turn out to be very, very wrong.
-
Sho finds himself lingering at CD shops a little too long, staring at the song that is his. (He knows, because the music sheet had his name and a little heart). It’s selling very well, he’s been paid accordingly and he knows it would be best for everyone if he just forgot. But he can’t; every dream, every lie he tells, he realises that he doesn’t want it anymore. He’s never hated himself so much, and he doesn’t know what to do.
-
‘I told you not to leave them lying around for the whole world to see’. Nino can only find it in himself to nod dully. Jun sighs. ‘That man was - is- a cheat, Nino, he’s done it before, he’ll do it again and he was never what you thought he was, he was paid to do it, remember?, so will you please stop moping?’
Nino shakes his head. It’s not about the music; the stolen music that was published last week under another name. Jun kicks Nino, gently though. ‘You have to do something about this. Or you’ll rot away’. Nino nods again, although as he stares at his piano, he feels like that wouldn’t be too bad at all.
-
Sho shouldn’t have stopped to listen to the song again at the store; especially since he has a job getting the sheets from that young violinist. But he does though, because Nino is still special. He’s almost finished, almost; just a minute earlier and it would have been different. Sho opens his eyes and replaces the headphones and looks up to find Nino standing in front of him.
-
Nino is at the CD store, moping about after Jun kicks him out of his own house when he sees Sho. Sho doesn’t see him because his eyes are closed. It’s raining again; Nino looks down and sees a flash of yellow in Sho’s hands and black bag, just like the one he brought to Nino’s house.
It hurts. Until now, it’s just been dull, shocked ache that throbbed about his heart. Now, it’s there; fresh and smarting, a fresh reminder of cruel trickery.
Sho opens his eyes and puts the headphones back on the hook. He looks up. Nino can’t bring himself to walk away. (It would be for the better if he did, because he doesn’t know how he feels anymore)
Sho’s mouth opens and shuts several times, as though he has so much to say that can’t be said. Request to make that are too selfish to even think about making, excuses that they both know will fall flat.
‘I’m sorry’
-
There is no excuse for hurting someone special to you. Sometimes though, if you’re special enough to the special someone you’ve hurt, things might turn out different.
-
Nino’s nails dig into his hands, shoved tightly into his pockets. He’s never been smart with relationships. Never will be, he supposes.
‘You have to return my umbrella’, he says at last, ‘It was a gift from someone special’
And then, he leaves, heart a little lighter. The pain is still there, but with it a little sprig of hope and new beginnings.
-
Sho stands in the shop for a while, hand clenching tight on the yellow umbrella. In his head, the sound of a piano floats through his mind. On his way out, he throws the bag into a bin. Raindrops trickles down his face as he opens his umbrella, washing away all the lies and the masks he’s put up (for reasons so complicated, so deeply rooted that he’s told no one, ever) and sweeping in the clean coolness of a whole new start.
Fin
-
ahhhhhhhh.
Done~ THIS WAS BUGGING ME ALL DAY BECAUSE I HAD NO PLOT FOR IT.
now I can try working on my other stuff.
The song in question is this one. I LOVE IT. also, this version is the best because of the fanservice 8D
Pairing: sho/Nino
Rating: light R
Summary: They run into each other on a rainy day, only it’s not so much of a coincidence as it seems AU
A/n: Title shamelessly stolen from Kinki song because the song itself is inspiration, and well♥ Also, note, if you will, the use of quotation marks. FIRST EVER, YO. Also, this is for turtle_ai , who I hate with a passion. And this means she has to write me fic 8D
-
‘I’m sorry’
The words hang in the air between them, floating about and coating the room with cold, cold chills that make them want to scream, or cry, or laugh, perhaps. Anything to take away the sinking lump that grabs onto their hearts and refuses to let go.
-
They run into each other on a rainy day. Sho’s coffee ends up on Nino’s shirt, and Nino’s yoghurt ends up on Sho’s pants. Somehow, when Nino looks up, he sees someone he’s sure he’s known before. Maybe it’s the eyes, warm and slightly panicked, or the smooth, clear voice that comes out rather high pitched.
‘I’m sorry, he says, I didn’t see you’. And it’s true, although Nino thinks that it’s a good thing they’d bumped, because he wouldn’t be standing with the stranger under his umbrella otherwise. And that would be a pity.
The stranger shakes his head, ‘I wasn’t looking either’, he says. A pause. ‘I don’t suppose you have a spare umbrella, do you?’
Nino grabs onto the chance, because one doesn’t meet someone special every day.’ I don’t have one right now, he says, but my house is just there, I could get you one’. The stranger smiles and Nino sees crinkled eyes and a row of bright, white teeth. ‘Thank you, I’ll accept’, the stranger says, ‘the rain’s getting heavier.’
-
‘Why?’
The answer lodges itself in his throat, trying to claw its way out in the form of a lie. It should be easy, but it isn’t, and he doesn’t understand it.
-
Sho sits in Ninomiya’s living room, perched on the couch gingerly because he doesn’t want to wet the cushions. It’s a rough place, basic furniture, and clean, sharp colours in black and white. Atop the grand piano sits a pile of sheet music and five photo frames; one for each year that Nino’s won the musician of the year.
‘I write music’, says Nino, handing Sho a mug of tea.
‘I know’, says Sho, without thinking. ‘Because of that’, he adds, pointing at the piano, when Nino looks at him questioningly.
Sho watches Nino’s face soften a little as he follows Sho’s finger to his piano. Sho recognises love, a true, true love for what he’s doing, and wishes he could find something to love like that too. Nino looks at him. ‘I’ll get the umbrella for you’, he says.
The ‘wait’ is on the tip of Sho’s tongue, but it doesn’t fall out as Nino rummages in his cupboard. Sho shuts his eyes and drinks his tea slowly, enjoying the slow burn that spreads across his tongue. When he sets the mug down, Nino is sitting on the chair across from him, holding an umbrella. Nino is looking at Sho, as though he wants Sho to say something. Sho recognises the loneliness that lingers in Nino’s eyes, but there is something else there, something that Sho can’t quite understand. He knows that it’s time to leave; he’s gotten what he came for anyway.
-
‘Leave’
And he should, because he has no right to do anything else but obey. His feet weigh him down, he want to sit, sleep, dream away everything and wake up in a place where all the wrongs are right.
-
The stranger, Sakurai, leaves. Nino watches him hurry down the streets with Nino’s obnoxious yellow umbrella with a sour taste of regret on his tongue. He supposes that he shouldn’t have expected anything else but that; not everyone can sense it when someone is attracted to them, but he’s disappointed, because there is something about Sho that draws Nino to him.
Nino sits at his piano and plays his thought away; keeping stuff inside isn’t good after all. He keeps one song for Sakurai Sho, the special men he ran into on the streets. Then, he remembers that he has a deadline to work with, and Sho flies out of the (working) part of his brain.
-
‘No’
It’s laced with determination, ungrounded, but unmoving. He won’t leave, he decides, because he has so much he wants to say. Eyes, confused and angry stare at him, and he shuts his eyes to block them out. But even then, he can feel the gaze, brushing against his eyelids, fighting to get in and understand all his secrets.
-
Sho rings the doorbell to Nino’s house exactly one week and three days after their first encounter. He enjoys seeing the surprise on Nino’s face; pleasant surprise which just confirms what he’s expected. ‘Your umbrella’, Sho says, and holds it out. Nino smiles.
When their fingers brush as he hands the umbrella over, Sho has to bite his lip at the tingles that spread across his fingertips and dance along his arms, right till they reach his heart. He only half listens as Nino tells him about his latest work, about how he thinks it’s the best yet. He should be listening, but he watches the movement of Nino’s collarbones instead, peeking out from a huge shirt covered with pencil marks.
But he came with a purpose in mind, a definite one that he knows he has to act out with no hesitation at all. When Nino bends down to set Sho’s mug on the coffee table, Sho reaches out and pulls Nino in and kisses him.
-
‘Why’
There’s that question again, only he’s the one asking instead. He isn’t quite sure what he wants to know; only that there are things that he can’t figure out, and it’s killing him on the inside.
-
They don’t make it off the couch. Sho’s hands are warm and gentle; a little like his mother’s, only wandering towards places in ways that are completely different at the same time. Nino relaxes into Sho; perhaps he won’t be so lonely after this.
When Nino kisses Sho, he can feel Sho smile into the kiss, a nibble here and there, and a nose brushing across a cheek. Nino’s fingers stroke Sho’s back, almost trusting and full of want before they press down hard, nails digging into bare skin as Sho mouths his way down Nino’s chest.
It’s absolutely wonderful; Nino hasn’t been with anyone for months now; not since Jun claimed Ohno for himself, and his girlfriend told him he was a jerk and left for good. Sho feels like fresh release; he feels special. Nino’s pretty sure that Sho feels it too.
As he comes with a breathy sigh, contented and sleepy, he feels Sho whisper a quick ‘go to sleep’ in his ear, soft hands tucking a blanket over him and warm heat settling in beside him before he shuts his eyes and lets sleep take him.
-
‘ask yourself’
He shakes his head, because he can’t; he’s tried. But all the reasons he’s so good at producing don’t seem to be moving anywhere. They’re all stuck somewhere, leaving him bare and exposed, trembling because there is no excuse for hurting someone special to you.
-
Sho looks up at Nino’s kitchen window from the streets. The lights are still turned on from when he’d gotten hot water for the hot water bottle he’d tucked in with Nino. The bag in his hand is heavy; his arm feels dead; as though he’s holding a ton of bricks. And he may as well be. It’s raining, in his other hand is one bright yellow umbrella. He wonders if Nino will find his note.
Sho walks down the street away from Nino’s house knowing that he will regret doing this. He can see Nino’s face, hurt and torn between anger and tears. The knowledge that it’s him tears at his heart, even though it’s not the first time, but Sho keeps on walking. Sheets of rain fall onto the umbrella and drip down onto the pavement. Sho’s fingers tighten on the handles, of both his bag and the umbrella. He’ll regret, and it’s not too late to turn back, but he won’t; he’s known that he won’t since the start; he’s a coward after all.
-
Nino wakes up the next day alone. A cold bottle of water is sticking into his back, and the yellow umbrella he’s put on the coffee table is gone. The room is empty, noiseless and Nino feels loneliness flood back in all over again. He shivers; even the blanket seems to have frozen over. His toes feel like ice as he sits up and walks over to his piano; his baby, the one that lets him forget.
The sting hurts more this time, he’d really felt a connection, a mutual one. Nino rests his hands on the cold black of his piano and rests his forehead on the keys, letting the noises fill his head. Then he looks up, panic filling him as he stares at where his hand is lying, right next to his five certificates. And next to his pinky sits a post it, yellow like the colour of happiness and umbrellas. The words blur, but Nino reads it as what it is, ‘I’m sorry’. Nino shuts his eyes; the world won’t stop spinning as the things he thought to be right turn out to be very, very wrong.
-
Sho finds himself lingering at CD shops a little too long, staring at the song that is his. (He knows, because the music sheet had his name and a little heart). It’s selling very well, he’s been paid accordingly and he knows it would be best for everyone if he just forgot. But he can’t; every dream, every lie he tells, he realises that he doesn’t want it anymore. He’s never hated himself so much, and he doesn’t know what to do.
-
‘I told you not to leave them lying around for the whole world to see’. Nino can only find it in himself to nod dully. Jun sighs. ‘That man was - is- a cheat, Nino, he’s done it before, he’ll do it again and he was never what you thought he was, he was paid to do it, remember?, so will you please stop moping?’
Nino shakes his head. It’s not about the music; the stolen music that was published last week under another name. Jun kicks Nino, gently though. ‘You have to do something about this. Or you’ll rot away’. Nino nods again, although as he stares at his piano, he feels like that wouldn’t be too bad at all.
-
Sho shouldn’t have stopped to listen to the song again at the store; especially since he has a job getting the sheets from that young violinist. But he does though, because Nino is still special. He’s almost finished, almost; just a minute earlier and it would have been different. Sho opens his eyes and replaces the headphones and looks up to find Nino standing in front of him.
-
Nino is at the CD store, moping about after Jun kicks him out of his own house when he sees Sho. Sho doesn’t see him because his eyes are closed. It’s raining again; Nino looks down and sees a flash of yellow in Sho’s hands and black bag, just like the one he brought to Nino’s house.
It hurts. Until now, it’s just been dull, shocked ache that throbbed about his heart. Now, it’s there; fresh and smarting, a fresh reminder of cruel trickery.
Sho opens his eyes and puts the headphones back on the hook. He looks up. Nino can’t bring himself to walk away. (It would be for the better if he did, because he doesn’t know how he feels anymore)
Sho’s mouth opens and shuts several times, as though he has so much to say that can’t be said. Request to make that are too selfish to even think about making, excuses that they both know will fall flat.
‘I’m sorry’
-
There is no excuse for hurting someone special to you. Sometimes though, if you’re special enough to the special someone you’ve hurt, things might turn out different.
-
Nino’s nails dig into his hands, shoved tightly into his pockets. He’s never been smart with relationships. Never will be, he supposes.
‘You have to return my umbrella’, he says at last, ‘It was a gift from someone special’
And then, he leaves, heart a little lighter. The pain is still there, but with it a little sprig of hope and new beginnings.
-
Sho stands in the shop for a while, hand clenching tight on the yellow umbrella. In his head, the sound of a piano floats through his mind. On his way out, he throws the bag into a bin. Raindrops trickles down his face as he opens his umbrella, washing away all the lies and the masks he’s put up (for reasons so complicated, so deeply rooted that he’s told no one, ever) and sweeping in the clean coolness of a whole new start.
Fin
-
ahhhhhhhh.
Done~ THIS WAS BUGGING ME ALL DAY BECAUSE I HAD NO PLOT FOR IT.
now I can try working on my other stuff.
The song in question is this one. I LOVE IT. also, this version is the best because of the fanservice 8D