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ninoexchange2019-06-18 11:33 pm
nino_mod) wrote in ninoexchange2019-06-18 11:33 pm
Entry tags:
fic for azurevanillasky!
For: azurevanillasky
From: :3.
Title: us, therefore (free of any eden)
Pairing/Focus: Aiba/Nino
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~4,500
Warnings: None.
Summary: Nino writes bitter beginnings, and Aiba just wants him to have a happy ending.
Notes: Why have one Aimiya when you can have a variety pack! ...was what I told myself as I failed to overcome my crippling indecisiveness over what I wanted to write for you, my dear recipient. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy this humble cheese platter of bff-ery :’) Also, huge love for my beta E for making time to give some much-needed insight and encouragement. Title is inspired by the poem “You, Therefore” by Reginald Shepherd.
happy endings // i’ve seen it in a dream before
Most stories save the best parts for last. Most stories are about love. Most loves are good only in the beginning. Who doesn't want a good story?
And so Nino sells beginnings. He masters the art of writing beginnings: every morning another lingering glance across the platform; every morning another chapter of non-definitive acts and stars colliding like a crash test. It's all the same chapter. The story never moves forward, but who really cares? As long as you put it on a catchy new hook with a heart-wrenching bridge--who cares?
He's sick of love stories, but he holds nothing against the money.
His best friend's heart is always on sale. He's tall and lanky, a bed of brown hair flopping over eyes that sparkle like the first snowflakes of winter, a little wet and brittle, and Nino has probably romanticized him in his mind twenty times over because what's the harm in that if it's just one of many acts of desperation.
His best friend's heart is always on sale, but Nino doesn't have the right currency. So he takes the paper bills where he can, sells his catalog of happy beginnings.
They kissed once in his room. Aiba-kun was rolling over for another Umaibo just as Nino put down his guitar and time suspended between them for a moment in a meeting of bony elbows as Nino felt courage filling his lungs and he said, "You've got something here," and instead of gesturing to his own lips, he put his finger on Aiba's and then his lips were there too. The floorboards moaned; so did he. But he was only sixteen, and it probably sounded more like a high-pitched squeak much like anything else that came from his mouth.
Except for the songs. The songs spelled out sultry desire, whined of heartbreak before his heart was even whole.
Aiba had let Nino pull back first. His eyes were wide open, neither shocked nor cruel, as he bit his lip around lost words, measuring the seconds before when Nino might say something that would change their friendship irrevocably.
"We're out of the consomme flavor," he said, rising to his feet in an abrasive act of bare skin against hardwood.
Nino watched Aiba rush out the door, listened to the shuffle of his steps on the stairs. This was hardly a bad ending, but he’d have written a better beginning.
cloud-watching // his life is a vapor trail
The succulent Jun buys him as a housewarming gift comes with a fairy. His name is Aiba. According to a quick Internet search Nino runs on the legends of such creatures, Aiba is supposed to be able to fit in his breast pocket and have red skin, but he looks just like any gangly Japanese guy. (His forearms and face may be above average, but Nino will sidestep that thought for now.)
"It's better than looking deathly pale," Aiba says, checking Nino out pointedly. His hand reaches for the basket of chips on Nino’s desk. "Indoors type?"
"Fair-skinned," Nino corrects testily because he had counted on a companion that he will need to water once a week, not a pain in the ass he will have to babysit and share his snacks with.
When he mentions as much, Aiba just flops onto his bed and kicks his feet. "I make better company than that thing." When he raises a finger, Nino expects him to point at the little potted plant, but instead he begins a list: "For one, you can talk and talk and talk and it will never say anything to share your loneliness. Two: tree-hugging should remain strictly figurative, unless you enjoy scratching the ‘fair’ skin of your delicates with bark. I, on the other hand, give great hugs. Whether or not you deserve them is a different story, I guess. Three--"
Aiba's face is very close, all of a sudden. There are pieces of the sky buried in the earth, Nino realizes as he stares into his eyes.
"Only people whose hearts beat in sync with mine can see me," Aiba says. "This is actually something of a miracle."
Nino feels the warmth wisps of Aiba's breath as he whispers miracle against Nino's skin, and when Nino takes in a breath from that same pool of air, he feels Aiba's words tremor inside his stomach like a tuning fork.
But then Aiba is throwing his head back and laughing, off-rhythm and hysterical. Even as Nino realizes with a prick of irritation that he has been played, he appreciates the way Aiba's laughter doesn't scrape against his throat on its way out. Maybe it's because Aiba is a mischievous fairy with not a trouble in the world. Maybe it's just him.
Nino lets his back cave into a slouch as he begins to dig for the gift receipt. "I'm taking you back to the store."
"You can take that thing back but I'm staying here," Aiba says, this time pointing at the plant.
"Aren't you a part of that thing?"
"I guess." Aiba shrugs. "But I can live for a month or two without it."
"What about after that?"
"I become seafoam? A falling star? I'd be a bird if I had the choice, though." When he reaches for another chip, Nino moves the basket out of his reach and he falls off the bed. His dark hair splays messily over his face and he looks up at Nino with such a betrayed expression that Nino ends up handing him the basket with a resigned sigh.
"What, is it your dream to fly?" He sounds more condescending than he intends to, but Aiba answers with an enthusiastic nod. "Let's strike a deal, then," Nino says. "I help you become an...bird and you stop stealing my food."
"Oh, you're not making me leave?"
"Well, you'd already be flying away," Nino points out.
Aiba agrees with too much trust for his slim body, practically shaking with excitement. Nino worries for a moment that Aiba will collapse under the weight of his anticipation, but he just picks up the next chip and crunches on.
"I'm ready!" Aiba says, flinging open the bathroom door the next evening.
Nino jumps hurriedly into the shower. "Don't follow me into the bathroom!" Ten years of living alone had nursed him out of the habit of locking doors behind him; he keeps forgetting that he, a man in his thirties, now has a roommate.
"But you said you'd help me fly," Aiba insists, his voice bouncing off the bathroom tiles. Part of this whole fairy physiology must mean that Aiba’s body is full of voltage, not blood, Nino decides.
"That's at my convenience," he says. "Right now, I'm going to take a shower and go to sleep because I'm tired from work."
"But you promised!" Aiba protests, distraught. A frown folds his face along the fault lines on his cheeks, by his eyes, between his eyebrows.
"Look," Nino says with a sigh, poking his head out around the shower curtain. "You're not a real person, so you don't understand, but there are more important things in other people's lives than helping you reach your dreams, all right?"
In the silence that follows, Nino feels the foreshocks of an earthquake, but the raging disaster never comes. Aiba just kind of looks like he's crumbling, which might actually be even worse. Long moments tick by like a metronome, measuring the distance between them, and when Nino opens his mouth to tell Aiba to get out of the bathroom if he's done, Aiba twists his fingers together and looks down at his feet.
"You're the one who doesn't get it at all," he says, body slumped, heavy at the knees. He stays locked in place.
Something twists in Nino's stomach. Maybe it's just condensation from the shower fogging up his vision, but for a moment he thinks he sees iron chains there, shackling down this ground-dweller whose only wish is to fly.
It's not that Nino doesn't understand Aiba completely. If it were up to him, he wouldn't have chosen to live every day in a string of déjà vu moments either, but more people end up this way than not, so he doesn't feel like too much of a victim either. At one point of his life, he’d considered a life dancing and performing and writing music, but the deeper he forayed into the dark forest of adulthood, the deeper he felt the pull of the earth keeping him down turn into a kind of safety that freed him from reaching up towards the clouds that he would never be among. The pragmatism in him keeps him from looking back on choosing the path he did over the endless exhilaration of life aflight.
Going forward, there was only looking down at the love bites on his skin left by misplaced staples and convincing himself that this is for the best.
Maybe he sees in Aiba the person he wanted to be. Maybe he's a little touched by Aiba's perseverance. Maybe it's just that despite Aiba's impatience and dumb chattering, he does relieve Nino a bit of his loneliness.
Whatever the reason, Nino doesn't kick Aiba out. He begins building him wings.
It's positive hell in the beginning because although Nino had thought at one point that he would have liked to work with his hands for a living, he was thinking more like magic tricks or Gundam models, not bodily appendages meant to keep a 63kg male in the sky. He's not one of the Wright Brothers, goddammit.
It takes a full three weeks of funneling every waking moment outside of work into this project until Nino puts together something that looks even remotely viable. Still, there's endless troubleshooting ahead.
Nino feels Aiba's eagerness practically radiating off his body next to him. "Aren't you afraid of falling back down?" Nino asks.
Aiba looks at him with bright eyes. "Aren't you afraid of never rising far enough to fall?"
Nino whacks him in the head. Aiba sticks out his tongue petulantly. "Don't say things that are too human for you."
"Don’t say things that are too adult for you," Aiba rebuts. "You get angry when I steal your chips."
"And you throw a fit when I try to regain ownership of said chips," Nino says.
"I'm allowed to. You said I’m not a human adult," Aiba says.
Nino rolls his eyes. "If your wings malfunction when you're gliding over rocky mountain ranges, you'll know why," he warns with very little threat.
"You wouldn't let me fall," Aiba says, without missing a beat.
Nino raises an eyebrow at him. "You're underestimating my love for chips."
Running a reverent finger along the wiry frame of one wing, Aiba smiles, wide and brilliant. "But you'd choose tearing off a piece of the clouds and eating it like cotton candy any day, wouldn't you?"
"I..." Nino begins to protest but isn't really sure that he can.
The big day comes another two weeks later. The sun hangs high and proud in the sky.
"Ready, Aiba-chan?" Nino asks.
He feels Aiba's fingers tighten against their hold on each other’s hands as he invests a lifetime of feeling into a firm affirmative. With a small jump, Nino propels the two of them into a sprint down the long track before them, leading into the sea. The wind embraces them in her wispy arms, carrying them forward, until Nino can barely feel his feet on earth.
"I feel like I'm flying already," Aiba shouts, with such admiration of everything he's ever seen or known that Nino almost doesn't want to give him away to the world.
"Ever seen Titanic?" Nino jokes, but Aiba isn't even listening. Nino can't see his face, but he imagines the slivers of sky in his earth brown eyes glittering against the first rays of day hitting clear waters, melting over the waves unfurling into infinity.
When they hit the end of the runway and Aiba's fingers untwine from his, Aiba takes flight for real, a boy carried by dream-feathers, sun-kissed and smiling, wings too small for his heart swelling like helium. With his feet rooted against the concrete of the marina, where weeds break free through the cracks, struggling and losing (but trying all the same), Nino watches Aiba soar beyond the horizon. He is a terrible, terrible beauty.
In a day, maybe a year, he will tumble like tears from the skies he so deeply adores, but in this moment at the very least, his heart beats with Nino's, vital and alive.
voyages // draw in your head and sleep the long way home
"There's nothing in the world like this," they say.
"And never to quite understand," they say.
But that's all just conceit because, with the expanse of the ocean stretched like a magician's taupe before him, Nino sees that they're neither much bigger nor more outstanding than the ants crawling at their feet. Maybe that's why people bind together: to find their strength in numbers.
"I should practice my argh," Aiba muses, back slumped against Nino's side and head tilted on Nino's shoulder at an angle that must make him a bit nauseated. He doesn't move away, though, because he'll be doing too much of that soon enough.
"Your argh?"
"All pirates have a fierce argh," Aiba says. "It's like automatic forfeit if you don't."
"Makes sense," Nino says wryly. "Just remember to cast your flag. It's basic courtesy, but you're bound to forget because you're going to get too excited at the first sighting of another ship." And okay, Aiba is going off to be a pirate not a social worker, but rules are rules.
"Yeah, okay, practice my argh with me," Aiba says, brushing off Nino's very relevant advice. "Don't get all shy now when you never have any trouble being...vocal." He wags his eyebrows lewdly.
Nino jostles his shoulder so that Aiba's head bounces. "I feel like celibacy will be very trying for you."
Aiba gives a soft, breathy laugh. "As harsh as it will be on you, I guess." Then he backtracks: "Not that I'm holding you to anything. It's my choice to go away."
"It's my fault I can't go with you," Nino says.
"Crippling seasickness is hardly your fault," Aiba says around a frown.
"That's true," Nino considers. "Then I suppose you wouldn't be able to blame me if I accidentally get wrapped up in someone with gorgeous fingers and a killer smile.”
As the person who's leaving Nino behind, Aiba has no right to complain or contradict that statement. That doesn't mean he can't sulk about it. He picks at a hangnail until he pulls one too hard and a thin thread of blood rises from his skin.
"That's one option," Nino continues, lightly, as if he hadn't noticed Aiba's fidgeting. Except, he's picking up Aiba's bleeding finger and studying it curiously. "But it's really a probability problem: out of all the people in the world who send electricity across your skin and light up every nerve like Tokyo on fire, how many of them will walk halfway to the moon to meet you in the middle? How many of them want you to stay where you are and just be you?”
Nino can feel the tips of his ears burning and buries his face into Aiba’s hair to conceal the fact that he’s about to burst from embarrassment.
Not without irritation, Nino feels Aiba easing off his shoulder a moment later. He knows right away that he's made a fatal mistake when he sees Aiba grinning down at him with his mouth and cheeks and eyes and nose and--Nino takes a shuddering breath. How is it even fair that Nino delivers absolutely killer lines he spent all last night writing and then ends up the one with the wind knocked out of him from an ocean-splitting grin that Aiba pulls off on the spot? Aiba really needs to take Nino's well-informed advice, goddammit, he thinks, as he stares into riches the likes of which he’ll never find anywhere else on land or sea.
He can't even imagine a more flagless piracy.
darling, darling // i've seen you from every angle
The summer before his second year of junior high, Nino's mom gives him 5000 yen to enter the National Junior Science Fair. Figuring that he only had 5,000 yen to gain, he hits submit.
He doesn't expect, three months later, that he would be lugging his tank of squids into the Kantou Regionals Exhibition. Nor did he expect that his closest competitor is a guy who spent three months of his life painting Baikin-kun with live bacteria. According to said Aiba Masaki-kun, it was quite a feat avoiding cross-contamination and fungal infestation.
"So did you harvest these guys yourself?" Aiba asks, eyes sparkling in interest at Nino's tank of bioluminescent squid.
"Got them from the old guys at the docks," Nino says.
"Damn, that's lucky," Aiba says, tapping at the glass. Nino tsks and quickly covers his squid back up with a dark blanket. Aiba straightens with a sheepish giggle. "I isolated my bacteria from poop and soil in my backyard. It took soooo long for some of them to grow."
"Haa…" Nino says. He doesn't want to ask about where Aiba acquired the poop because honestly did any answer make it less gross? "Weren't you afraid you were growing stuff that'd make you sick?"
Aiba shrugs. "They lived in me"--so that answered the poop question, Nino thinks with a shudder--"and around me. Do you worry about your neighbor making you sick every time you talk to them?"
Nino considers his neighbor, an eighty-year-old man whom he has observed on multiple occasions picking his nose and hitting the elevator button not two seconds later. He doesn't think he's ever gotten sick from old Tanaka-san, but he also never touches the elevator button with his bare hands anymore. It seems just common sense that you'd want to avoid germs. Wash your hands and gurgle often is practically the unofficial national slogan of Japan.
But as the poster session of the exhibition ended and it came time for them to each give a ten-minute spiel about their projects, Nino discovers that Aiba has much to say about an unpopular opinion.
"There's a universe within us," Aiba had begun, with the air of a hero setting out to save the world. It earns a few chuckles from the crowd. Nino had been engrossed in the GameBoy he'd used to spare himself from dry explanations about the mechanical inner workings of many a sophisticated contraption, but when he looks up, he catches Aiba's face slip into a small smirk, colored pink by embarrassment at his own dramatic prelude. "Or so I've been told."
Nino doesn't think Aiba will win the science fair this year--this much, he surmises from the faces of the judges; some engaged in note-taking, others just smiling indulgently. Growing up in a town of old workers, Nino knows a thing or two about charming his way into the hearts of unsuspecting adults. He knows exactly how his project made his way to Regionals, despite being buried among a sea of sophisticated and expensive feats of engineering.
The thing is, people don't really care about being impressed. They want to be moved, to experience emotion from their core. They want to be told stories that they can connect to--to feel nostalgic and sad and inspired. Nino doesn't have the financial means or the time of day outside school and baseball to be pushing the cutting edge of technology, so he invests his energy into pushing as many emotional buzzers as possible instead, observing his audience carefully.
He doesn't think Aiba shares his upbringing so what he offers must just be who he genuinely is as a person: bumbling and inarticulate at times, but dedicated, relentless, and passionate. Aiba Masaki may be no genius and would probably never become a prophet-level public speaker, but Nino is willing to bet that, probably, he's just a fucking good person with an extraordinary sense of hope.
At the end of the day, Aiba wins Honorable Mention and raises his Baikin-kun proudly in a kanpai to the crowd's applause. Nino walks away with third prize, ten thousand yen in cold cash.
the special two // our hands will not be taught to hold another's
A pulse.
It's weak, too weak for someone with Aiba’s reckless drive for life, but it's there. Nino can almost cry with relief for just that. He doesn't, though, he can't, there isn't time, not when their Ohno and Sho and Jun are out there risking their lives for the sake of the mission, for the sake of protecting the brains of the operation. That's how Aiba ended up a limp mess Nino has to stuff back into his space suit in the first place.
But he makes a promise to himself, a note in thick letters and all caps, that if they both make it out of this alive, he's going to just say it. Like, really, stop dancing around the inevitable and pretending like he's only there for the wonky games and quick pleasure because no offense but Aiba’s sloppy handjobs in the command room really wouldn't be all that great if Nino’s mind wasn't so clouded by the rough texture of his tongue and musky scent behind his ears and the way he croaks Nino’s name over and over like he doesn't have the vocabulary to describe how right they feel together.
Thump. Th-thump. Thump.
He needs Aiba to know. He needs it in the same way they must exterminate every one of these vile soul-eating parasites and shed the Earth of the fear that fetter their feet. Every one of us was born to see the ocean, dance under the rain, kiss the person who holds our hand until the bitter end. He needs Aiba to live to see a world where every time Nino whispers at him to open his eyes it will not because he's afraid he'll never see them again; where they can fall asleep next to each other pressed skin for skin, tell each other good night, and not wonder if this will be the last time those words leave their lips; where the most intimate of confession is not a trembling "I'm so glad you're alive" but a steady "I'm so, so in love with you."
They're going to make it out of this, Nino chants to himself as a particularly large, slimy son of a bitch plasters itself against the window in front of his eyes, obstructing his view. He pounds against the glass, making the whole ship tremble at twice the speed of his heartbeat. With his other hand, Nino clutches the accelerator and, taking one last breath, yanks it back with all his might. They've made it through so much that it almost feels stupid to die here.
We're going to live. And I'm going to tell him.
Thump. Th-thump.
Thump.
happy endings // reprise
Aiba’s best friend is more of a gremlin than a real adult. He’s tiny and grouchy and eats mostly candy and other junk that will put him into an early grave.
If you think about emotional capacity in terms of a keyboard that spells out “sadness” or “joy”, Aiba thinks that his friend is probably missing a few letters, keys he gave away to his absentee father or lovers he thought he could trust with his back and a knife. But Aiba is happy—resolved, even!—to lend him a vowel, so he plans a whole day of activities for them over New Year’s break. He prepares takoyaki and card games even though they’ll be in Osaka just days later and, between the two of them, there’s no one to play moderator in Karuta.
His best friend is also a little flaky, especially when he senses that Aiba is trying to do something sentimental for his benefit, so Aiba insists that he personally pick up the tiny gremlin in his car.
“I’m an adult,” the gremlin says, looking up from his DS, “which means that I don’t need a chaperone.”
“It’s dangerous!” Aiba insists with conviction.
The gremlin takes a breath to say something, mouth hanging open. His thumb has even suspended its noble duty of slaying the dragon. “Are you sure this is what you wanna do for New Year’s? What about your mysterious circle of logically connected friends?”
Aiba’s best friend has a bit of a hero complex, and he always acts like he knows what Aiba needs. Most of the time he’s right, but for some reason his sensor tends to misinterpret his place in Aiba’s heart. Aiba doesn’t mind when he protects him from his own evil genius or even when he forces purchases of games and manga onto Aiba’s tab, but sometimes Aiba wants to be the one doing the saving too. All’s fair in heroes and princesses.
“New Year’s is time for family,” Aiba explains.
The gremlin sighs and goes back to smashing buttons. “Whatever. What time?”
And see, here’s the thing about little mythical creatures with big ears for listening and big doe eyes for observing: they’ll whine about late-night dance practice and bitch about their best friend wanting to spend more time together and refuse to go to happy occasions like weddings for fear of suffocating on the unadulterated hope in the air, but play them “season” in the car alone with his best friend on New Year’s and even the grumpiest gremlin won’t be able to help but sniffle quietly.
“Nino,” Aiba says, as the music fades into silence. “I always want you in my life.”
A sound like crushed air escapes to his left before it can be swallowed down. Nino turns his head away, looking out the window, but he does a shitty job of concealing the smile in his voice: “Gross. Never say that again.”
Aiba giggles victoriously. So that’s 1 for Nino and Aiba and 0 for the little gremlin.
His best friend is a slouchy, cynical, teeny-tiny gremlin, but he’s also the boy Aiba has spent more than half his life loving for his quick wit, dedication, and fierce loyalty toward the handful of people he painstakingly gives away his heart to.
Aiba is determined to give him a happy ending, even if he doesn’t believe in them.
azurevanillaskyFrom: :3.
Title: us, therefore (free of any eden)
Pairing/Focus: Aiba/Nino
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~4,500
Warnings: None.
Summary: Nino writes bitter beginnings, and Aiba just wants him to have a happy ending.
Notes: Why have one Aimiya when you can have a variety pack! ...was what I told myself as I failed to overcome my crippling indecisiveness over what I wanted to write for you, my dear recipient. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy this humble cheese platter of bff-ery :’) Also, huge love for my beta E for making time to give some much-needed insight and encouragement. Title is inspired by the poem “You, Therefore” by Reginald Shepherd.
happy endings // i’ve seen it in a dream before
Most stories save the best parts for last. Most stories are about love. Most loves are good only in the beginning. Who doesn't want a good story?
And so Nino sells beginnings. He masters the art of writing beginnings: every morning another lingering glance across the platform; every morning another chapter of non-definitive acts and stars colliding like a crash test. It's all the same chapter. The story never moves forward, but who really cares? As long as you put it on a catchy new hook with a heart-wrenching bridge--who cares?
He's sick of love stories, but he holds nothing against the money.
His best friend's heart is always on sale. He's tall and lanky, a bed of brown hair flopping over eyes that sparkle like the first snowflakes of winter, a little wet and brittle, and Nino has probably romanticized him in his mind twenty times over because what's the harm in that if it's just one of many acts of desperation.
His best friend's heart is always on sale, but Nino doesn't have the right currency. So he takes the paper bills where he can, sells his catalog of happy beginnings.
They kissed once in his room. Aiba-kun was rolling over for another Umaibo just as Nino put down his guitar and time suspended between them for a moment in a meeting of bony elbows as Nino felt courage filling his lungs and he said, "You've got something here," and instead of gesturing to his own lips, he put his finger on Aiba's and then his lips were there too. The floorboards moaned; so did he. But he was only sixteen, and it probably sounded more like a high-pitched squeak much like anything else that came from his mouth.
Except for the songs. The songs spelled out sultry desire, whined of heartbreak before his heart was even whole.
Aiba had let Nino pull back first. His eyes were wide open, neither shocked nor cruel, as he bit his lip around lost words, measuring the seconds before when Nino might say something that would change their friendship irrevocably.
"We're out of the consomme flavor," he said, rising to his feet in an abrasive act of bare skin against hardwood.
Nino watched Aiba rush out the door, listened to the shuffle of his steps on the stairs. This was hardly a bad ending, but he’d have written a better beginning.
cloud-watching // his life is a vapor trail
The succulent Jun buys him as a housewarming gift comes with a fairy. His name is Aiba. According to a quick Internet search Nino runs on the legends of such creatures, Aiba is supposed to be able to fit in his breast pocket and have red skin, but he looks just like any gangly Japanese guy. (His forearms and face may be above average, but Nino will sidestep that thought for now.)
"It's better than looking deathly pale," Aiba says, checking Nino out pointedly. His hand reaches for the basket of chips on Nino’s desk. "Indoors type?"
"Fair-skinned," Nino corrects testily because he had counted on a companion that he will need to water once a week, not a pain in the ass he will have to babysit and share his snacks with.
When he mentions as much, Aiba just flops onto his bed and kicks his feet. "I make better company than that thing." When he raises a finger, Nino expects him to point at the little potted plant, but instead he begins a list: "For one, you can talk and talk and talk and it will never say anything to share your loneliness. Two: tree-hugging should remain strictly figurative, unless you enjoy scratching the ‘fair’ skin of your delicates with bark. I, on the other hand, give great hugs. Whether or not you deserve them is a different story, I guess. Three--"
Aiba's face is very close, all of a sudden. There are pieces of the sky buried in the earth, Nino realizes as he stares into his eyes.
"Only people whose hearts beat in sync with mine can see me," Aiba says. "This is actually something of a miracle."
Nino feels the warmth wisps of Aiba's breath as he whispers miracle against Nino's skin, and when Nino takes in a breath from that same pool of air, he feels Aiba's words tremor inside his stomach like a tuning fork.
But then Aiba is throwing his head back and laughing, off-rhythm and hysterical. Even as Nino realizes with a prick of irritation that he has been played, he appreciates the way Aiba's laughter doesn't scrape against his throat on its way out. Maybe it's because Aiba is a mischievous fairy with not a trouble in the world. Maybe it's just him.
Nino lets his back cave into a slouch as he begins to dig for the gift receipt. "I'm taking you back to the store."
"You can take that thing back but I'm staying here," Aiba says, this time pointing at the plant.
"Aren't you a part of that thing?"
"I guess." Aiba shrugs. "But I can live for a month or two without it."
"What about after that?"
"I become seafoam? A falling star? I'd be a bird if I had the choice, though." When he reaches for another chip, Nino moves the basket out of his reach and he falls off the bed. His dark hair splays messily over his face and he looks up at Nino with such a betrayed expression that Nino ends up handing him the basket with a resigned sigh.
"What, is it your dream to fly?" He sounds more condescending than he intends to, but Aiba answers with an enthusiastic nod. "Let's strike a deal, then," Nino says. "I help you become an...bird and you stop stealing my food."
"Oh, you're not making me leave?"
"Well, you'd already be flying away," Nino points out.
Aiba agrees with too much trust for his slim body, practically shaking with excitement. Nino worries for a moment that Aiba will collapse under the weight of his anticipation, but he just picks up the next chip and crunches on.
"I'm ready!" Aiba says, flinging open the bathroom door the next evening.
Nino jumps hurriedly into the shower. "Don't follow me into the bathroom!" Ten years of living alone had nursed him out of the habit of locking doors behind him; he keeps forgetting that he, a man in his thirties, now has a roommate.
"But you said you'd help me fly," Aiba insists, his voice bouncing off the bathroom tiles. Part of this whole fairy physiology must mean that Aiba’s body is full of voltage, not blood, Nino decides.
"That's at my convenience," he says. "Right now, I'm going to take a shower and go to sleep because I'm tired from work."
"But you promised!" Aiba protests, distraught. A frown folds his face along the fault lines on his cheeks, by his eyes, between his eyebrows.
"Look," Nino says with a sigh, poking his head out around the shower curtain. "You're not a real person, so you don't understand, but there are more important things in other people's lives than helping you reach your dreams, all right?"
In the silence that follows, Nino feels the foreshocks of an earthquake, but the raging disaster never comes. Aiba just kind of looks like he's crumbling, which might actually be even worse. Long moments tick by like a metronome, measuring the distance between them, and when Nino opens his mouth to tell Aiba to get out of the bathroom if he's done, Aiba twists his fingers together and looks down at his feet.
"You're the one who doesn't get it at all," he says, body slumped, heavy at the knees. He stays locked in place.
Something twists in Nino's stomach. Maybe it's just condensation from the shower fogging up his vision, but for a moment he thinks he sees iron chains there, shackling down this ground-dweller whose only wish is to fly.
It's not that Nino doesn't understand Aiba completely. If it were up to him, he wouldn't have chosen to live every day in a string of déjà vu moments either, but more people end up this way than not, so he doesn't feel like too much of a victim either. At one point of his life, he’d considered a life dancing and performing and writing music, but the deeper he forayed into the dark forest of adulthood, the deeper he felt the pull of the earth keeping him down turn into a kind of safety that freed him from reaching up towards the clouds that he would never be among. The pragmatism in him keeps him from looking back on choosing the path he did over the endless exhilaration of life aflight.
Going forward, there was only looking down at the love bites on his skin left by misplaced staples and convincing himself that this is for the best.
Maybe he sees in Aiba the person he wanted to be. Maybe he's a little touched by Aiba's perseverance. Maybe it's just that despite Aiba's impatience and dumb chattering, he does relieve Nino a bit of his loneliness.
Whatever the reason, Nino doesn't kick Aiba out. He begins building him wings.
It's positive hell in the beginning because although Nino had thought at one point that he would have liked to work with his hands for a living, he was thinking more like magic tricks or Gundam models, not bodily appendages meant to keep a 63kg male in the sky. He's not one of the Wright Brothers, goddammit.
It takes a full three weeks of funneling every waking moment outside of work into this project until Nino puts together something that looks even remotely viable. Still, there's endless troubleshooting ahead.
Nino feels Aiba's eagerness practically radiating off his body next to him. "Aren't you afraid of falling back down?" Nino asks.
Aiba looks at him with bright eyes. "Aren't you afraid of never rising far enough to fall?"
Nino whacks him in the head. Aiba sticks out his tongue petulantly. "Don't say things that are too human for you."
"Don’t say things that are too adult for you," Aiba rebuts. "You get angry when I steal your chips."
"And you throw a fit when I try to regain ownership of said chips," Nino says.
"I'm allowed to. You said I’m not a human adult," Aiba says.
Nino rolls his eyes. "If your wings malfunction when you're gliding over rocky mountain ranges, you'll know why," he warns with very little threat.
"You wouldn't let me fall," Aiba says, without missing a beat.
Nino raises an eyebrow at him. "You're underestimating my love for chips."
Running a reverent finger along the wiry frame of one wing, Aiba smiles, wide and brilliant. "But you'd choose tearing off a piece of the clouds and eating it like cotton candy any day, wouldn't you?"
"I..." Nino begins to protest but isn't really sure that he can.
The big day comes another two weeks later. The sun hangs high and proud in the sky.
"Ready, Aiba-chan?" Nino asks.
He feels Aiba's fingers tighten against their hold on each other’s hands as he invests a lifetime of feeling into a firm affirmative. With a small jump, Nino propels the two of them into a sprint down the long track before them, leading into the sea. The wind embraces them in her wispy arms, carrying them forward, until Nino can barely feel his feet on earth.
"I feel like I'm flying already," Aiba shouts, with such admiration of everything he's ever seen or known that Nino almost doesn't want to give him away to the world.
"Ever seen Titanic?" Nino jokes, but Aiba isn't even listening. Nino can't see his face, but he imagines the slivers of sky in his earth brown eyes glittering against the first rays of day hitting clear waters, melting over the waves unfurling into infinity.
When they hit the end of the runway and Aiba's fingers untwine from his, Aiba takes flight for real, a boy carried by dream-feathers, sun-kissed and smiling, wings too small for his heart swelling like helium. With his feet rooted against the concrete of the marina, where weeds break free through the cracks, struggling and losing (but trying all the same), Nino watches Aiba soar beyond the horizon. He is a terrible, terrible beauty.
In a day, maybe a year, he will tumble like tears from the skies he so deeply adores, but in this moment at the very least, his heart beats with Nino's, vital and alive.
voyages // draw in your head and sleep the long way home
"There's nothing in the world like this," they say.
"And never to quite understand," they say.
But that's all just conceit because, with the expanse of the ocean stretched like a magician's taupe before him, Nino sees that they're neither much bigger nor more outstanding than the ants crawling at their feet. Maybe that's why people bind together: to find their strength in numbers.
"I should practice my argh," Aiba muses, back slumped against Nino's side and head tilted on Nino's shoulder at an angle that must make him a bit nauseated. He doesn't move away, though, because he'll be doing too much of that soon enough.
"Your argh?"
"All pirates have a fierce argh," Aiba says. "It's like automatic forfeit if you don't."
"Makes sense," Nino says wryly. "Just remember to cast your flag. It's basic courtesy, but you're bound to forget because you're going to get too excited at the first sighting of another ship." And okay, Aiba is going off to be a pirate not a social worker, but rules are rules.
"Yeah, okay, practice my argh with me," Aiba says, brushing off Nino's very relevant advice. "Don't get all shy now when you never have any trouble being...vocal." He wags his eyebrows lewdly.
Nino jostles his shoulder so that Aiba's head bounces. "I feel like celibacy will be very trying for you."
Aiba gives a soft, breathy laugh. "As harsh as it will be on you, I guess." Then he backtracks: "Not that I'm holding you to anything. It's my choice to go away."
"It's my fault I can't go with you," Nino says.
"Crippling seasickness is hardly your fault," Aiba says around a frown.
"That's true," Nino considers. "Then I suppose you wouldn't be able to blame me if I accidentally get wrapped up in someone with gorgeous fingers and a killer smile.”
As the person who's leaving Nino behind, Aiba has no right to complain or contradict that statement. That doesn't mean he can't sulk about it. He picks at a hangnail until he pulls one too hard and a thin thread of blood rises from his skin.
"That's one option," Nino continues, lightly, as if he hadn't noticed Aiba's fidgeting. Except, he's picking up Aiba's bleeding finger and studying it curiously. "But it's really a probability problem: out of all the people in the world who send electricity across your skin and light up every nerve like Tokyo on fire, how many of them will walk halfway to the moon to meet you in the middle? How many of them want you to stay where you are and just be you?”
Nino can feel the tips of his ears burning and buries his face into Aiba’s hair to conceal the fact that he’s about to burst from embarrassment.
Not without irritation, Nino feels Aiba easing off his shoulder a moment later. He knows right away that he's made a fatal mistake when he sees Aiba grinning down at him with his mouth and cheeks and eyes and nose and--Nino takes a shuddering breath. How is it even fair that Nino delivers absolutely killer lines he spent all last night writing and then ends up the one with the wind knocked out of him from an ocean-splitting grin that Aiba pulls off on the spot? Aiba really needs to take Nino's well-informed advice, goddammit, he thinks, as he stares into riches the likes of which he’ll never find anywhere else on land or sea.
He can't even imagine a more flagless piracy.
darling, darling // i've seen you from every angle
The summer before his second year of junior high, Nino's mom gives him 5000 yen to enter the National Junior Science Fair. Figuring that he only had 5,000 yen to gain, he hits submit.
He doesn't expect, three months later, that he would be lugging his tank of squids into the Kantou Regionals Exhibition. Nor did he expect that his closest competitor is a guy who spent three months of his life painting Baikin-kun with live bacteria. According to said Aiba Masaki-kun, it was quite a feat avoiding cross-contamination and fungal infestation.
"So did you harvest these guys yourself?" Aiba asks, eyes sparkling in interest at Nino's tank of bioluminescent squid.
"Got them from the old guys at the docks," Nino says.
"Damn, that's lucky," Aiba says, tapping at the glass. Nino tsks and quickly covers his squid back up with a dark blanket. Aiba straightens with a sheepish giggle. "I isolated my bacteria from poop and soil in my backyard. It took soooo long for some of them to grow."
"Haa…" Nino says. He doesn't want to ask about where Aiba acquired the poop because honestly did any answer make it less gross? "Weren't you afraid you were growing stuff that'd make you sick?"
Aiba shrugs. "They lived in me"--so that answered the poop question, Nino thinks with a shudder--"and around me. Do you worry about your neighbor making you sick every time you talk to them?"
Nino considers his neighbor, an eighty-year-old man whom he has observed on multiple occasions picking his nose and hitting the elevator button not two seconds later. He doesn't think he's ever gotten sick from old Tanaka-san, but he also never touches the elevator button with his bare hands anymore. It seems just common sense that you'd want to avoid germs. Wash your hands and gurgle often is practically the unofficial national slogan of Japan.
But as the poster session of the exhibition ended and it came time for them to each give a ten-minute spiel about their projects, Nino discovers that Aiba has much to say about an unpopular opinion.
"There's a universe within us," Aiba had begun, with the air of a hero setting out to save the world. It earns a few chuckles from the crowd. Nino had been engrossed in the GameBoy he'd used to spare himself from dry explanations about the mechanical inner workings of many a sophisticated contraption, but when he looks up, he catches Aiba's face slip into a small smirk, colored pink by embarrassment at his own dramatic prelude. "Or so I've been told."
Nino doesn't think Aiba will win the science fair this year--this much, he surmises from the faces of the judges; some engaged in note-taking, others just smiling indulgently. Growing up in a town of old workers, Nino knows a thing or two about charming his way into the hearts of unsuspecting adults. He knows exactly how his project made his way to Regionals, despite being buried among a sea of sophisticated and expensive feats of engineering.
The thing is, people don't really care about being impressed. They want to be moved, to experience emotion from their core. They want to be told stories that they can connect to--to feel nostalgic and sad and inspired. Nino doesn't have the financial means or the time of day outside school and baseball to be pushing the cutting edge of technology, so he invests his energy into pushing as many emotional buzzers as possible instead, observing his audience carefully.
He doesn't think Aiba shares his upbringing so what he offers must just be who he genuinely is as a person: bumbling and inarticulate at times, but dedicated, relentless, and passionate. Aiba Masaki may be no genius and would probably never become a prophet-level public speaker, but Nino is willing to bet that, probably, he's just a fucking good person with an extraordinary sense of hope.
At the end of the day, Aiba wins Honorable Mention and raises his Baikin-kun proudly in a kanpai to the crowd's applause. Nino walks away with third prize, ten thousand yen in cold cash.
the special two // our hands will not be taught to hold another's
A pulse.
It's weak, too weak for someone with Aiba’s reckless drive for life, but it's there. Nino can almost cry with relief for just that. He doesn't, though, he can't, there isn't time, not when their Ohno and Sho and Jun are out there risking their lives for the sake of the mission, for the sake of protecting the brains of the operation. That's how Aiba ended up a limp mess Nino has to stuff back into his space suit in the first place.
But he makes a promise to himself, a note in thick letters and all caps, that if they both make it out of this alive, he's going to just say it. Like, really, stop dancing around the inevitable and pretending like he's only there for the wonky games and quick pleasure because no offense but Aiba’s sloppy handjobs in the command room really wouldn't be all that great if Nino’s mind wasn't so clouded by the rough texture of his tongue and musky scent behind his ears and the way he croaks Nino’s name over and over like he doesn't have the vocabulary to describe how right they feel together.
Thump. Th-thump. Thump.
He needs Aiba to know. He needs it in the same way they must exterminate every one of these vile soul-eating parasites and shed the Earth of the fear that fetter their feet. Every one of us was born to see the ocean, dance under the rain, kiss the person who holds our hand until the bitter end. He needs Aiba to live to see a world where every time Nino whispers at him to open his eyes it will not because he's afraid he'll never see them again; where they can fall asleep next to each other pressed skin for skin, tell each other good night, and not wonder if this will be the last time those words leave their lips; where the most intimate of confession is not a trembling "I'm so glad you're alive" but a steady "I'm so, so in love with you."
They're going to make it out of this, Nino chants to himself as a particularly large, slimy son of a bitch plasters itself against the window in front of his eyes, obstructing his view. He pounds against the glass, making the whole ship tremble at twice the speed of his heartbeat. With his other hand, Nino clutches the accelerator and, taking one last breath, yanks it back with all his might. They've made it through so much that it almost feels stupid to die here.
We're going to live. And I'm going to tell him.
Thump. Th-thump.
Thump.
happy endings // reprise
Aiba’s best friend is more of a gremlin than a real adult. He’s tiny and grouchy and eats mostly candy and other junk that will put him into an early grave.
If you think about emotional capacity in terms of a keyboard that spells out “sadness” or “joy”, Aiba thinks that his friend is probably missing a few letters, keys he gave away to his absentee father or lovers he thought he could trust with his back and a knife. But Aiba is happy—resolved, even!—to lend him a vowel, so he plans a whole day of activities for them over New Year’s break. He prepares takoyaki and card games even though they’ll be in Osaka just days later and, between the two of them, there’s no one to play moderator in Karuta.
His best friend is also a little flaky, especially when he senses that Aiba is trying to do something sentimental for his benefit, so Aiba insists that he personally pick up the tiny gremlin in his car.
“I’m an adult,” the gremlin says, looking up from his DS, “which means that I don’t need a chaperone.”
“It’s dangerous!” Aiba insists with conviction.
The gremlin takes a breath to say something, mouth hanging open. His thumb has even suspended its noble duty of slaying the dragon. “Are you sure this is what you wanna do for New Year’s? What about your mysterious circle of logically connected friends?”
Aiba’s best friend has a bit of a hero complex, and he always acts like he knows what Aiba needs. Most of the time he’s right, but for some reason his sensor tends to misinterpret his place in Aiba’s heart. Aiba doesn’t mind when he protects him from his own evil genius or even when he forces purchases of games and manga onto Aiba’s tab, but sometimes Aiba wants to be the one doing the saving too. All’s fair in heroes and princesses.
“New Year’s is time for family,” Aiba explains.
The gremlin sighs and goes back to smashing buttons. “Whatever. What time?”
And see, here’s the thing about little mythical creatures with big ears for listening and big doe eyes for observing: they’ll whine about late-night dance practice and bitch about their best friend wanting to spend more time together and refuse to go to happy occasions like weddings for fear of suffocating on the unadulterated hope in the air, but play them “season” in the car alone with his best friend on New Year’s and even the grumpiest gremlin won’t be able to help but sniffle quietly.
“Nino,” Aiba says, as the music fades into silence. “I always want you in my life.”
A sound like crushed air escapes to his left before it can be swallowed down. Nino turns his head away, looking out the window, but he does a shitty job of concealing the smile in his voice: “Gross. Never say that again.”
Aiba giggles victoriously. So that’s 1 for Nino and Aiba and 0 for the little gremlin.
His best friend is a slouchy, cynical, teeny-tiny gremlin, but he’s also the boy Aiba has spent more than half his life loving for his quick wit, dedication, and fierce loyalty toward the handful of people he painstakingly gives away his heart to.
Aiba is determined to give him a happy ending, even if he doesn’t believe in them.
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P.S. Nino as gremlin image is sending me into cackles XD
P.P.S. I love "cloud-watching" and "voyages" (lol practicing the 'arrghhs')
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