fic for littlealex
For: littlealex
From: dirtbaguette
Title: the plural pronoun (is a dangerous fiction)
Pairing: Aiba/Nino, Jun/Nino friendship
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None.
Summary: Aiba and Nino check up on their intentions to be with each other every ten years like they're taking the census. Except, they can never reach a consensus.
Notes: littlealex, I am also hugely fond of Aimiya's BFF-ery and stories about adolescence/growing up, so I was super happy to write this for you. A billion thanks to my beta for her fantastic advice! ♥ The title is from an Ellen Bryant Voigt poem.
In movies, the protagonists have two hours to fall in love. In real life, Nino has two days to fall out of it.
The thing is, falling out isn't as easy as falling in because (for one, gravity) Nino suspects that it's been literally half a lifetime ago since he tripped after that dumb, happy rabbit into this Wonderland decorated with bright smiles and brighter sequins, and he doesn't know if the opening to the tunnel is even still there anymore.
Being on this trip, though, reminds him of a time when he might have been able to claw his way out if he'd tried. Aiba has upgraded from the car with the Jun-induced dent from the Hakone trip, but the atmosphere in the car hasn't changed and Sho is still not here, hosting some live event instead. Thankfully, he's joining them in the evening because otherwise Nino doesn't think Aiba would have stopped pouting and insisting he was smiling.
"Your manager told me to pass this along to you," Jun says, presenting Nino a copy of a time table. "There've been some amendments to our rehearsal schedule for after we come back."
On auto-pilot, Nino's mind chimes, "For our 20th anniversary!" because that's what their lives had revolved around for the past six months. Well, up until four days ago when Aiba decided to announce that he was getting married in a week.
"It's like boot camp," Aiba moans from the driver's seat. "Like he doesn't love us anymore."
Nino doesn't need to see Jun's face to know that he's rolling his eyes.
"Do you hate us, Matsujun?" Aiba asks, making the turn into the district Ohno lives in. "Tell the truth, I'll know if you're lying." Aiba's cell phone rings before Jun has the chance to return with a ring-weighted whack over the head, and Aiba takes one hand off the wheel.
Jun reaches over the clutch, reproaching Aiba for improper hand position, and mines out Aiba's cell phone from the unfathomable depths of his pocket. A few crumpled receipts and a tube of lip balm tumble out with it.
"I can't believe this guy is getting married before any of us," Nino says.
In the quiet moments that follow as Aiba hums along to his fiancée telling him to be back in time for one of the billion things they seem to need to do before going to the registrar, Nino thinks Jun could have pointed out to him that he had two chances to be first but chickened out on both. Nino has always appreciated that Jun is more sensitive than that.
When Ohno ducks in, bringing the door closed behind him, he promptly knocks shoulders with Nino, who was sitting on the same side. Nino slides over and spreads the news about Jun's Spartan training program in lieu of a proper hello. Ohno looks like he wants to crawl back in bed and play hermit at the idea of seven o'clock rehearsals but accepts the print-out quietly, folding it into his pouch.
("All for our 20th anniversary!" Nino's mind sings again.)
"Ready?" Aiba asks.
"Yup," Ohno says as Aiba grips the wheel.
They cruise past small hints of blue sky peeking out from between pale, cloudy curtains like grade school children before their first school play. When Ohno cracks open a window, a delicious breath of rain rushes in. Jun fusses at Ohno on Aiba's behalf about the leather seats getting wet. Nino keeps his eyes on the scenery blurring by, the fields of sky printed jade on the earth. He doesn't know if Aiba is taking this route on purpose, but as the car races forward and the familiar scenery invites old memories out of retirement, Nino feels himself more lost than ever inside this rabbit hole.
More than a decade has passed since Nino last took the Sobu line, but he is sure he will carry memories of this landscape to the grave (along with his favorite games, his guitar, and maybe a select list of his most memorable snide remarks).
When Nino first noticed That Gangly New Kid on the train, Aiba had been much more mellow, especially with strangers. He was popular in a way Nino was not, though, because he didn't have to say a lot for the other kids to be charmed by his excitability and whole-heartedness. As Nino stood next to where Aiba sat with a bag of chips balanced between his thighs and asked Aiba if the seat next to him was free, he wasn't thinking about how they would be attached at the hip throughout the rest of their Junior days, or that they would debut in the same insanely successful group, or that they would spend more than half their lives together. He didn't let himself hold high hopes of someone who didn't even know his name.
("Should I be embarrassed about the thinness of my presence, or be embarrassed on behalf of your lack of observational skills," Nino wondered aloud, pointedly, as he tried to shoo away the disappointment tugging pitifully at his sleeve.
Aiba giggled in rolling intakes of breath, catching Nino in its irratic rhythm. "I'm new! Don't pick on the new kid."
"You should know your senpai's face, then, New Kid-kun."
"I'm probably older than you, you know," Aiba pointed out, rubbing Nino's cheeks between his palms. "You're tiny."
"I'm average," Nino asserted. "And so are you, by the way.")
Nino had only wanted a train buddy and didn't expected Aiba to perk up the way he did when Nino waved to him the next day at rehearsals. Cutting through the sprinkling of Juniors between them, Aiba grabbed Nino's arm. It took Nino a beat plus some stumbling to realize that Aiba was tugging him over to the group where Aiba, one week in, had already found his niche.
"I'm fine," Nino said.
"Oh, it's not about you," Aiba assured him. "Grandma says that friends don't watch other friends speed down one-way streets toward Aloneville, so this is just me being a good kid and taking Grandma's advice on life."
"Wait," Nino protested, trying to shake Aiba off but Aiba just wrapped both his arms around Nino's like he was the one holding on for dear life.
"We should give it our all," Aiba said. "It's about giving everything a chance, yeah?"
When Nino turned to tell Aiba that the reason he was here at all was because of 5000 yen from his mother and couldn't work up even half of his all, he found that Aiba was too blinding to see under the afternoon sun that struck his body tenderly with arrows of yellows and reds from beyond the window. It was as if Aiba was an eclipse Nino couldn't stare straight into for fear of the burn.
The fact that they were a dramatic soundtrack away from one of those movies about adolescence and growing pains years before they would actually star in one should have served as some horridly grey premonition in the sky. But with the way Aiba twisted and tucked himself tight against the side of Nino's body like he was claiming this to be his home for ever and beyond, the imminent storm didn't seem so bad.
Before the day Nino approached Aiba on the train, he had spent many a rehearsal watching this little, round-cheeked kid named Jun. Nino didn't like dealing with Matsumoto Jun's type because his type waited in the opening pose of a dance for an entire minute; his type made others seem unmotivated in comparison; his type craved greatness in an eager, agitated way that got on Nino's nerves. But some days, Jun sat alone with his knees tucked in as he watched the other kids push teasingly at each other. On those days, he wore not his huge camera smile but the face of someone who had reached out for something that wasn't there.
Nino wanted to do something for him because that expression was emptier than anything kids their age should even know, but pranking him about a random Junior being his brother had only ended in Jun refusing to believe a word he said after that.
Jun couldn't keep up the cold shoulder for long, though, if only for professional reasons.
During the summer of rehearsals for Stand by Me, the first thing Nino noted about Jun was that for all that he enjoyed reflection (both of the introspection and looking-glass variety), Jun didn't know himself very well at all. He was really more like the poster child for youths lost in adolescence than the self-assured persona he presented on stage and in meetings. He worked so hard because he thought much too little of his natural abilities and had a difficult time not taking criticism personally when his hard work didn't pay off proportionally to a positive reception.
The second thing that Nino picked up on was Jun's semi-realized crush on Toma. It was a sweet puppy love, involving flirting on location buses and Jun taking a blow for the team after he and Toma accidentally bumped a hammer onto Aiba's foot.
"That looks pretty bad," Nino said, examining the purple cloud on the back of Jun's thigh where Aiba had kicked him afterwards.
Jun jumped, pulling up his pants quickly.
Nino stretched out on one of the long benches in the dressing room. "I've never seen Aiba-kun explode at someone like that. Honoring you on a job well done." He accompanied this with a lackadaisical salute.
"It wasn't just my fault," Jun grumbled.
"Nevertheless, you took full responsibility," Nino said. "That was honorable of you."
Jun's face twisted into a scowl. "Why does everything sound sarcastic coming from your mouth?"
"Is it because you wanted to protect Ikuta-kun?"
"Wait-wha-what are you saying?" Jun spluttered, his eyes round and Bambi-like.
Nino shrugged. "Since he's your best friend and all."
"Oh." Jun diverted his gaze and bit down on his lower lip, grazing his teeth over the plump flesh. Jun had really great lips, Nino thought as he stretched sleepily. "Yeah. Toma's my best friend. He's just my best friend, though."
As Aiba and Toma's footsteps sounded in the hall, Nino tilted his head at Jun wordlessly.
Not even Jun was convinced by his acting, and this time it wasn't just a matter of self-confidence.
When Nino walked into the restroom during the play's crank-up dinner, he spotted Jun and Toma's shoes peeking out from underneath the door of a closed stall. The sound of small gasps and rustling of clothes echoed off the walls. Nino mentally applauded Jun on his courage and applauded himself for having the decency not to bring this up until they were thirty years old and drunk and Jun's crush on Toma was history from the age of the dinosaurs.
The only part of this episode undeserving of applause was the fact that at thirty, Nino still wasn't over his own childhood crush and, at thirty, he didn't have the courage Jun had at fourteen to do something about it.
It wasn't analogous, Nino reasoned, what he had with Aiba. Within a few months Jun's feelings for Toma would fade back into pure friendship, and they would revert to their usual days of fighting over manga and swatting at each other on the bus. The way that Jun felt for Sho over the next ten years or so was probably a better object of comparison (if you excluded the ugly confessions and awkward maneuvering that made everyone within a fifty-kilometer radius uncomfortable).
In the beginning, it wasn't so bad. Sho was only the scary senpai with the tacky hair and triple-lined sweatpants who got unreasonably angry at people for dumping their cup ramen in the sink. Despite Nino's lack of interest in this "charisma" who never seemed to calm down, they ended up hanging out in the rehearsal room together on a regular basis. Nino would be obnoxiously bouncing a baseball off the walls while Sho did his homework during breaks. They would talk. Sho always had something to chatter on about, as if he just wanted to dispel words from his body to keep them from springing around inside like SuperBalls wreaking havoc.
As time went on, being seen with Sho landed Nino a role as Jun's Portal to All That is Sakurai Sho. Most of the time, it was a troublesome part to play because being Jun's portal while Jun denied using him as a one meant that Jun did things like dragging him along to buy men's underwear for Yoko after listening to Yoko insist for an entire half hour that the convenience stores in Sendai only sold pink panties.
"See, they're right here," Jun said, unhooking a pack from the wall.
"I think I'll get one too," Nino said. "This one's on sale."
Jun wrinkled his nose. "Isn't that color more suited for middle-age people?"
"Well, not everyone can afford to be as fashionable as Sakurai-kun," Nino said.
Jun swiveled to the opposite aisle to hide his face, running his hand against the bill of a stack of baseball caps. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Not sure if he's into those," Nino said. "I think he said they made his hair look funny."
Jun's hand dropped. "Really?"
Nino grabbed Jun's arm, sifting through the caps. He fit a blue one over Jun's head before Jun could protest.
"Get it as a souvenir," Nino said. When Jun opened his mouth, he added, "For yourself. Do it for yourself."
By a long shot, Jun wasn't some altruistic saint. It was obvious that he spent a lot of time thinking about his ambitions and what he wanted to do with his life, but it was equally obvious that he spent just as long thinking about what he could do for others, to please them, to make them happy. All in all, Matsumoto Jun was a fucking good person.
He wasn't a natural at being liked by people, but as with all his endeavors, he tried his best. Occasionally, these efforts ended in him randomly giving boots to people two years his senior, but Subaru had looked happy about that and the story ended up being fine fodder for variety shows years later, so all was well.
There were few things Nino hated more than forcing himself to change to please others, but as he watched Jun offer to help Aiba with a part of the choreography he couldn't get right, Nino considered the option quite seriously. After all, Nino knew best that it was a lot nicer having a friend who offered you a hand on the edge of a cliff instead of one who pointed and laughed.
Perhaps Nino's tendency to poke fun at others before he was poked was a legacy of the days in elementary school when his classmates would occasionally have a laugh at his expense. They meant no real harm because the victim could have been anyone. When one kid pointed at Nino and blamed him for some random thing that had gone wrong, it was just in the flow of things that everyone hopped on the bandwagon.
A nauseating, helpless sense of déjà vu struck Nino one morning in the Junior dorms, when he walked into the dining room and everyone whipped around to stare at him. The word French toast began to spin around the room and before Nino's eyes everyone turned into spiders weaving a web that they were going to trap him in. No one really remembered who started saying it first but by the end they were all demanding why Nino ate Yoko's piece of French toast, you know there are only two pieces, we have a system for this, and Yoko was complaining about how bad things always happened to him and-and Nino had to get out.
His cheeks already felt hot and the taste on his tongue pickled and sour when Jun tried to say, "Guys, let's stop it," but everyone was young and just enjoying a joke and no one was in the mood to listen.
Nino turned for the door he'd come through just moments ago. Once he reached the front steps of the building, he took off running. He ran and ran and ran until his legs and lungs burned more than his face.
His feet had taken him to the train station and he would have hopped on the next train home if it weren't for the group rehearsals at noon and Music Station performance that evening. As more and more people pushed past him to enter the station, blurring into each other, he felt himself shrink. He was so small, he didn't even have the energy to shrink away.
He collapsed onto the stairs and folded his arms over his knees. "It isn't my fault," he mumbled, dropping his head. "It's not my fault."
"What isn't?"
When Nino looked up, Aiba's eyes were so close to his that their eyelashes might have brushed if they blinked together. He pulled back.
"Sorry, I overslept and when I got up, Matsujun was lecturing everyone and he sent me to look for you, but I'm not sure why." Aiba squeezed himself much closer than necessary next to Nino. "What happened?"
"Go ask Yokoyama," Nino said and didn't realize how bitter was until he heard himself. "He'll talk up a storm, I'm sure."
Aiba tilted his head. "But I asked you," he said. "Did you and Yoko fight?"
"No," Nino said. Nino just wasn't super-close, bath-taking buddies with Yoko like Aiba was. It was as if AibaandYoko were becoming the new AibaandNino, as if Aiba had grown out of Nino and moved on ("Downgraded," a mean little voice in Nino's head corrected) from their childhood together.
Nino buried his chin between the valley of his knees. "It's just not my fault."
Aiba hummed thoughtfully. "I've got an idea," he said after a few beats. "Why don't we play rock-paper-scissors to see whose fault it is?"
Nino hadn't dared to expect much when Aiba began that sentence, but this was just stupid. "You aren't even a part of this," he pointed out.
"I'm always a part of anything that involves you," Aiba said, meeting Nino's eyes evenly.
Nino's heart rammed into his ribcage like a prisoner demanding freedom as he contemplated how to respond to his male friend reciting a line out of a Getsu 9 romance at him when Aiba's face crinkled like foil into a shy, silly grin.
"I can't pull that off, can I," Aiba said. He slapped both his knees firmly. "Well! In any case, since neither of us are Jun-chan or that scary guy who yells at people over ramen, it doesn't matter whose fault it really is. Let's just put an end to it." Aiba's grin softened into a smile that curved gently around his features. "First is rock..."
Aiba had made sure Nino saw that he hid an open palm behind his back. In that split-second before Aiba said, "Rock-paper-scissors," Nino decided that as much as he enjoyed being contrary, he wasn't one to throw stones at the hand stretched out to help him.
The scissors Nino played had small, blunt blades not meant to cut. Aiba slotted his hand between the two blades, in full faith that they would not harm him. Breath held, Nino watched as his lifeline curled around his fingers and squeezed. Aiba's hand pulled away to scratch the back of his head.
"Ah, I lost. I guess it's my fault!" Aiba said, his expression completely incongruous with what he was saying.
Nino laughed lightly. "Better go apologize to Yoko, then," he said, following Aiba's scenario.
"I guess I could apologize via offering special bath-time services." Aiba paired his words with uncoordinated waggling of his eyebrows.
"You're disgusting," Nino said primly.
"Let's go." Aiba grabbed Nino's hand again. "This is the part where we skip into the sunset."
"It's noon," Nino pointed out. Then: "-oh. Rehearsals."
Aiba's grip tightened on Nino's hand. "Then let's hop through the heat of the Tokyo midday sun and get so sweaty and gross that none of our senpai would want to get close enough to kick our asses into next year."
And Nino thought, sighing as he tilted his head to look at Aiba, he really wished Aiba would stop doing that eclipse thing, even if this time it was probably just because Aiba was standing tall with the sun behind him. When Nino stood straight too, he found that the glow around Aiba softened enough that Nino could look into him this time-see his bright eyes, huge with optimism; wide mouth, rich with laugher; high eyebrows, reaching for the sky.
"Stupid rabbit," Nino muttered. A bounce carried his steps back to the dorms, too, though.
Nino didn't believe in the concept of falling in love. Falling in love was less falling than tripping into some shallow ditch and believing that you might be okay for a while until you a) actually found your grounding again, or b) discovered too late that that shallow ditch was actually a deep pit you'd been slipping down the side of and now, fuck, you're stuck.
Nino made this realization after the taping of a 8Ji Da segment. Considering he and Aiba and Jun were dancing center-stage with mikes and sparkly bowties, it should have been quite a fantastic day. The problem was three-fold: filming took place five days after White Day, Aiba had gotten himself a girlfriend on White Day, and said girlfriend was in the audience during filming.
Guess that went well, Nino thought when he saw Aiba run off to talk to the girl once the shoot was over.
After Nino finished changing back into his own clothing, he considered going home on his own since he didn't want Aiba to come out arm-in-arm with his girlfriend and be third-wheeling them the entire train ride home.
But when Aiba called after him just as he started down the stairs, Aiba was alone. His cheeks were quivering half way between a smile and a sob. Aiba didn't say anything after that, so Nino didn't ask. It was only a matter of time, and Nino admitted to being impressed that Aiba managed to hold off from actually crying until they were on the train and Aiba opened his phone to delete her number. Luckily, the few people sitting close by were either preoccupied or deeply asleep.
Nino studied Aiba's face, stared at how he was trying to fold himself into a tiny, neat size so that someone could just take him home where everything was warm, but his corners weren't lining up and he ended up jumbled and gnarled in his own hands. Not without some resignation, Nino started cleaning up the mess, taking Aiba into his much smaller hands and realigning the pieces.
The girl had told Aiba that he felt so far away, Aiba said, blubbering into Nino's shoulder. She said that she couldn't handle all the lights, and what did that even mean?
Nino had an inkling, having recently discovered the dark sides of fame, but withheld this grain of knowledge for now.
Aiba sniffled against the wet spot he'd created on Nino's shirt. "You'll always stay with me, right?" he said, brown bristles brittle and sharp in his eyes.
"Mm," Nino said, even though this did not identify with the nature of their relationship. He hoped the poignant growing pains soundtrack wasn't swelling up in the background right now.
But then: "Really? You're going to stay by my side no matter how sparkly and famous I get?"
That was more like it. Nino rolled his eyes and reached out to whack Aiba over the head, but his hand fell short on Aiba's shoulder when their noses smacked into each other and their lips met and their eyelashes brushed, every bit as fluttery as he had imagined. Nino watched Aiba pull back into his own seat in a slow, stop-motion sequence and felt his blood pulsing in his ears at thrice the speed.
"I do like you best," Aiba said, with a smile that just wasn't fair for someone whose eyes and nose and lips were swollen and ugly.
He was beautiful.
Shit. Nino stared blankly through the window, clutching blindly with his eyes at the light above the pit.
The train ducked into a tunnel.
Neither of them brought up what happened on the train, so it passed, muffled by the hustle and bustle of variety show tapings and back-dancing and drama filming.
Nino was cast for his first drama because he didn't mind shaving his head. For the first time in this job, he was surrounded by adults, all of whom praised him on his acting and pledged that they would adopt him one day. While people being happy with his work pleased Nino, he found that in order to keep the peace-whether in variety shows or dramas-being a role was more important than being a person. Maybe it was better not to read the drama script at home and to work things out only under the director's supervision. Maybe it was better to play games during the meetings. Maybe it was better to keep himself from forming his own ideas at all instead of trying to force them back down.
The thing about being young was you constantly felt like you were pushing forward with your sticky thin limbs against a world too big for you, and it was only your determination that made you invincible. Nino didn't remember ever feeling invincible. It wasn't even a matter of giving up; he would never take on the world in the first place because that included too many things he didn't give a shit about.
He wasn't born for this. He wasn't standing on the right side of the camera lens. People got in front of the camera because they wanted others to know them; people got behind the camera because they wanted to know others. Nino was more fascinated with finding out about other people because he knew himself well enough.
Maybe he would go to America. He could be a different person there.
Aiba draped himself against the back of the couch, poking his head over Nino's shoulder as Nino filled out a questionnaire for a television magazine.
"You do this many things on the weekend?" Aiba asked. He was crunching on senbei and dropping crumbs all over Nino's questionnaire. "I thought all you did was sit at home and-wait."
"The fans might be interested in knowing details about the types of games I play," Nino said, holding the pie chart he drew up to the light like it was some masterpiece.
"Don't you want to seem more active?" Aiba said. "I mean, we sometimes play baseball on the weekends and stuff."
"It would ruin the harmony of the pie," Nino said. "Besides, it's part of my character."
"You could have a best-baseball-friends-with-Aiba-chan character instead of a creeper-in-dark-basement character," Aiba pointed out.
"I don't know how I'd like my character to be associated with someone who still can't multitask," Nino said. The crumbs were raining down on his shoulder now, and he brushed them briskly onto the couch. "Keeping your mouth closed and chewing at the same can't be that difficult, surely, even for you."
"Have a senbei," Aiba said. "Energy for your drama shoot later."
When Nino looked from the bag Aiba was offering to Aiba's face, he forced himself to slouch against the couch, slowly unscrewing the bolts that had fastened themselves to his back without a word of greeting throughout the past few days. He took the bag wordlessly as Aiba grabbed at his shoulders, digging his thumbs in a painful attempt at a massage.
In Nino's mouth, the salt of the senbei mingled with the poison that remained on his tongue after he spat most of it at Aiba. He didn't utter a word of complaint about the massage. He didn't mention that he couldn't create a best-baseball-friends-with-Aiba-chan character because to him, that wasn't a character at all.
Nino didn't know what character that guy was supposed to be. The old man picking his nose in the corner.
For all that Ohno Satoshi was something of a legend among the Juniors, he was surprisingly lackluster in person, seeming to be devoid of any motivation to do his job and even the smallest bit of interest in the glitter and glamor around him. In a way, Ohno was the kindred spirit Nino had been searching for since he entered Johnny's.
The Juniors were filming a summer special out in this huge park, and Jun and Toma were running around throwing water balloons at each other as Aiba tried to extract juice from a coconut. Nino warily eyed the knife Aiba wielded from where he sat next to Ohno. The same scene had apparently also entered Ohno's frame of vision.
"Mm...but I think you're more of a coconut," Ohno said as they mused in the hazy, heat-induced tones of summer about how they wanted to be unweighted and free like the children of dandelion.
Nino threw Ohno a sideways glance. "You mean I get to be smashed into pieces by Aiba-kun instead of blown by you? Joy," he said.
"It's so tiring," Ohno said.
Nino gestured at the dandelion Ohno was trying to blow bald, "No one's forcing you to do that, you realize."
"I meant, like, all this..." Ohno waved his hand at the camera as it came by. "Idol stuff."
Nino watched the coconut explode all over Sho, who the bad karma to have been kindly bringing around napkins. "No one's forcing you to do it," he repeated.
"I guess," Ohno said.
Thy were in that weird period of adolescence when all the adults thought they were flipping their shit because they were beginning to figure out that when adults talked about growing up and being rooted, it sounded like children were potted plants in someone's living room that only needed a bit of sunshine and a good watering once every three days while every adolescent was convinced that they were meant to be more than that.
Or in the case of the three who wanted to turn down the chance to debut at the end of that summer, it was a matter of having smaller dreams than that. As Sho explained the night before he and Nino would go find Johnny-san together, debuting in an idol group was like buying out a college drop-out's start-up company when Sho had planned on an investment more like buying a house for retirement.
Although, Sho had said, lips pressed tight in thought, they would go see Johnny-san tomorrow, but if he wasn't there, maybe that was fate.
Nino tucked himself deeper into his sleeping bag.
Johnny-san wasn't at his office the next day. They only found a scrap piece of paper with a single kanji, written bold and circled imperious.
Just because Nino finished his last back-dancing performance before he was due to hop on a plane to Hawaii, three days later, didn't mean that he had given up on talking his way out of it. He was loitering around backstage, trying to catch any of the higher-ups, when someone tugged him by the back of his collar towards the door.
"Come home with me," Aiba said when Nino squirmed against his hold.
"I've got something to do, lemme go," Nino said. "I've been going to your house too often anyway."
"My grandfather wants to adopt you, which shouldn't be too hard since you already call my dad 'Dad,'" Aiba said, ignoring Nino's demands to be released. He was steering them not in the direction of the elevators but the narrow side-hall with the abandoned vending machines. "Well, either that or he suggests that we just get married already, except Mom pointed out that that's illegal in Japan."
As if that was the only problem.
"But you know what's close enough to being married." Suddenly, Aiba stopped in his tracks so that Nino crashed into him. He leaned close with a curious look on his face. "Being in a group together."
"You're in, too."
Aiba nodded. "Johnny-san called me this morning, and he didn't really say why we were going, but that's something even I can figure out."
"Do you actually want to do this?"
"I don't know," Aiba admitted. "I don't know what I really want to do."
"Then why-"
"But I don't think any of us does," Aiba said. "We have things we think we want to do but we never know whether or not we'll actually like it, so why not start with things we can do? And if it doesn't work, at least we have each other?"
Except they didn't because if there was no group, they would be just individuals who had no obligations to one another. Besides, in Nino's eyes, there would be no "if it doesn't work" once they chose to be together. If they debuted, they would be bound by one name. They would be like the Suzukis or the Sazaes but they would be the Arashis and Nino wouldn't be able to tear that family apart the way his father tore his apart.
"Aiba-kun-"
Aiba dropped his grip on Nino. "Come home with me?" he said.
Nino's back hit the vending machine.
"Come home with me." Aiba crowded into Nino's space.
"Nino," Aiba was saying now, his breath warm against Nino's cheek. Nino's body was caged in Aiba's as Aiba leaned in, giving Nino time to push him away if he wanted to.
But all that was going through Nino's mind was that rabbit with the big pink ears and stopwatch, counting down to the moment he would leap into the same tunnel down to Wonderland that Nino was trapped in. As much as Nino wanted not to be alone down here anymore, he had to stop that mad rabbit because rabbits were such gentle, sensitive creatures that always smiled through the upward curve of their mouths despite the tears in their red, red eyes.
Nino twisted out from between Aiba's arms. "Let's get going. We need to get ready," he said. "In three days, we'll be facing the world, right?"
When he turned back to look at Aiba, Aiba was wearing a victorious grin that looked like a game of connect-the-dots where he missed one dot in the beginning and the whole drawing was off.
"You bet," Aiba said, raising a hand that Nino met in a high-five.
Nino didn't let go of Aiba's hand, didn't dare let go, until the corners of Aiba's lips were no longer trembling and his body no longer looked like a mannequin with loose joints.
"Race you to the station?" Nino challenged and took off before Aiba had the chance to respond.
"Cheater!" Aiba said, waving his arms to try to catch Nino by his clothes.
They charged out of the hall, blocking each other on the stairs, and tumbled out onto the sidewalk with smiles redrawn.
"Get your mom to cut your hair before you come!" Nino shouted as Aiba pulled ahead of him. "I'm not having matching haircuts with you for life."
Aiba twisted his head to stick his tongue out at Nino, legs rocketing forward at full speed. They were running into the setting sun this time, all properly movie-like, but the growing pains soundtrack was fading fast. In three days, they had to be adults.
As they announced their debut, they tried to match their enthusiasm with the enormity of the giant, brown coconuts surrounding them. Nino was still sick from the cruiser. He and Aiba still shared the same haircut.
Thankfully, that changed three months into the business, mostly because their agency assigned them a hair stylist that was not Nino's mother. Over the course of the next twenty years, more than their hair changed, of course: they moved into their own apartments, they dated girls and boys that came and went, they stirred up a storm like they promised. But in Nino's mind, there were more things that stayed the same.
For example, the landscape on the round-about ("Picturesque!" Aiba always corrects) route Aiba likes to take from Tokyo to Chiba. For example, Aiba's enthusiasm as he dove head-first into uncharted waters. For example, Nino's wariness of that enthusiasm.
"Are you sure you aren't driving us into the bottom of some ditch," Nino says as the car bounced like a boat in tempestuous waters. Again. "I thought we were going to your house in Chiba."
"Oh we are," Aiba says, each syllable coated with sugary giddiness.
"I don't think I like where this is going," Jun says. "Or where we're going."
Nino narrows his eyes at the line of trees they are approaching. "Is the plan to drive right through that? Because I think it's time to consider Plan B."
"Nah, we can think about that the morning after," Aiba says so breezily that Nino almost doesn't catch the joke. When he does, though, it takes Jun reminding him that they don't really want to end up stuck in a pit to resist throwing something heavy at Aiba's head.
Aiba hums happily to himself as he turns onto a hidden trail off the main path (which was more of a continuous speed bump than a road, but). "Wake Leader up, yeah? We're here."
"This isn't anywhere near-" Nino begins, batting at Ohno. He stops and blinks a few times at the thing before him.
"Welcome to my home!" Aiba says, opening his arms grandly.
"You bought this," Nino says, just to confirm.
"Yes!" Pride absolutely radiates from Aiba's face.
As Ohno rubs his eyes blearily, Nino leans an arm on his shoulder and says, "Hey, did Aiba-kun tell you about how he secretly owns an oil well?"
"I don't need to own an oil well to buy a house," Aiba protests with a pout. "Leader has a house in Atami, and you accepted that perfectly fine."
"He owns a house," Jun says, his eyes glued on Aiba's new home. He looks like he needs to sit down despite already being seated. "You own the palace of a small principality."
"I got a pretty good deal on it, since it's so far removed from everything," Aiba says, waving them all out of the car. "Come on, I'll show you guys around."
Nino watches Aiba and Jun and Ohno duck out of the car. He doesn't walk toward the house until Ohno drags him along. He feels much too unready for it.
"Ugh, you have your television facing that way again," Nino groans when Aiba leads them into the dining room. "Why do you insist on staring at wires while you eat? I've been telling you for the past eight years to turn it."
"And I've been telling you that you'd have a say if you lived here," Aiba says.
"I swear you're doing this just to spite me."
"I learn from the best," Aiba says, proudly.
"Are you sure it's all right that we're staying here?" Jun says despite that he's already making himself comfortable with all the brand new tools and appliances in the kitchen. "This is an excellent iron plate, by the way."
"I know, Nino got it for me for my eighteenth birthday." Aiba turns towards Nino. "Aren't you flattered that I've kept this in brand new condition?"
"Unused condition, you mean," Nino says. "That thing was expensive you know."
"But I mean," Jun says, still digging through all of Aiba's cabinets, fully loaded with pots and pans and condiments, "aren't you and your new family supposed to christen everything?"
You and your new family.
You and your new family.
You and your new family.
Nino had spent the first ten years of his acquaintance with Jun thinking of Jun as his foil and it still surprises Nino sometimes, how strikingly similar their thinking can be.
"I didn't buy the house because I'm getting married," Aiba said. "We're still living in my apartment in Tokyo because this place is too far. It's more like an investment for retirement."
"Why is the person who'd be most touched by that sentence not here?" Nino says.
"You did a really good job decorating," Ohno says, fingering the beige curtains.
Aiba beams brightly because even now, none of them are immune to the power of Ohno's praise. "Oh oh, do you know what I also did a good job of?" he says. "Pull back that curtain, Leader."
When Ohno does, Nino sees a large porch flooded with waves of yellow afternoon sunlight. Five chaise lounges sit on the deck invitingly.
"We can star-gaze there tonight. I specifically had a deck built here because from this angle, the house and the trees don't block out the constellations," Aiba explains.
"Star-gazing," Nino echoes.
"I'm going to start the coffee," Jun says. "We've got a long, sappy night ahead of us."
A game of family make-believe begins while they cook dinner, as it tends to whenever they do anything remotely domestic together.
("There's a bit of traditional role reversal going on here," Nino comments, watching Jun give delicate care to decorating the chilled tofu that the rest of them are going to destroy in less than a minute. "Considering that Mom's out on a business trip and Dad's making dinner."
"But does anyone really want to eat Mom's cooking?" Aiba points out.
"Are you supposed to be my brother?"
"I've never really understood Aiba-chan's character setting in this," Ohno says, swinging mildly in his rocking chair and looking far too perfect for his part.
"I thought he was that uncle who always hangs out at our house mooching off of us," Nino says. "You know, the one everyone wishes would just go home."
"THIS IS MY HOUSE, OKAY.")
The game carries on into dinner, during which they catch the end of Sho's broadcast. They begin to lose concentration after the third round of beers, though. By 9 PM, they move out onto the deck, having finished with dinner and clumsy clean-up. They are close enough to the ocean that the breeze feels slightly salty and scratchy against their skin. For the longest time, they don't talk. They're looking, just looking.
Nino isn't as into gazing at the stars as he is into gazing at Aiba gazing at the stars. Aiba was born to be stared at in awe, in wonder, in staccato bursts of emotion. He had long ago exchanged his cherry lollipop grin for this soft, blanket-like smile, and it's never looked so gentle combined with the fuzzy x's that form in his eyes from the string of lights in the sky.
X - the universal unknown.
X - the universal no.
Staring up at the stars reminds Nino of the time he did Ryusei no Kizuna. Unlike the Ariake siblings, who faced a statute of limitations on the murder case, Nino is facing a statute of limitations on his ambiguous friend-romance with Aiba, as if being in love is a crime and you have only so much time to decide if you want to do something about your feelings before they expire. They have been teetering on the brink of things for so long that they must now either fall together or fall apart. The decision, though, is mostly already made, has probably been written in the stars since the beginning, since the first time he pushed Aiba away, and solidified ten years later after a concert when they had been feeling so on top of the world and had just too much to lose.
Another ten years have passed. They never talk about it, not explicitly. It's not in the nature of their relationship.
"I'm going to use the bath first," Nino says. When he stands, the floorboards groan. The rest of them hum in acknowledgement.
He had been wrong that day in the grimy hall outside the studio with Aiba. Nino had imagined that debuting would be like being repackaged from AibaandNino into the new Arashi combo deal. Instead of being attached at the hips and sharing everything with Aiba, he would have to do it with three other people. But early on, Nino had realized that those chains were entirely voluntary, that they had no personal commitments to each other apart from what they chose to hold.
In spite of the five-for-one, one-for-five sentiments that pulled them through the years and into super-stardom, they are all still their own person with their own lives, through and through. They come together to sell dreams and in that moment they are one, but the moment they sober from that dream, they are five.
There probably never was an AibaandNino; they never were the Arashis. People never truly become we.
The plural pronoun is only a delusion of the lonely.
Nino has a leg in the tub when the phone in the bathroom rings. Aiba had made this house so move-in ready. Nino hadn't expected the landline to be set up in a home Aiba claims he isn't going to live in.
On the third ring, Nino picks up.
He is greeted with Sho grumbling, "Why don't any of you answer your cell phones?"
"Who did you call first?" Nino says, another game of make-believe: possessive girlfriend version.
"...You, darling?" Sho tries after a long pause and they laugh.
"Where are you right now?" Nino asks.
"On my way over. Given that this obstacle course of a road doesn't break my car, I'll be there in about thirty minutes."
"Oh, poor Sho-chan," Nino coos. "As if nature needed to give you a reason to drive any more slowly."
"Better safe than sorry," Sho says. "As with all endeavors."
Just for that, Nino almost hangs up on him. When did birth control jokes become a fad in their group?
"How's it been over there?"
"Hard to say if this is the pre- or post-wedding trip," Nino says, "considering there have been castles and family dinners and star-gazing."
"I'm so sorry I'm missing out," Sho says, and he's half-serious because he's into fate and romance in a way that Nino is not.
A silence settles over the phone as the bath water settles against Nino's skin.
"How've you been?" Sho asks.
"Didn't we just go over this?"
"I mean, you-" Sho stresses, a little too cautiously.
"It's one and the same, whether you mean one you or multiple yous," Nino says. When you're on the outside looking in, you can't know the difference.
"Ah." In the pause that follows, Nino sees in his mind's eye Sho pressing his lips together in thought. If he strains his ears, Nino can almost hear Sho deliberating whether or not to take a crack at Arashi's open secret. Sho does: "Are you going to tell him?"
"Oh, I don't know, I need the proper moonlight and three dozen roses, and I haven't really had time to get on that since we got there," Nino says, trying to keep it light.
"I don't think you deserve to anymore," Sho says.
Nino winces, caught by surprise. Sho, contrary to his usual thoughtfulness and care, can be painfully honest at times.
"You've had more than two decades to do it and you didn't. Now that he's found someone he's happy with, you would be awful to finally tell him what he's been wanting to hear."
"It's not like that," Nino says.
"What's not like that? You've lined up for hours at stores to get him clothes you think he'd like. For his eighteenth birthday, you got him that ridiculously expensive iron plate, which-frankly?-I don't think he's even ever used," Sho says. "You're not really as cheap as your television character; you just don't spend money or energy or anything on people you don't care a fucking lot about."
Nino is quiet. "He still has it."
"What?" Right now, Sho is probably trying to figure out how to pinch himself between the eyebrows without letting go of the wheel.
"The iron plate. He still has it and he's been taking good care of it," Nino says.
Sho sighs. "Do you remember that conversation we had our third or fourth year into Arashi? We decided that in order to move forward, we had to let go of the comforts and guarantees we had at the time. I think your talk is long overdue."
Nino would point out to Sho how pleasantly talking things out ended for him and Jun if it weren't for that, at the very least, they had been able to find a resolution early on. It's just that while Sho and Jun were into efficiency and getting answers, Nino and Aiba would choose elusive procrastination over blunt confrontation, every single time, if it meant delaying the collapse of a not unhappy status quo.
"Don't do anything you can't take responsibility for," Sho warns.
"I know," Nino says. "It's not like that, okay?"
"You can't say you're not in love with him," Sho says, kinder this time.
"It's not always the same, having someone you're in love with in this moment and having someone you're always going to be in love with," Nino says.
"That's just a matter of-" Sho begins before a crashing sound stops him mid-sentence. "Nino? Are you okay?"
"That wasn't me," Nino says.
A beat passes. "Sorry, ran into a plant," Aiba's voice sounds sheepishly down the phone line. Nino hears it double as Aiba pushes open the door to the bathroom, holding another one of the landline phones.
"Hasn't your wise old grandmother taught you not to eavesdrop?" Nino narrows his eyes, mostly to cover up for the shades of red he feels his face turning.
"Sorry," Aiba says again, genuinely.
"Well, it seems like I'm beginning to lose signal in the countryside. I'll see you guys in a bit!" Sho says quickly. He hangs up without waiting for Nino's response.
Aiba gestures at the bath. "I was coming to join you in here," he explains.
"And?" Nino raises an eyebrow.
Aiba grabs a bubble bath buddy in the shape of a bunny from the cabinet next to the tub, holding it out to Nino as a peace offering.
Nino crosses his arms. "Aren't you going to get in?"
As Aiba nods and begins to strip, Nino thinks that Aiba looks more like a bunny than the bubble bath block, with his ears perked, nose twitching, sniffing the air for the most subtle of changes. When Nino stares straight at Aiba, he finds that Aiba is already staring back.
In his head, Nino carefully recounts the story of Alice in Wonderland. If memory serves correctly, even though the tale revolves around Alice's fall into Wonderland, isn't it really the rabbit with the stopwatch that jumped first?
That bunny, he must have been tired after waiting in the pit for so long, Nino realizes.
Aiba splashes a wave of bubbly water at Nino. Nino splashes back.
"What," Nino says.
"You don't tell me things anymore," Aiba complains, a little incoherently as he is blowing bubbles in the bubbles. "Or ever."
"Says the person who went ahead and bought a castle."
"That's different," Aiba insists. "Because my buying a house doesn't have anything to do with you."
"But it could have had everything to do with me," Nino says. "'You would have a say if you actually lived here.' You've been saying that for eight years."
Aiba laughs. "It's true, though."
"What's also true is that you've known what I said to Sho-chan for more than eight years," Nino says.
"Yeah," Aiba admits. "Though I don't feel like I've been enjoying any Takeuchi Yuuko-class privileges as one of your forevers."
"You don't put photobooks of me next to your Vivian Hsu collection either," Nino returns.
"Like that's my fault."
"Well, it's certainly not mine."
They meet eyes over the sea of bubbles. It doesn't matter whose fault it is. It's never really mattered, between the two of them.
"First is rock..." they begin in unison, and Aiba doesn't need to hide his open palm behind his back anymore-that hand will never change. But Nino throws stones at it this time because they have both been hanging on to each other for too long at the rocky edge and they must let go.
"Rock-paper-scissors."
Aiba's eyes pause on Nino's fist for a three full seconds, during which he attempts an imitation of a smile, but it is a feat too tasking, too daunting. "Yay, see? Your fault," Aiba says, sliding into the bath.
The quiver in Aiba's voice is because he's speaking into the water, Nino thinks, for Aiba's sake.
The quiver in his own voice as he says, "Your expression doesn't match what you're saying," is because he, too, is trying to hide his tears among the bubbles.
Nino is thirty-six and still doesn't believe in the concept of falling in love. He does believe in slowly sliding into love the way they slip deep into the sea that embraces only the two of them-but they had hit rock bottom years ago. Now, it is time to climb back up.
Aiba's hand finds Nino's in the water and their fingers twist together, locked and secure and the way it's always been, the way it's always going to be, if only in a strictly Arashi way.
Nino tightens their hold on each other. Maybe climbing could wait, for just one more night.
When they get out of the bathroom, tucked into fluffy robes, they find Sho drinking with Jun and Ohno at the kitchen counter. Sho smiles at them softly and pats the two empty stools next to him.
Aiba has five of everything in this house. Perhaps five is just a good number for a set. Perhaps even now as Aiba is moving on to a different stage in his life, there's a strong part of him that wants all of Arashi to know that he isn't going to set the group on the back burner. It's just that they have dedicated so much of their lives to the band, to maintaining relationships with the fans and management and each other, that in the calm before the second storm Aiba had wanted to drop the anchor for a different type of happiness: the type of ordinary, domestic bliss that most people take for granted.
On bright, sunny days perfect for baseball, Nino fleetingly considers having children, but he approaches marriage with more caution. Getting married is like making the same type of investment in someone else that he had already put in Arashi. He doesn't have enough emotional currency for that. Probably, this was what happened between Jun and Sho, too. By the time Jun had confessed at a point in his life when he'd just reached adulthood and was still full of hope for the future, Sho was four years past that stage, having already made a risk investment on which the returns had been underwhelming.
As Jun drapes blankets over Sho and Ohno and Aiba's shoulders while they sleep steadfastly against the counter, Nino wonders if Jun had ever come to understand that or if he only let time bury away his frustrated, unrequited feelings for Sho. Nino's never stirred up the courage to ask directly, for fear of adding salt to injury.
But when Jun's arm doesn't linger, even for a split-second longer, around Sho, Nino thinks that there's really no need to poke at that old scar.
Later into the night, when Jun comments that a full moon and alcohol would make for lovely poetry, Nino giggles drunkenly and says, "So romantic, Jun-pon is."
Jun rolls his eyes at the nickname. "I try to be. The world would be a more beautiful place that way."
Nino frowns as the words ring familiarly in his ears. "Isn't that something I've said before?"
"I like things you say," Jun says.
"I appreciate the support," Nino says. "I'm a fan of you too."
Jun laughs, taking a swig from his cup. "Have you met a group more kiss-ass than ours?"
"Nope," Nino says.
Jun laughs again, louder. "I don't think I could have made it through without it."
The greater miracle is that their group made it through all these years when, from the beginning, three out of five wanted to quit. The way they always find the good in each other definitely helped. They try their hardest to look for it because they want to like each other, to fit together like the pie charts they've been drawing for magazines since forever. If one of them can't find the strength to hold his own fifth for the day, the others will fight whatever uphill battle they must to fill the circle in the meantime. Together, they never let themselves be less than 100 percent.
"I mean," Jun begins, and Nino is expecting something idealistic and profound. "We'll go on and fall in love with other people at different points in our lives, but Arashi is the thing we'll always be in love with."
Underneath the heat of the alcohol, Nino would be touched by this, except: "Was our entire group eavesdropping on my phone conversation?"
Jun only looks slightly remorseful. "I really like the things you say."
Only after Jun wraps Nino neatly in his arms and hugs Nino to sleep on Aiba's absurdly huge bed does Nino decide to forgive him.
At 7:30 the next morning, Jun gets a call about a producer from Fuji TV who wants to have lunch with him. This means that there is Business with a capital B to be discussed which must be prioritized before their little retreat because that is how being a successful adult goes.
Jun insists on going back alone as not to ruin the trip but Aiba shakes his head and Sho says, "We can always continue tonight," and Nino adds, "At Aiba-kun's non-castle-like home," while Ohno nods in agreement because that is how being Arashi goes.
(As they sweep through Aiba's house, packing up their belongings, Ohno asks, bent over the laundry basket, "Why was Nino wearing too layers of underwear?"
Nino frowns. "I wasn't. It's not like my crotch needs extra insulation during summer."
"But there are two pairs with your name on it," Ohno says, lifting both of them by the tag.
"Isn't that the god-awful one you got on sale when we were in Sendai?" Jun says as he folds away his own clothes. "I can't believe you still have it."
"I didn't bring those here," Nino says just as Aiba pokes his head into the bathroom to see what the stall is all about.
"Oh, you can just leave those here," Aiba says. "Or wait, that's the pair I've been meaning to get back to Nino."
"I'm good," Nino says. "Keep them. Please."
"I wonder what happened to that hat I got..." Jun says.
Sho's head floats in above Aiba's and says, "Reminiscing about fragments of our childhood is great but we've got a three-hour drive down a long, country road waiting impatiently."
In the end, the underwear stays at the bottom of the laundry basket. Some things are meant to be left behind.)
On the way back, they get stuck in one of the ditches they bounced over on the way there. At 8:15 AM on a dusty dirt road, five super idols try their best to shove a car along. Falling in had been easy, but as they are finding out, falling out is not.
"Because for one, gravity," Nino points out as he puts himself in Alice's shoes in an attempt to figure out how to dig out Sho's car. The inconvenient timing doesn't allow him to linger very long in his roleplay.
But what he does discover in his ruminations is that, Jun's lunch aside, falling doesn't have to be an awful thing and not being able to fall out isn't the end of the world either. What matters isn't so much what happens as the people by your side as it happens. Nino is glad that the five of them had weak enough resolves about not being in a group, that they suspended their disbelief in living a dream. Maybe, just maybe, we has been more than just a delusion.
For the past twenty years, and for twenty more, they continue to push with their too-thin limbs against a too-strong world. But their determination makes them invincible, always.
From: dirtbaguette
Title: the plural pronoun (is a dangerous fiction)
Pairing: Aiba/Nino, Jun/Nino friendship
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None.
Summary: Aiba and Nino check up on their intentions to be with each other every ten years like they're taking the census. Except, they can never reach a consensus.
Notes: littlealex, I am also hugely fond of Aimiya's BFF-ery and stories about adolescence/growing up, so I was super happy to write this for you. A billion thanks to my beta for her fantastic advice! ♥ The title is from an Ellen Bryant Voigt poem.
In movies, the protagonists have two hours to fall in love. In real life, Nino has two days to fall out of it.
The thing is, falling out isn't as easy as falling in because (for one, gravity) Nino suspects that it's been literally half a lifetime ago since he tripped after that dumb, happy rabbit into this Wonderland decorated with bright smiles and brighter sequins, and he doesn't know if the opening to the tunnel is even still there anymore.
Being on this trip, though, reminds him of a time when he might have been able to claw his way out if he'd tried. Aiba has upgraded from the car with the Jun-induced dent from the Hakone trip, but the atmosphere in the car hasn't changed and Sho is still not here, hosting some live event instead. Thankfully, he's joining them in the evening because otherwise Nino doesn't think Aiba would have stopped pouting and insisting he was smiling.
"Your manager told me to pass this along to you," Jun says, presenting Nino a copy of a time table. "There've been some amendments to our rehearsal schedule for after we come back."
On auto-pilot, Nino's mind chimes, "For our 20th anniversary!" because that's what their lives had revolved around for the past six months. Well, up until four days ago when Aiba decided to announce that he was getting married in a week.
"It's like boot camp," Aiba moans from the driver's seat. "Like he doesn't love us anymore."
Nino doesn't need to see Jun's face to know that he's rolling his eyes.
"Do you hate us, Matsujun?" Aiba asks, making the turn into the district Ohno lives in. "Tell the truth, I'll know if you're lying." Aiba's cell phone rings before Jun has the chance to return with a ring-weighted whack over the head, and Aiba takes one hand off the wheel.
Jun reaches over the clutch, reproaching Aiba for improper hand position, and mines out Aiba's cell phone from the unfathomable depths of his pocket. A few crumpled receipts and a tube of lip balm tumble out with it.
"I can't believe this guy is getting married before any of us," Nino says.
In the quiet moments that follow as Aiba hums along to his fiancée telling him to be back in time for one of the billion things they seem to need to do before going to the registrar, Nino thinks Jun could have pointed out to him that he had two chances to be first but chickened out on both. Nino has always appreciated that Jun is more sensitive than that.
When Ohno ducks in, bringing the door closed behind him, he promptly knocks shoulders with Nino, who was sitting on the same side. Nino slides over and spreads the news about Jun's Spartan training program in lieu of a proper hello. Ohno looks like he wants to crawl back in bed and play hermit at the idea of seven o'clock rehearsals but accepts the print-out quietly, folding it into his pouch.
("All for our 20th anniversary!" Nino's mind sings again.)
"Ready?" Aiba asks.
"Yup," Ohno says as Aiba grips the wheel.
They cruise past small hints of blue sky peeking out from between pale, cloudy curtains like grade school children before their first school play. When Ohno cracks open a window, a delicious breath of rain rushes in. Jun fusses at Ohno on Aiba's behalf about the leather seats getting wet. Nino keeps his eyes on the scenery blurring by, the fields of sky printed jade on the earth. He doesn't know if Aiba is taking this route on purpose, but as the car races forward and the familiar scenery invites old memories out of retirement, Nino feels himself more lost than ever inside this rabbit hole.
More than a decade has passed since Nino last took the Sobu line, but he is sure he will carry memories of this landscape to the grave (along with his favorite games, his guitar, and maybe a select list of his most memorable snide remarks).
When Nino first noticed That Gangly New Kid on the train, Aiba had been much more mellow, especially with strangers. He was popular in a way Nino was not, though, because he didn't have to say a lot for the other kids to be charmed by his excitability and whole-heartedness. As Nino stood next to where Aiba sat with a bag of chips balanced between his thighs and asked Aiba if the seat next to him was free, he wasn't thinking about how they would be attached at the hip throughout the rest of their Junior days, or that they would debut in the same insanely successful group, or that they would spend more than half their lives together. He didn't let himself hold high hopes of someone who didn't even know his name.
("Should I be embarrassed about the thinness of my presence, or be embarrassed on behalf of your lack of observational skills," Nino wondered aloud, pointedly, as he tried to shoo away the disappointment tugging pitifully at his sleeve.
Aiba giggled in rolling intakes of breath, catching Nino in its irratic rhythm. "I'm new! Don't pick on the new kid."
"You should know your senpai's face, then, New Kid-kun."
"I'm probably older than you, you know," Aiba pointed out, rubbing Nino's cheeks between his palms. "You're tiny."
"I'm average," Nino asserted. "And so are you, by the way.")
Nino had only wanted a train buddy and didn't expected Aiba to perk up the way he did when Nino waved to him the next day at rehearsals. Cutting through the sprinkling of Juniors between them, Aiba grabbed Nino's arm. It took Nino a beat plus some stumbling to realize that Aiba was tugging him over to the group where Aiba, one week in, had already found his niche.
"I'm fine," Nino said.
"Oh, it's not about you," Aiba assured him. "Grandma says that friends don't watch other friends speed down one-way streets toward Aloneville, so this is just me being a good kid and taking Grandma's advice on life."
"Wait," Nino protested, trying to shake Aiba off but Aiba just wrapped both his arms around Nino's like he was the one holding on for dear life.
"We should give it our all," Aiba said. "It's about giving everything a chance, yeah?"
When Nino turned to tell Aiba that the reason he was here at all was because of 5000 yen from his mother and couldn't work up even half of his all, he found that Aiba was too blinding to see under the afternoon sun that struck his body tenderly with arrows of yellows and reds from beyond the window. It was as if Aiba was an eclipse Nino couldn't stare straight into for fear of the burn.
The fact that they were a dramatic soundtrack away from one of those movies about adolescence and growing pains years before they would actually star in one should have served as some horridly grey premonition in the sky. But with the way Aiba twisted and tucked himself tight against the side of Nino's body like he was claiming this to be his home for ever and beyond, the imminent storm didn't seem so bad.
Before the day Nino approached Aiba on the train, he had spent many a rehearsal watching this little, round-cheeked kid named Jun. Nino didn't like dealing with Matsumoto Jun's type because his type waited in the opening pose of a dance for an entire minute; his type made others seem unmotivated in comparison; his type craved greatness in an eager, agitated way that got on Nino's nerves. But some days, Jun sat alone with his knees tucked in as he watched the other kids push teasingly at each other. On those days, he wore not his huge camera smile but the face of someone who had reached out for something that wasn't there.
Nino wanted to do something for him because that expression was emptier than anything kids their age should even know, but pranking him about a random Junior being his brother had only ended in Jun refusing to believe a word he said after that.
Jun couldn't keep up the cold shoulder for long, though, if only for professional reasons.
During the summer of rehearsals for Stand by Me, the first thing Nino noted about Jun was that for all that he enjoyed reflection (both of the introspection and looking-glass variety), Jun didn't know himself very well at all. He was really more like the poster child for youths lost in adolescence than the self-assured persona he presented on stage and in meetings. He worked so hard because he thought much too little of his natural abilities and had a difficult time not taking criticism personally when his hard work didn't pay off proportionally to a positive reception.
The second thing that Nino picked up on was Jun's semi-realized crush on Toma. It was a sweet puppy love, involving flirting on location buses and Jun taking a blow for the team after he and Toma accidentally bumped a hammer onto Aiba's foot.
"That looks pretty bad," Nino said, examining the purple cloud on the back of Jun's thigh where Aiba had kicked him afterwards.
Jun jumped, pulling up his pants quickly.
Nino stretched out on one of the long benches in the dressing room. "I've never seen Aiba-kun explode at someone like that. Honoring you on a job well done." He accompanied this with a lackadaisical salute.
"It wasn't just my fault," Jun grumbled.
"Nevertheless, you took full responsibility," Nino said. "That was honorable of you."
Jun's face twisted into a scowl. "Why does everything sound sarcastic coming from your mouth?"
"Is it because you wanted to protect Ikuta-kun?"
"Wait-wha-what are you saying?" Jun spluttered, his eyes round and Bambi-like.
Nino shrugged. "Since he's your best friend and all."
"Oh." Jun diverted his gaze and bit down on his lower lip, grazing his teeth over the plump flesh. Jun had really great lips, Nino thought as he stretched sleepily. "Yeah. Toma's my best friend. He's just my best friend, though."
As Aiba and Toma's footsteps sounded in the hall, Nino tilted his head at Jun wordlessly.
Not even Jun was convinced by his acting, and this time it wasn't just a matter of self-confidence.
When Nino walked into the restroom during the play's crank-up dinner, he spotted Jun and Toma's shoes peeking out from underneath the door of a closed stall. The sound of small gasps and rustling of clothes echoed off the walls. Nino mentally applauded Jun on his courage and applauded himself for having the decency not to bring this up until they were thirty years old and drunk and Jun's crush on Toma was history from the age of the dinosaurs.
The only part of this episode undeserving of applause was the fact that at thirty, Nino still wasn't over his own childhood crush and, at thirty, he didn't have the courage Jun had at fourteen to do something about it.
It wasn't analogous, Nino reasoned, what he had with Aiba. Within a few months Jun's feelings for Toma would fade back into pure friendship, and they would revert to their usual days of fighting over manga and swatting at each other on the bus. The way that Jun felt for Sho over the next ten years or so was probably a better object of comparison (if you excluded the ugly confessions and awkward maneuvering that made everyone within a fifty-kilometer radius uncomfortable).
In the beginning, it wasn't so bad. Sho was only the scary senpai with the tacky hair and triple-lined sweatpants who got unreasonably angry at people for dumping their cup ramen in the sink. Despite Nino's lack of interest in this "charisma" who never seemed to calm down, they ended up hanging out in the rehearsal room together on a regular basis. Nino would be obnoxiously bouncing a baseball off the walls while Sho did his homework during breaks. They would talk. Sho always had something to chatter on about, as if he just wanted to dispel words from his body to keep them from springing around inside like SuperBalls wreaking havoc.
As time went on, being seen with Sho landed Nino a role as Jun's Portal to All That is Sakurai Sho. Most of the time, it was a troublesome part to play because being Jun's portal while Jun denied using him as a one meant that Jun did things like dragging him along to buy men's underwear for Yoko after listening to Yoko insist for an entire half hour that the convenience stores in Sendai only sold pink panties.
"See, they're right here," Jun said, unhooking a pack from the wall.
"I think I'll get one too," Nino said. "This one's on sale."
Jun wrinkled his nose. "Isn't that color more suited for middle-age people?"
"Well, not everyone can afford to be as fashionable as Sakurai-kun," Nino said.
Jun swiveled to the opposite aisle to hide his face, running his hand against the bill of a stack of baseball caps. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Not sure if he's into those," Nino said. "I think he said they made his hair look funny."
Jun's hand dropped. "Really?"
Nino grabbed Jun's arm, sifting through the caps. He fit a blue one over Jun's head before Jun could protest.
"Get it as a souvenir," Nino said. When Jun opened his mouth, he added, "For yourself. Do it for yourself."
By a long shot, Jun wasn't some altruistic saint. It was obvious that he spent a lot of time thinking about his ambitions and what he wanted to do with his life, but it was equally obvious that he spent just as long thinking about what he could do for others, to please them, to make them happy. All in all, Matsumoto Jun was a fucking good person.
He wasn't a natural at being liked by people, but as with all his endeavors, he tried his best. Occasionally, these efforts ended in him randomly giving boots to people two years his senior, but Subaru had looked happy about that and the story ended up being fine fodder for variety shows years later, so all was well.
There were few things Nino hated more than forcing himself to change to please others, but as he watched Jun offer to help Aiba with a part of the choreography he couldn't get right, Nino considered the option quite seriously. After all, Nino knew best that it was a lot nicer having a friend who offered you a hand on the edge of a cliff instead of one who pointed and laughed.
Perhaps Nino's tendency to poke fun at others before he was poked was a legacy of the days in elementary school when his classmates would occasionally have a laugh at his expense. They meant no real harm because the victim could have been anyone. When one kid pointed at Nino and blamed him for some random thing that had gone wrong, it was just in the flow of things that everyone hopped on the bandwagon.
A nauseating, helpless sense of déjà vu struck Nino one morning in the Junior dorms, when he walked into the dining room and everyone whipped around to stare at him. The word French toast began to spin around the room and before Nino's eyes everyone turned into spiders weaving a web that they were going to trap him in. No one really remembered who started saying it first but by the end they were all demanding why Nino ate Yoko's piece of French toast, you know there are only two pieces, we have a system for this, and Yoko was complaining about how bad things always happened to him and-and Nino had to get out.
His cheeks already felt hot and the taste on his tongue pickled and sour when Jun tried to say, "Guys, let's stop it," but everyone was young and just enjoying a joke and no one was in the mood to listen.
Nino turned for the door he'd come through just moments ago. Once he reached the front steps of the building, he took off running. He ran and ran and ran until his legs and lungs burned more than his face.
His feet had taken him to the train station and he would have hopped on the next train home if it weren't for the group rehearsals at noon and Music Station performance that evening. As more and more people pushed past him to enter the station, blurring into each other, he felt himself shrink. He was so small, he didn't even have the energy to shrink away.
He collapsed onto the stairs and folded his arms over his knees. "It isn't my fault," he mumbled, dropping his head. "It's not my fault."
"What isn't?"
When Nino looked up, Aiba's eyes were so close to his that their eyelashes might have brushed if they blinked together. He pulled back.
"Sorry, I overslept and when I got up, Matsujun was lecturing everyone and he sent me to look for you, but I'm not sure why." Aiba squeezed himself much closer than necessary next to Nino. "What happened?"
"Go ask Yokoyama," Nino said and didn't realize how bitter was until he heard himself. "He'll talk up a storm, I'm sure."
Aiba tilted his head. "But I asked you," he said. "Did you and Yoko fight?"
"No," Nino said. Nino just wasn't super-close, bath-taking buddies with Yoko like Aiba was. It was as if AibaandYoko were becoming the new AibaandNino, as if Aiba had grown out of Nino and moved on ("Downgraded," a mean little voice in Nino's head corrected) from their childhood together.
Nino buried his chin between the valley of his knees. "It's just not my fault."
Aiba hummed thoughtfully. "I've got an idea," he said after a few beats. "Why don't we play rock-paper-scissors to see whose fault it is?"
Nino hadn't dared to expect much when Aiba began that sentence, but this was just stupid. "You aren't even a part of this," he pointed out.
"I'm always a part of anything that involves you," Aiba said, meeting Nino's eyes evenly.
Nino's heart rammed into his ribcage like a prisoner demanding freedom as he contemplated how to respond to his male friend reciting a line out of a Getsu 9 romance at him when Aiba's face crinkled like foil into a shy, silly grin.
"I can't pull that off, can I," Aiba said. He slapped both his knees firmly. "Well! In any case, since neither of us are Jun-chan or that scary guy who yells at people over ramen, it doesn't matter whose fault it really is. Let's just put an end to it." Aiba's grin softened into a smile that curved gently around his features. "First is rock..."
Aiba had made sure Nino saw that he hid an open palm behind his back. In that split-second before Aiba said, "Rock-paper-scissors," Nino decided that as much as he enjoyed being contrary, he wasn't one to throw stones at the hand stretched out to help him.
The scissors Nino played had small, blunt blades not meant to cut. Aiba slotted his hand between the two blades, in full faith that they would not harm him. Breath held, Nino watched as his lifeline curled around his fingers and squeezed. Aiba's hand pulled away to scratch the back of his head.
"Ah, I lost. I guess it's my fault!" Aiba said, his expression completely incongruous with what he was saying.
Nino laughed lightly. "Better go apologize to Yoko, then," he said, following Aiba's scenario.
"I guess I could apologize via offering special bath-time services." Aiba paired his words with uncoordinated waggling of his eyebrows.
"You're disgusting," Nino said primly.
"Let's go." Aiba grabbed Nino's hand again. "This is the part where we skip into the sunset."
"It's noon," Nino pointed out. Then: "-oh. Rehearsals."
Aiba's grip tightened on Nino's hand. "Then let's hop through the heat of the Tokyo midday sun and get so sweaty and gross that none of our senpai would want to get close enough to kick our asses into next year."
And Nino thought, sighing as he tilted his head to look at Aiba, he really wished Aiba would stop doing that eclipse thing, even if this time it was probably just because Aiba was standing tall with the sun behind him. When Nino stood straight too, he found that the glow around Aiba softened enough that Nino could look into him this time-see his bright eyes, huge with optimism; wide mouth, rich with laugher; high eyebrows, reaching for the sky.
"Stupid rabbit," Nino muttered. A bounce carried his steps back to the dorms, too, though.
Nino didn't believe in the concept of falling in love. Falling in love was less falling than tripping into some shallow ditch and believing that you might be okay for a while until you a) actually found your grounding again, or b) discovered too late that that shallow ditch was actually a deep pit you'd been slipping down the side of and now, fuck, you're stuck.
Nino made this realization after the taping of a 8Ji Da segment. Considering he and Aiba and Jun were dancing center-stage with mikes and sparkly bowties, it should have been quite a fantastic day. The problem was three-fold: filming took place five days after White Day, Aiba had gotten himself a girlfriend on White Day, and said girlfriend was in the audience during filming.
Guess that went well, Nino thought when he saw Aiba run off to talk to the girl once the shoot was over.
After Nino finished changing back into his own clothing, he considered going home on his own since he didn't want Aiba to come out arm-in-arm with his girlfriend and be third-wheeling them the entire train ride home.
But when Aiba called after him just as he started down the stairs, Aiba was alone. His cheeks were quivering half way between a smile and a sob. Aiba didn't say anything after that, so Nino didn't ask. It was only a matter of time, and Nino admitted to being impressed that Aiba managed to hold off from actually crying until they were on the train and Aiba opened his phone to delete her number. Luckily, the few people sitting close by were either preoccupied or deeply asleep.
Nino studied Aiba's face, stared at how he was trying to fold himself into a tiny, neat size so that someone could just take him home where everything was warm, but his corners weren't lining up and he ended up jumbled and gnarled in his own hands. Not without some resignation, Nino started cleaning up the mess, taking Aiba into his much smaller hands and realigning the pieces.
The girl had told Aiba that he felt so far away, Aiba said, blubbering into Nino's shoulder. She said that she couldn't handle all the lights, and what did that even mean?
Nino had an inkling, having recently discovered the dark sides of fame, but withheld this grain of knowledge for now.
Aiba sniffled against the wet spot he'd created on Nino's shirt. "You'll always stay with me, right?" he said, brown bristles brittle and sharp in his eyes.
"Mm," Nino said, even though this did not identify with the nature of their relationship. He hoped the poignant growing pains soundtrack wasn't swelling up in the background right now.
But then: "Really? You're going to stay by my side no matter how sparkly and famous I get?"
That was more like it. Nino rolled his eyes and reached out to whack Aiba over the head, but his hand fell short on Aiba's shoulder when their noses smacked into each other and their lips met and their eyelashes brushed, every bit as fluttery as he had imagined. Nino watched Aiba pull back into his own seat in a slow, stop-motion sequence and felt his blood pulsing in his ears at thrice the speed.
"I do like you best," Aiba said, with a smile that just wasn't fair for someone whose eyes and nose and lips were swollen and ugly.
He was beautiful.
Shit. Nino stared blankly through the window, clutching blindly with his eyes at the light above the pit.
The train ducked into a tunnel.
Neither of them brought up what happened on the train, so it passed, muffled by the hustle and bustle of variety show tapings and back-dancing and drama filming.
Nino was cast for his first drama because he didn't mind shaving his head. For the first time in this job, he was surrounded by adults, all of whom praised him on his acting and pledged that they would adopt him one day. While people being happy with his work pleased Nino, he found that in order to keep the peace-whether in variety shows or dramas-being a role was more important than being a person. Maybe it was better not to read the drama script at home and to work things out only under the director's supervision. Maybe it was better to play games during the meetings. Maybe it was better to keep himself from forming his own ideas at all instead of trying to force them back down.
The thing about being young was you constantly felt like you were pushing forward with your sticky thin limbs against a world too big for you, and it was only your determination that made you invincible. Nino didn't remember ever feeling invincible. It wasn't even a matter of giving up; he would never take on the world in the first place because that included too many things he didn't give a shit about.
He wasn't born for this. He wasn't standing on the right side of the camera lens. People got in front of the camera because they wanted others to know them; people got behind the camera because they wanted to know others. Nino was more fascinated with finding out about other people because he knew himself well enough.
Maybe he would go to America. He could be a different person there.
Aiba draped himself against the back of the couch, poking his head over Nino's shoulder as Nino filled out a questionnaire for a television magazine.
"You do this many things on the weekend?" Aiba asked. He was crunching on senbei and dropping crumbs all over Nino's questionnaire. "I thought all you did was sit at home and-wait."
"The fans might be interested in knowing details about the types of games I play," Nino said, holding the pie chart he drew up to the light like it was some masterpiece.
"Don't you want to seem more active?" Aiba said. "I mean, we sometimes play baseball on the weekends and stuff."
"It would ruin the harmony of the pie," Nino said. "Besides, it's part of my character."
"You could have a best-baseball-friends-with-Aiba-chan character instead of a creeper-in-dark-basement character," Aiba pointed out.
"I don't know how I'd like my character to be associated with someone who still can't multitask," Nino said. The crumbs were raining down on his shoulder now, and he brushed them briskly onto the couch. "Keeping your mouth closed and chewing at the same can't be that difficult, surely, even for you."
"Have a senbei," Aiba said. "Energy for your drama shoot later."
When Nino looked from the bag Aiba was offering to Aiba's face, he forced himself to slouch against the couch, slowly unscrewing the bolts that had fastened themselves to his back without a word of greeting throughout the past few days. He took the bag wordlessly as Aiba grabbed at his shoulders, digging his thumbs in a painful attempt at a massage.
In Nino's mouth, the salt of the senbei mingled with the poison that remained on his tongue after he spat most of it at Aiba. He didn't utter a word of complaint about the massage. He didn't mention that he couldn't create a best-baseball-friends-with-Aiba-chan character because to him, that wasn't a character at all.
Nino didn't know what character that guy was supposed to be. The old man picking his nose in the corner.
For all that Ohno Satoshi was something of a legend among the Juniors, he was surprisingly lackluster in person, seeming to be devoid of any motivation to do his job and even the smallest bit of interest in the glitter and glamor around him. In a way, Ohno was the kindred spirit Nino had been searching for since he entered Johnny's.
The Juniors were filming a summer special out in this huge park, and Jun and Toma were running around throwing water balloons at each other as Aiba tried to extract juice from a coconut. Nino warily eyed the knife Aiba wielded from where he sat next to Ohno. The same scene had apparently also entered Ohno's frame of vision.
"Mm...but I think you're more of a coconut," Ohno said as they mused in the hazy, heat-induced tones of summer about how they wanted to be unweighted and free like the children of dandelion.
Nino threw Ohno a sideways glance. "You mean I get to be smashed into pieces by Aiba-kun instead of blown by you? Joy," he said.
"It's so tiring," Ohno said.
Nino gestured at the dandelion Ohno was trying to blow bald, "No one's forcing you to do that, you realize."
"I meant, like, all this..." Ohno waved his hand at the camera as it came by. "Idol stuff."
Nino watched the coconut explode all over Sho, who the bad karma to have been kindly bringing around napkins. "No one's forcing you to do it," he repeated.
"I guess," Ohno said.
Thy were in that weird period of adolescence when all the adults thought they were flipping their shit because they were beginning to figure out that when adults talked about growing up and being rooted, it sounded like children were potted plants in someone's living room that only needed a bit of sunshine and a good watering once every three days while every adolescent was convinced that they were meant to be more than that.
Or in the case of the three who wanted to turn down the chance to debut at the end of that summer, it was a matter of having smaller dreams than that. As Sho explained the night before he and Nino would go find Johnny-san together, debuting in an idol group was like buying out a college drop-out's start-up company when Sho had planned on an investment more like buying a house for retirement.
Although, Sho had said, lips pressed tight in thought, they would go see Johnny-san tomorrow, but if he wasn't there, maybe that was fate.
Nino tucked himself deeper into his sleeping bag.
Johnny-san wasn't at his office the next day. They only found a scrap piece of paper with a single kanji, written bold and circled imperious.
Just because Nino finished his last back-dancing performance before he was due to hop on a plane to Hawaii, three days later, didn't mean that he had given up on talking his way out of it. He was loitering around backstage, trying to catch any of the higher-ups, when someone tugged him by the back of his collar towards the door.
"Come home with me," Aiba said when Nino squirmed against his hold.
"I've got something to do, lemme go," Nino said. "I've been going to your house too often anyway."
"My grandfather wants to adopt you, which shouldn't be too hard since you already call my dad 'Dad,'" Aiba said, ignoring Nino's demands to be released. He was steering them not in the direction of the elevators but the narrow side-hall with the abandoned vending machines. "Well, either that or he suggests that we just get married already, except Mom pointed out that that's illegal in Japan."
As if that was the only problem.
"But you know what's close enough to being married." Suddenly, Aiba stopped in his tracks so that Nino crashed into him. He leaned close with a curious look on his face. "Being in a group together."
"You're in, too."
Aiba nodded. "Johnny-san called me this morning, and he didn't really say why we were going, but that's something even I can figure out."
"Do you actually want to do this?"
"I don't know," Aiba admitted. "I don't know what I really want to do."
"Then why-"
"But I don't think any of us does," Aiba said. "We have things we think we want to do but we never know whether or not we'll actually like it, so why not start with things we can do? And if it doesn't work, at least we have each other?"
Except they didn't because if there was no group, they would be just individuals who had no obligations to one another. Besides, in Nino's eyes, there would be no "if it doesn't work" once they chose to be together. If they debuted, they would be bound by one name. They would be like the Suzukis or the Sazaes but they would be the Arashis and Nino wouldn't be able to tear that family apart the way his father tore his apart.
"Aiba-kun-"
Aiba dropped his grip on Nino. "Come home with me?" he said.
Nino's back hit the vending machine.
"Come home with me." Aiba crowded into Nino's space.
"Nino," Aiba was saying now, his breath warm against Nino's cheek. Nino's body was caged in Aiba's as Aiba leaned in, giving Nino time to push him away if he wanted to.
But all that was going through Nino's mind was that rabbit with the big pink ears and stopwatch, counting down to the moment he would leap into the same tunnel down to Wonderland that Nino was trapped in. As much as Nino wanted not to be alone down here anymore, he had to stop that mad rabbit because rabbits were such gentle, sensitive creatures that always smiled through the upward curve of their mouths despite the tears in their red, red eyes.
Nino twisted out from between Aiba's arms. "Let's get going. We need to get ready," he said. "In three days, we'll be facing the world, right?"
When he turned back to look at Aiba, Aiba was wearing a victorious grin that looked like a game of connect-the-dots where he missed one dot in the beginning and the whole drawing was off.
"You bet," Aiba said, raising a hand that Nino met in a high-five.
Nino didn't let go of Aiba's hand, didn't dare let go, until the corners of Aiba's lips were no longer trembling and his body no longer looked like a mannequin with loose joints.
"Race you to the station?" Nino challenged and took off before Aiba had the chance to respond.
"Cheater!" Aiba said, waving his arms to try to catch Nino by his clothes.
They charged out of the hall, blocking each other on the stairs, and tumbled out onto the sidewalk with smiles redrawn.
"Get your mom to cut your hair before you come!" Nino shouted as Aiba pulled ahead of him. "I'm not having matching haircuts with you for life."
Aiba twisted his head to stick his tongue out at Nino, legs rocketing forward at full speed. They were running into the setting sun this time, all properly movie-like, but the growing pains soundtrack was fading fast. In three days, they had to be adults.
As they announced their debut, they tried to match their enthusiasm with the enormity of the giant, brown coconuts surrounding them. Nino was still sick from the cruiser. He and Aiba still shared the same haircut.
Thankfully, that changed three months into the business, mostly because their agency assigned them a hair stylist that was not Nino's mother. Over the course of the next twenty years, more than their hair changed, of course: they moved into their own apartments, they dated girls and boys that came and went, they stirred up a storm like they promised. But in Nino's mind, there were more things that stayed the same.
For example, the landscape on the round-about ("Picturesque!" Aiba always corrects) route Aiba likes to take from Tokyo to Chiba. For example, Aiba's enthusiasm as he dove head-first into uncharted waters. For example, Nino's wariness of that enthusiasm.
"Are you sure you aren't driving us into the bottom of some ditch," Nino says as the car bounced like a boat in tempestuous waters. Again. "I thought we were going to your house in Chiba."
"Oh we are," Aiba says, each syllable coated with sugary giddiness.
"I don't think I like where this is going," Jun says. "Or where we're going."
Nino narrows his eyes at the line of trees they are approaching. "Is the plan to drive right through that? Because I think it's time to consider Plan B."
"Nah, we can think about that the morning after," Aiba says so breezily that Nino almost doesn't catch the joke. When he does, though, it takes Jun reminding him that they don't really want to end up stuck in a pit to resist throwing something heavy at Aiba's head.
Aiba hums happily to himself as he turns onto a hidden trail off the main path (which was more of a continuous speed bump than a road, but). "Wake Leader up, yeah? We're here."
"This isn't anywhere near-" Nino begins, batting at Ohno. He stops and blinks a few times at the thing before him.
"Welcome to my home!" Aiba says, opening his arms grandly.
"You bought this," Nino says, just to confirm.
"Yes!" Pride absolutely radiates from Aiba's face.
As Ohno rubs his eyes blearily, Nino leans an arm on his shoulder and says, "Hey, did Aiba-kun tell you about how he secretly owns an oil well?"
"I don't need to own an oil well to buy a house," Aiba protests with a pout. "Leader has a house in Atami, and you accepted that perfectly fine."
"He owns a house," Jun says, his eyes glued on Aiba's new home. He looks like he needs to sit down despite already being seated. "You own the palace of a small principality."
"I got a pretty good deal on it, since it's so far removed from everything," Aiba says, waving them all out of the car. "Come on, I'll show you guys around."
Nino watches Aiba and Jun and Ohno duck out of the car. He doesn't walk toward the house until Ohno drags him along. He feels much too unready for it.
"Ugh, you have your television facing that way again," Nino groans when Aiba leads them into the dining room. "Why do you insist on staring at wires while you eat? I've been telling you for the past eight years to turn it."
"And I've been telling you that you'd have a say if you lived here," Aiba says.
"I swear you're doing this just to spite me."
"I learn from the best," Aiba says, proudly.
"Are you sure it's all right that we're staying here?" Jun says despite that he's already making himself comfortable with all the brand new tools and appliances in the kitchen. "This is an excellent iron plate, by the way."
"I know, Nino got it for me for my eighteenth birthday." Aiba turns towards Nino. "Aren't you flattered that I've kept this in brand new condition?"
"Unused condition, you mean," Nino says. "That thing was expensive you know."
"But I mean," Jun says, still digging through all of Aiba's cabinets, fully loaded with pots and pans and condiments, "aren't you and your new family supposed to christen everything?"
You and your new family.
You and your new family.
You and your new family.
Nino had spent the first ten years of his acquaintance with Jun thinking of Jun as his foil and it still surprises Nino sometimes, how strikingly similar their thinking can be.
"I didn't buy the house because I'm getting married," Aiba said. "We're still living in my apartment in Tokyo because this place is too far. It's more like an investment for retirement."
"Why is the person who'd be most touched by that sentence not here?" Nino says.
"You did a really good job decorating," Ohno says, fingering the beige curtains.
Aiba beams brightly because even now, none of them are immune to the power of Ohno's praise. "Oh oh, do you know what I also did a good job of?" he says. "Pull back that curtain, Leader."
When Ohno does, Nino sees a large porch flooded with waves of yellow afternoon sunlight. Five chaise lounges sit on the deck invitingly.
"We can star-gaze there tonight. I specifically had a deck built here because from this angle, the house and the trees don't block out the constellations," Aiba explains.
"Star-gazing," Nino echoes.
"I'm going to start the coffee," Jun says. "We've got a long, sappy night ahead of us."
A game of family make-believe begins while they cook dinner, as it tends to whenever they do anything remotely domestic together.
("There's a bit of traditional role reversal going on here," Nino comments, watching Jun give delicate care to decorating the chilled tofu that the rest of them are going to destroy in less than a minute. "Considering that Mom's out on a business trip and Dad's making dinner."
"But does anyone really want to eat Mom's cooking?" Aiba points out.
"Are you supposed to be my brother?"
"I've never really understood Aiba-chan's character setting in this," Ohno says, swinging mildly in his rocking chair and looking far too perfect for his part.
"I thought he was that uncle who always hangs out at our house mooching off of us," Nino says. "You know, the one everyone wishes would just go home."
"THIS IS MY HOUSE, OKAY.")
The game carries on into dinner, during which they catch the end of Sho's broadcast. They begin to lose concentration after the third round of beers, though. By 9 PM, they move out onto the deck, having finished with dinner and clumsy clean-up. They are close enough to the ocean that the breeze feels slightly salty and scratchy against their skin. For the longest time, they don't talk. They're looking, just looking.
Nino isn't as into gazing at the stars as he is into gazing at Aiba gazing at the stars. Aiba was born to be stared at in awe, in wonder, in staccato bursts of emotion. He had long ago exchanged his cherry lollipop grin for this soft, blanket-like smile, and it's never looked so gentle combined with the fuzzy x's that form in his eyes from the string of lights in the sky.
X - the universal unknown.
X - the universal no.
Staring up at the stars reminds Nino of the time he did Ryusei no Kizuna. Unlike the Ariake siblings, who faced a statute of limitations on the murder case, Nino is facing a statute of limitations on his ambiguous friend-romance with Aiba, as if being in love is a crime and you have only so much time to decide if you want to do something about your feelings before they expire. They have been teetering on the brink of things for so long that they must now either fall together or fall apart. The decision, though, is mostly already made, has probably been written in the stars since the beginning, since the first time he pushed Aiba away, and solidified ten years later after a concert when they had been feeling so on top of the world and had just too much to lose.
Another ten years have passed. They never talk about it, not explicitly. It's not in the nature of their relationship.
"I'm going to use the bath first," Nino says. When he stands, the floorboards groan. The rest of them hum in acknowledgement.
He had been wrong that day in the grimy hall outside the studio with Aiba. Nino had imagined that debuting would be like being repackaged from AibaandNino into the new Arashi combo deal. Instead of being attached at the hips and sharing everything with Aiba, he would have to do it with three other people. But early on, Nino had realized that those chains were entirely voluntary, that they had no personal commitments to each other apart from what they chose to hold.
In spite of the five-for-one, one-for-five sentiments that pulled them through the years and into super-stardom, they are all still their own person with their own lives, through and through. They come together to sell dreams and in that moment they are one, but the moment they sober from that dream, they are five.
There probably never was an AibaandNino; they never were the Arashis. People never truly become we.
The plural pronoun is only a delusion of the lonely.
Nino has a leg in the tub when the phone in the bathroom rings. Aiba had made this house so move-in ready. Nino hadn't expected the landline to be set up in a home Aiba claims he isn't going to live in.
On the third ring, Nino picks up.
He is greeted with Sho grumbling, "Why don't any of you answer your cell phones?"
"Who did you call first?" Nino says, another game of make-believe: possessive girlfriend version.
"...You, darling?" Sho tries after a long pause and they laugh.
"Where are you right now?" Nino asks.
"On my way over. Given that this obstacle course of a road doesn't break my car, I'll be there in about thirty minutes."
"Oh, poor Sho-chan," Nino coos. "As if nature needed to give you a reason to drive any more slowly."
"Better safe than sorry," Sho says. "As with all endeavors."
Just for that, Nino almost hangs up on him. When did birth control jokes become a fad in their group?
"How's it been over there?"
"Hard to say if this is the pre- or post-wedding trip," Nino says, "considering there have been castles and family dinners and star-gazing."
"I'm so sorry I'm missing out," Sho says, and he's half-serious because he's into fate and romance in a way that Nino is not.
A silence settles over the phone as the bath water settles against Nino's skin.
"How've you been?" Sho asks.
"Didn't we just go over this?"
"I mean, you-" Sho stresses, a little too cautiously.
"It's one and the same, whether you mean one you or multiple yous," Nino says. When you're on the outside looking in, you can't know the difference.
"Ah." In the pause that follows, Nino sees in his mind's eye Sho pressing his lips together in thought. If he strains his ears, Nino can almost hear Sho deliberating whether or not to take a crack at Arashi's open secret. Sho does: "Are you going to tell him?"
"Oh, I don't know, I need the proper moonlight and three dozen roses, and I haven't really had time to get on that since we got there," Nino says, trying to keep it light.
"I don't think you deserve to anymore," Sho says.
Nino winces, caught by surprise. Sho, contrary to his usual thoughtfulness and care, can be painfully honest at times.
"You've had more than two decades to do it and you didn't. Now that he's found someone he's happy with, you would be awful to finally tell him what he's been wanting to hear."
"It's not like that," Nino says.
"What's not like that? You've lined up for hours at stores to get him clothes you think he'd like. For his eighteenth birthday, you got him that ridiculously expensive iron plate, which-frankly?-I don't think he's even ever used," Sho says. "You're not really as cheap as your television character; you just don't spend money or energy or anything on people you don't care a fucking lot about."
Nino is quiet. "He still has it."
"What?" Right now, Sho is probably trying to figure out how to pinch himself between the eyebrows without letting go of the wheel.
"The iron plate. He still has it and he's been taking good care of it," Nino says.
Sho sighs. "Do you remember that conversation we had our third or fourth year into Arashi? We decided that in order to move forward, we had to let go of the comforts and guarantees we had at the time. I think your talk is long overdue."
Nino would point out to Sho how pleasantly talking things out ended for him and Jun if it weren't for that, at the very least, they had been able to find a resolution early on. It's just that while Sho and Jun were into efficiency and getting answers, Nino and Aiba would choose elusive procrastination over blunt confrontation, every single time, if it meant delaying the collapse of a not unhappy status quo.
"Don't do anything you can't take responsibility for," Sho warns.
"I know," Nino says. "It's not like that, okay?"
"You can't say you're not in love with him," Sho says, kinder this time.
"It's not always the same, having someone you're in love with in this moment and having someone you're always going to be in love with," Nino says.
"That's just a matter of-" Sho begins before a crashing sound stops him mid-sentence. "Nino? Are you okay?"
"That wasn't me," Nino says.
A beat passes. "Sorry, ran into a plant," Aiba's voice sounds sheepishly down the phone line. Nino hears it double as Aiba pushes open the door to the bathroom, holding another one of the landline phones.
"Hasn't your wise old grandmother taught you not to eavesdrop?" Nino narrows his eyes, mostly to cover up for the shades of red he feels his face turning.
"Sorry," Aiba says again, genuinely.
"Well, it seems like I'm beginning to lose signal in the countryside. I'll see you guys in a bit!" Sho says quickly. He hangs up without waiting for Nino's response.
Aiba gestures at the bath. "I was coming to join you in here," he explains.
"And?" Nino raises an eyebrow.
Aiba grabs a bubble bath buddy in the shape of a bunny from the cabinet next to the tub, holding it out to Nino as a peace offering.
Nino crosses his arms. "Aren't you going to get in?"
As Aiba nods and begins to strip, Nino thinks that Aiba looks more like a bunny than the bubble bath block, with his ears perked, nose twitching, sniffing the air for the most subtle of changes. When Nino stares straight at Aiba, he finds that Aiba is already staring back.
In his head, Nino carefully recounts the story of Alice in Wonderland. If memory serves correctly, even though the tale revolves around Alice's fall into Wonderland, isn't it really the rabbit with the stopwatch that jumped first?
That bunny, he must have been tired after waiting in the pit for so long, Nino realizes.
Aiba splashes a wave of bubbly water at Nino. Nino splashes back.
"What," Nino says.
"You don't tell me things anymore," Aiba complains, a little incoherently as he is blowing bubbles in the bubbles. "Or ever."
"Says the person who went ahead and bought a castle."
"That's different," Aiba insists. "Because my buying a house doesn't have anything to do with you."
"But it could have had everything to do with me," Nino says. "'You would have a say if you actually lived here.' You've been saying that for eight years."
Aiba laughs. "It's true, though."
"What's also true is that you've known what I said to Sho-chan for more than eight years," Nino says.
"Yeah," Aiba admits. "Though I don't feel like I've been enjoying any Takeuchi Yuuko-class privileges as one of your forevers."
"You don't put photobooks of me next to your Vivian Hsu collection either," Nino returns.
"Like that's my fault."
"Well, it's certainly not mine."
They meet eyes over the sea of bubbles. It doesn't matter whose fault it is. It's never really mattered, between the two of them.
"First is rock..." they begin in unison, and Aiba doesn't need to hide his open palm behind his back anymore-that hand will never change. But Nino throws stones at it this time because they have both been hanging on to each other for too long at the rocky edge and they must let go.
"Rock-paper-scissors."
Aiba's eyes pause on Nino's fist for a three full seconds, during which he attempts an imitation of a smile, but it is a feat too tasking, too daunting. "Yay, see? Your fault," Aiba says, sliding into the bath.
The quiver in Aiba's voice is because he's speaking into the water, Nino thinks, for Aiba's sake.
The quiver in his own voice as he says, "Your expression doesn't match what you're saying," is because he, too, is trying to hide his tears among the bubbles.
Nino is thirty-six and still doesn't believe in the concept of falling in love. He does believe in slowly sliding into love the way they slip deep into the sea that embraces only the two of them-but they had hit rock bottom years ago. Now, it is time to climb back up.
Aiba's hand finds Nino's in the water and their fingers twist together, locked and secure and the way it's always been, the way it's always going to be, if only in a strictly Arashi way.
Nino tightens their hold on each other. Maybe climbing could wait, for just one more night.
When they get out of the bathroom, tucked into fluffy robes, they find Sho drinking with Jun and Ohno at the kitchen counter. Sho smiles at them softly and pats the two empty stools next to him.
Aiba has five of everything in this house. Perhaps five is just a good number for a set. Perhaps even now as Aiba is moving on to a different stage in his life, there's a strong part of him that wants all of Arashi to know that he isn't going to set the group on the back burner. It's just that they have dedicated so much of their lives to the band, to maintaining relationships with the fans and management and each other, that in the calm before the second storm Aiba had wanted to drop the anchor for a different type of happiness: the type of ordinary, domestic bliss that most people take for granted.
On bright, sunny days perfect for baseball, Nino fleetingly considers having children, but he approaches marriage with more caution. Getting married is like making the same type of investment in someone else that he had already put in Arashi. He doesn't have enough emotional currency for that. Probably, this was what happened between Jun and Sho, too. By the time Jun had confessed at a point in his life when he'd just reached adulthood and was still full of hope for the future, Sho was four years past that stage, having already made a risk investment on which the returns had been underwhelming.
As Jun drapes blankets over Sho and Ohno and Aiba's shoulders while they sleep steadfastly against the counter, Nino wonders if Jun had ever come to understand that or if he only let time bury away his frustrated, unrequited feelings for Sho. Nino's never stirred up the courage to ask directly, for fear of adding salt to injury.
But when Jun's arm doesn't linger, even for a split-second longer, around Sho, Nino thinks that there's really no need to poke at that old scar.
Later into the night, when Jun comments that a full moon and alcohol would make for lovely poetry, Nino giggles drunkenly and says, "So romantic, Jun-pon is."
Jun rolls his eyes at the nickname. "I try to be. The world would be a more beautiful place that way."
Nino frowns as the words ring familiarly in his ears. "Isn't that something I've said before?"
"I like things you say," Jun says.
"I appreciate the support," Nino says. "I'm a fan of you too."
Jun laughs, taking a swig from his cup. "Have you met a group more kiss-ass than ours?"
"Nope," Nino says.
Jun laughs again, louder. "I don't think I could have made it through without it."
The greater miracle is that their group made it through all these years when, from the beginning, three out of five wanted to quit. The way they always find the good in each other definitely helped. They try their hardest to look for it because they want to like each other, to fit together like the pie charts they've been drawing for magazines since forever. If one of them can't find the strength to hold his own fifth for the day, the others will fight whatever uphill battle they must to fill the circle in the meantime. Together, they never let themselves be less than 100 percent.
"I mean," Jun begins, and Nino is expecting something idealistic and profound. "We'll go on and fall in love with other people at different points in our lives, but Arashi is the thing we'll always be in love with."
Underneath the heat of the alcohol, Nino would be touched by this, except: "Was our entire group eavesdropping on my phone conversation?"
Jun only looks slightly remorseful. "I really like the things you say."
Only after Jun wraps Nino neatly in his arms and hugs Nino to sleep on Aiba's absurdly huge bed does Nino decide to forgive him.
At 7:30 the next morning, Jun gets a call about a producer from Fuji TV who wants to have lunch with him. This means that there is Business with a capital B to be discussed which must be prioritized before their little retreat because that is how being a successful adult goes.
Jun insists on going back alone as not to ruin the trip but Aiba shakes his head and Sho says, "We can always continue tonight," and Nino adds, "At Aiba-kun's non-castle-like home," while Ohno nods in agreement because that is how being Arashi goes.
(As they sweep through Aiba's house, packing up their belongings, Ohno asks, bent over the laundry basket, "Why was Nino wearing too layers of underwear?"
Nino frowns. "I wasn't. It's not like my crotch needs extra insulation during summer."
"But there are two pairs with your name on it," Ohno says, lifting both of them by the tag.
"Isn't that the god-awful one you got on sale when we were in Sendai?" Jun says as he folds away his own clothes. "I can't believe you still have it."
"I didn't bring those here," Nino says just as Aiba pokes his head into the bathroom to see what the stall is all about.
"Oh, you can just leave those here," Aiba says. "Or wait, that's the pair I've been meaning to get back to Nino."
"I'm good," Nino says. "Keep them. Please."
"I wonder what happened to that hat I got..." Jun says.
Sho's head floats in above Aiba's and says, "Reminiscing about fragments of our childhood is great but we've got a three-hour drive down a long, country road waiting impatiently."
In the end, the underwear stays at the bottom of the laundry basket. Some things are meant to be left behind.)
On the way back, they get stuck in one of the ditches they bounced over on the way there. At 8:15 AM on a dusty dirt road, five super idols try their best to shove a car along. Falling in had been easy, but as they are finding out, falling out is not.
"Because for one, gravity," Nino points out as he puts himself in Alice's shoes in an attempt to figure out how to dig out Sho's car. The inconvenient timing doesn't allow him to linger very long in his roleplay.
But what he does discover in his ruminations is that, Jun's lunch aside, falling doesn't have to be an awful thing and not being able to fall out isn't the end of the world either. What matters isn't so much what happens as the people by your side as it happens. Nino is glad that the five of them had weak enough resolves about not being in a group, that they suspended their disbelief in living a dream. Maybe, just maybe, we has been more than just a delusion.
For the past twenty years, and for twenty more, they continue to push with their too-thin limbs against a too-strong world. But their determination makes them invincible, always.