Two Cups Of Coffee (and one broken mug) (oneshot, Ohkura/Nishikido)
Note: With a special dedication for my addiction to coffee. :D
Ohkura has never been and will never be a morning person. Every time he cracks his eyes open, slowly letting his mind working again, he sets in this kind of mood, when it’s quite dangerous for anyone to come near him.
No, it’s not that he has any problems with waking and getting up from bed. It’s more that his body seems to be not capable of catching up with his mind, making for him impossible to go through the morning without his usual fail, even when it comes to the most archaic things. He tends to trip on the thin air, the strip of toothpaste keeps falling from his brush before he manages to stick it into his mouth (it’s a repeated action for at least two times) and his toasts he enjoys to eat for breakfast usually comes out completely burnt.
The only thing that can somewhat brighten up his mood - and that doesn’t turn out to be an utter and complete fail - is coffee. Black or with milk, roasted or instant, steaming hot or a bit cooled, with sugar or unsweetened, it all doesn’t matter, as long as it’s strong and the unique taste of bitterness reserved for this type of liquid is detectable on his tongue and palate.
That’s why, no matter how bad and weird his morning is, and how hard all these daily routines are for him, Ohkura always does everything as fast as possible, just to make sure he’ll have enough of time for his small ritual of preparing and tasting coffee. Sometimes he thinks it must be pretty weird, feeling so attached to something so trivial, but he doesn’t really care as long as he’s free to do what he wants. Some people are addicted to cigarettes, some takes drugs, others are nymphomaniacs - and he just needs his coffee. It’s probably the best of the worst options when it comes to addictions, anyway.
His so-called ritual has three stages and Ohkura feels complete only when he manages to fully perform all of them. First comes preparation. His movements around the kitchen are careful and measured, everything from choosing container with selected coffee, through putting the kettle on, to taking one cup (or mug, it depends on Ohkura’s mood) from shelf. It doesn’t take more than three minutes, his actions already well-trained after all those years he has been living alone.
Second is the actual making of coffee. Normal people, who drinks coffee in the mornings just to apply themselves the regular dose of caffeine, would probably think that he’s crazy, with all the trouble he comes through to make his treat. But it’s nothing like that for Ohkura, because he simply enjoys it. Checking the right temperature of boiled water with his fancy (and incredibly expensive) cooking-thermometer, milling coffee beans, measuring out the powder and warming up milk - it’s all fun for him, comparable to how he treats drumming.
The last step is consumption. It’s the moment of relaxation and self-satisfaction (and sometimes praising own skills too, Ohkura must admit), sipping slowly at the well-prepared liquid while sitting in his favourite armchair that stands right next to his big windows allowing him to observe the weather outside. Sometimes, when it rains and the clouds are dark and heavy, Ohkura’s mood sets for the rather calm and melancholic, while in the sunny, cloudless days, it gives him a boost of positive energy - but no matter how the weather is, the whole morning process of preparing, making and drinking coffee makes him ready for the next few, busy, idol-hours that wait for him behind the closed door of his apartment.
However, life’s never been easy on him, so his time reserved for relaxing and getting ready for the day isn’t always so perfect and simple. Moreover, it must be his tough luck, because the biggest obstacles tend to show just when his morning-mood reaches it’s worst - and today is no different, loud banging on Ohkura’s door echoing in the whole apartment right when he’s in the middle of sitting in his armchair. The mug (his favourite, with hand-painted pattern) slips out of his startled hands, rolling onto his lap - carefully prepared coffee spilling on his new jeans in the process - in the end hitting the floor, already in three pieces. Ohkura doesn’t really know what to do first - try to clean his pants, or the mess on the floor, or maybe go and open the door in order to yell at whoever came up with a great idea of visiting him in such a barbarous hours, acting like the whole world was crumbling and doorbells suddenly stopped their existence.
In the end he chooses the last option (even though he knows he’s not really capable of yelling at his visitor, even in the worst of his moods), as he gets more and more annoyed with every next second the loud banging continues. The door flies open with one swift movement of his hand, and Ohkura doesn’t even manage to say anything before his unexpected guest makes his way into the room the second after he sees him.
“I’ve always known you’re kind of a slow person, but this time you’ve broken a record for sure,” Ryo says, slipping out of his shoes and hanging his jacket over the back of the chair. He looks at Ohkura only when he’s sitting on a couch already, his brows rising up in an instant, soon followed by the corners of his mouth.
“Shut up,” Ohkura says even before Ryo manages to comment on what he apparently saw - big, brown stain all over his crotch and thighs, nicely contrasting with his jeans’ light shade of blue.
“Are we having a bad morning?” Ryo asks, highly amused by his bandmate’s grumpy expression and overall posture, which is the best prove for his utter fail in, well, being basically.
“Yeah, something along these lines. I just met some stupid idiot, who only with his mere presence managed to crumble my mood in about five seconds, can you believe it?” he snaps, grabbing a few tissues from the box standing on a small coffee table and, without visible effects, trying to wipe the stain out.
“Wow, he must be a genius!” Ryo replies, grinning widely, and Ohkura can’t help but smile in return, completely defeated. It’s always like that after all - him trying to insult Ryo in any possible way and Ryo just shifting the ground, as effectively as ever, laughing it all off.
“Now, will you explain what are you doing there when we’re supposed to meet in an hour at the recording studio?” the younger man asks, shifting a little bit and crouching near the armchair. He sighs quietly at the view of his broken mug, laying in three pieces in the pool of dark liquid.
“I ran out of coffee,” he’s looking around the room while saying this, “So I came to borrow some from you. And wait, is that the mug I bought you as a birthday present?” Ryo asks, bending over the couch’s armrest.
Ohkura looks up just to stab some draggers with his glare, but obviously it doesn’t reach Ryo, and it comes as no surprise for the younger one. “Did I tell you about that idiot already?”, he asks, irritated. He really liked that mug. For many reasons to which, fortunately, Ryo is - or rather was, since the mug is included into the past rather than present now - oblivious. He would never admit any of his sentiments to that bastard, he’s full of himself enough and his pride doesn’t need to get any bigger. It could be really troublesome then.
Ohkura doesn’t comment on Ryo’s twisted logic of running out of coffee and riding through half of the city just to borrow some from Ohkura. He doesn’t think about how possibly logical could borrowing coffee, out of all things, be too, as well as why Ryo can’t use his borrowed item somewhere outside Ohkura’s apartment - and why it must be him, who prepares it and not Ryo himself. It all doesn’t really matter, when Ohkura can prepare coffee again, ritual repeated for the second time this morning, but not less special.
“You’re insane,” Ryo comments when the younger one is checking the water’s temperature with his fancy thermometer which, by the way, is a present from Ryo. It was a memorable moment, Ryo giving him the package, in one moment wishing him happy birthday and at the same time saying how stupid, and useless, and girly, and whatnot it was. “Coffee is for quickly making people something more than useless corpses in the mornings, how is it reasonable to do all those useless things when all you really want is some caffeine? It’s not like your body will care what temperature has the water you’re using for making it,” he complains, just like he always does, so Ohkura doesn’t even bother to listen to him anymore. He’d tried to explain it to him a few times already, but any of those seemed to have any effect, so he just gave up, shrugging it off.
“You’re getting the handmade, best-quality coffee for free, with muffin and a place on the comfortable couch as a bonus, so don’t complain. You can always go and stand a half an hour in a shit-long queue just to get cool, weak coffee which you’ll have to drink standing in a crowded shop. How about that?” Ohkura suggests, finishing the process of making coffee. The one for Ryo is strong, dark and bitter - Ohkura knows well what and how he likes, he’s learned that after all those times when Ryo’d showed up at his place and demanded coffee, with excuse like today, or without, simply taking his usual seat on a chair in the kitchen, observing quietly (or not, usually) how Ohkura moves around, making all those ridiculous things in order to prepare their favourite treat.
Because Ryo loves coffee just as much as Ohkura, and they both know that. Their kinds of love is a bit different however - while Ohkura is obvious, showing his affection to the world, Ryo never really talks or shows how special the taste and scent is for him. It’s only all in those movements that Ohkura gets to see - how he holds his cup, how the small smile lingers on his lips after the first sip, how he looks sated after finishing drinking. Maybe that’s why he keeps on allowing Ryo to barge into his apartment whenever he wants, not asking questions and not getting mad, simply doing what Ryo expects him to do, taking pleasure out of the situation.
The truth is that Ohkura enjoys his coffee in solitude, right, but drinking in someone’s company - someone, who is as special, as the coffee’s taste - is even better and memorable, and secretly he treasures those mornings - and afternoons, and even evenings - keeping it deep in his memory.
Neither of them say anything when they’re sitting on the couch, cups of steaming coffee in their hands. Ryo doesn’t praise Ohkura’s skills, and Ohkura doesn’t really expects him to do so. They know it all anyway - they’ve known each other for long enough, and they’ve spend mornings like that enough of times, to understand themselves without the need of using words.
“Hey, Ryo,” Ohkura says after a while, when his cup is nearly empty, and the older one shifts his gaze to him, looking torn out of his thoughts. “How about shopping after the recording?”
“Since when exactly do you want to shop with me? I remember that last time, you left me in the middle of Shibuya with pretty nasty adjectives flying through your mouth,” he answers, brows shooting up.
“Because you are a horrible buyer,” Ohkura points out. “I have no idea how others can do any shopping with you. But this time I want to go only in one place, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“And what is the place?” Ryo asks, eyeing him curiously.
“Ceramic shop. You have to buy me back one mug.”
“What? You’re joking. It’s not like it’s my fault that you’re clumsy. Forget about it, I’m not going to pay for your lack of visual-motor coordination,” he says, waving his free hand in a neglectful way.
“But it was you who started banging on my door as if the entire world was falling apart! It is your fault and my so-called clumsiness has nothing to do with your obvious lack of manners and intuition.”
No more words are needed when Ohkura points at Ryo accusingly, and Ryo just glare at him with the dreadiest of his glares, knocking off his expanded finger with his own hand.
Ryo doesn’t go shopping with Ohkura in the end (even after a bit more of quarrelling on their way to the studio recording) - but the next morning he shows at his door and demands coffee, in his right hand he’s holding a ceramic, hand-painted mug, which looks extremely familiar to Ohkura. And he can’t help, but smile once again, letting Ryo in and happily ignoring his complaints about how long he will need to wait for his coffee again.
Ohkura has never been and will never be a morning person. Every time he cracks his eyes open, slowly letting his mind working again, he sets in this kind of mood, when it’s quite dangerous for anyone to come near him.
No, it’s not that he has any problems with waking and getting up from bed. It’s more that his body seems to be not capable of catching up with his mind, making for him impossible to go through the morning without his usual fail, even when it comes to the most archaic things. He tends to trip on the thin air, the strip of toothpaste keeps falling from his brush before he manages to stick it into his mouth (it’s a repeated action for at least two times) and his toasts he enjoys to eat for breakfast usually comes out completely burnt.
The only thing that can somewhat brighten up his mood - and that doesn’t turn out to be an utter and complete fail - is coffee. Black or with milk, roasted or instant, steaming hot or a bit cooled, with sugar or unsweetened, it all doesn’t matter, as long as it’s strong and the unique taste of bitterness reserved for this type of liquid is detectable on his tongue and palate.
That’s why, no matter how bad and weird his morning is, and how hard all these daily routines are for him, Ohkura always does everything as fast as possible, just to make sure he’ll have enough of time for his small ritual of preparing and tasting coffee. Sometimes he thinks it must be pretty weird, feeling so attached to something so trivial, but he doesn’t really care as long as he’s free to do what he wants. Some people are addicted to cigarettes, some takes drugs, others are nymphomaniacs - and he just needs his coffee. It’s probably the best of the worst options when it comes to addictions, anyway.
His so-called ritual has three stages and Ohkura feels complete only when he manages to fully perform all of them. First comes preparation. His movements around the kitchen are careful and measured, everything from choosing container with selected coffee, through putting the kettle on, to taking one cup (or mug, it depends on Ohkura’s mood) from shelf. It doesn’t take more than three minutes, his actions already well-trained after all those years he has been living alone.
Second is the actual making of coffee. Normal people, who drinks coffee in the mornings just to apply themselves the regular dose of caffeine, would probably think that he’s crazy, with all the trouble he comes through to make his treat. But it’s nothing like that for Ohkura, because he simply enjoys it. Checking the right temperature of boiled water with his fancy (and incredibly expensive) cooking-thermometer, milling coffee beans, measuring out the powder and warming up milk - it’s all fun for him, comparable to how he treats drumming.
The last step is consumption. It’s the moment of relaxation and self-satisfaction (and sometimes praising own skills too, Ohkura must admit), sipping slowly at the well-prepared liquid while sitting in his favourite armchair that stands right next to his big windows allowing him to observe the weather outside. Sometimes, when it rains and the clouds are dark and heavy, Ohkura’s mood sets for the rather calm and melancholic, while in the sunny, cloudless days, it gives him a boost of positive energy - but no matter how the weather is, the whole morning process of preparing, making and drinking coffee makes him ready for the next few, busy, idol-hours that wait for him behind the closed door of his apartment.
However, life’s never been easy on him, so his time reserved for relaxing and getting ready for the day isn’t always so perfect and simple. Moreover, it must be his tough luck, because the biggest obstacles tend to show just when his morning-mood reaches it’s worst - and today is no different, loud banging on Ohkura’s door echoing in the whole apartment right when he’s in the middle of sitting in his armchair. The mug (his favourite, with hand-painted pattern) slips out of his startled hands, rolling onto his lap - carefully prepared coffee spilling on his new jeans in the process - in the end hitting the floor, already in three pieces. Ohkura doesn’t really know what to do first - try to clean his pants, or the mess on the floor, or maybe go and open the door in order to yell at whoever came up with a great idea of visiting him in such a barbarous hours, acting like the whole world was crumbling and doorbells suddenly stopped their existence.
In the end he chooses the last option (even though he knows he’s not really capable of yelling at his visitor, even in the worst of his moods), as he gets more and more annoyed with every next second the loud banging continues. The door flies open with one swift movement of his hand, and Ohkura doesn’t even manage to say anything before his unexpected guest makes his way into the room the second after he sees him.
“I’ve always known you’re kind of a slow person, but this time you’ve broken a record for sure,” Ryo says, slipping out of his shoes and hanging his jacket over the back of the chair. He looks at Ohkura only when he’s sitting on a couch already, his brows rising up in an instant, soon followed by the corners of his mouth.
“Shut up,” Ohkura says even before Ryo manages to comment on what he apparently saw - big, brown stain all over his crotch and thighs, nicely contrasting with his jeans’ light shade of blue.
“Are we having a bad morning?” Ryo asks, highly amused by his bandmate’s grumpy expression and overall posture, which is the best prove for his utter fail in, well, being basically.
“Yeah, something along these lines. I just met some stupid idiot, who only with his mere presence managed to crumble my mood in about five seconds, can you believe it?” he snaps, grabbing a few tissues from the box standing on a small coffee table and, without visible effects, trying to wipe the stain out.
“Wow, he must be a genius!” Ryo replies, grinning widely, and Ohkura can’t help but smile in return, completely defeated. It’s always like that after all - him trying to insult Ryo in any possible way and Ryo just shifting the ground, as effectively as ever, laughing it all off.
“Now, will you explain what are you doing there when we’re supposed to meet in an hour at the recording studio?” the younger man asks, shifting a little bit and crouching near the armchair. He sighs quietly at the view of his broken mug, laying in three pieces in the pool of dark liquid.
“I ran out of coffee,” he’s looking around the room while saying this, “So I came to borrow some from you. And wait, is that the mug I bought you as a birthday present?” Ryo asks, bending over the couch’s armrest.
Ohkura looks up just to stab some draggers with his glare, but obviously it doesn’t reach Ryo, and it comes as no surprise for the younger one. “Did I tell you about that idiot already?”, he asks, irritated. He really liked that mug. For many reasons to which, fortunately, Ryo is - or rather was, since the mug is included into the past rather than present now - oblivious. He would never admit any of his sentiments to that bastard, he’s full of himself enough and his pride doesn’t need to get any bigger. It could be really troublesome then.
Ohkura doesn’t comment on Ryo’s twisted logic of running out of coffee and riding through half of the city just to borrow some from Ohkura. He doesn’t think about how possibly logical could borrowing coffee, out of all things, be too, as well as why Ryo can’t use his borrowed item somewhere outside Ohkura’s apartment - and why it must be him, who prepares it and not Ryo himself. It all doesn’t really matter, when Ohkura can prepare coffee again, ritual repeated for the second time this morning, but not less special.
“You’re insane,” Ryo comments when the younger one is checking the water’s temperature with his fancy thermometer which, by the way, is a present from Ryo. It was a memorable moment, Ryo giving him the package, in one moment wishing him happy birthday and at the same time saying how stupid, and useless, and girly, and whatnot it was. “Coffee is for quickly making people something more than useless corpses in the mornings, how is it reasonable to do all those useless things when all you really want is some caffeine? It’s not like your body will care what temperature has the water you’re using for making it,” he complains, just like he always does, so Ohkura doesn’t even bother to listen to him anymore. He’d tried to explain it to him a few times already, but any of those seemed to have any effect, so he just gave up, shrugging it off.
“You’re getting the handmade, best-quality coffee for free, with muffin and a place on the comfortable couch as a bonus, so don’t complain. You can always go and stand a half an hour in a shit-long queue just to get cool, weak coffee which you’ll have to drink standing in a crowded shop. How about that?” Ohkura suggests, finishing the process of making coffee. The one for Ryo is strong, dark and bitter - Ohkura knows well what and how he likes, he’s learned that after all those times when Ryo’d showed up at his place and demanded coffee, with excuse like today, or without, simply taking his usual seat on a chair in the kitchen, observing quietly (or not, usually) how Ohkura moves around, making all those ridiculous things in order to prepare their favourite treat.
Because Ryo loves coffee just as much as Ohkura, and they both know that. Their kinds of love is a bit different however - while Ohkura is obvious, showing his affection to the world, Ryo never really talks or shows how special the taste and scent is for him. It’s only all in those movements that Ohkura gets to see - how he holds his cup, how the small smile lingers on his lips after the first sip, how he looks sated after finishing drinking. Maybe that’s why he keeps on allowing Ryo to barge into his apartment whenever he wants, not asking questions and not getting mad, simply doing what Ryo expects him to do, taking pleasure out of the situation.
The truth is that Ohkura enjoys his coffee in solitude, right, but drinking in someone’s company - someone, who is as special, as the coffee’s taste - is even better and memorable, and secretly he treasures those mornings - and afternoons, and even evenings - keeping it deep in his memory.
Neither of them say anything when they’re sitting on the couch, cups of steaming coffee in their hands. Ryo doesn’t praise Ohkura’s skills, and Ohkura doesn’t really expects him to do so. They know it all anyway - they’ve known each other for long enough, and they’ve spend mornings like that enough of times, to understand themselves without the need of using words.
“Hey, Ryo,” Ohkura says after a while, when his cup is nearly empty, and the older one shifts his gaze to him, looking torn out of his thoughts. “How about shopping after the recording?”
“Since when exactly do you want to shop with me? I remember that last time, you left me in the middle of Shibuya with pretty nasty adjectives flying through your mouth,” he answers, brows shooting up.
“Because you are a horrible buyer,” Ohkura points out. “I have no idea how others can do any shopping with you. But this time I want to go only in one place, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“And what is the place?” Ryo asks, eyeing him curiously.
“Ceramic shop. You have to buy me back one mug.”
“What? You’re joking. It’s not like it’s my fault that you’re clumsy. Forget about it, I’m not going to pay for your lack of visual-motor coordination,” he says, waving his free hand in a neglectful way.
“But it was you who started banging on my door as if the entire world was falling apart! It is your fault and my so-called clumsiness has nothing to do with your obvious lack of manners and intuition.”
No more words are needed when Ohkura points at Ryo accusingly, and Ryo just glare at him with the dreadiest of his glares, knocking off his expanded finger with his own hand.
Ryo doesn’t go shopping with Ohkura in the end (even after a bit more of quarrelling on their way to the studio recording) - but the next morning he shows at his door and demands coffee, in his right hand he’s holding a ceramic, hand-painted mug, which looks extremely familiar to Ohkura. And he can’t help, but smile once again, letting Ryo in and happily ignoring his complaints about how long he will need to wait for his coffee again.