http://nino-mod.livejournal.com/ (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
nino-mod.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ninoexchange2012-06-17 07:24 pm
nino-mod.livejournal.com) wrote in ninoexchange2012-06-17 07:24 pm
Entry tags:
fic for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
airairo
For: airairo
From:g_esquared
Title: never was much of a romantic
Pairing/Focus: Nino/Ohno
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Summary: Nino runs from a choice he mightn’t need to make in the first place.
Notes: Dearairairo, a lot of the time meant to be spent on my own writing, I was getting distracted and really charmed by yours. I hope you are able to enjoy this even a fraction of how much I have enjoyed your stuff! This was also surprisingly difficult, in a Character Building sort of way. All my love to the person who valiantly busted me through that, and to the one who always makes a bigger difference than she can imagine.
Nino ends up in Hokkaido in a hotel that has a picture of a sheep in the lobby. It reminds him of a cryptic Murakami novel Jun lent him some time ago, and he vaguely wonders if the hotel will make him disappear.
Everything seems normal enough, however.
In the room, he discovers how badly he’d thought this out. He only has a phone and some cash and the jacket he’s wearing. Not even a toothbrush.
He sighs, and heads back out.
The street is freezing and deserted. Two streets away, a Family Mart appears like an oasis. Nino goes in to buy a toothbrush and dinner, studiously avoiding the magazine stand.
“Not many people this time of year,” says the guy behind the counter. “You sightseeing?”
Nino looks at him like he’s crazy, then remembers to avert his eyes. “Um. Yes?” he pauses. “Any recommendations?”
The man shrugs. “Seafood. Hot springs. Skiing.” He bags Nino’s travel dental kit. “Not much to do in this cold.”
He steps back out. Thinks that maybe he should have gone to Kyoto, or something.
He spends the evening sitting on the hotel bed eating his Family Mart bento and watching TV. There’s a travel programme on what to do in the summer, which only reminds Nino how it won’t be summer anytime soon.
He falls asleep to a late night horror movie, jerking awake when someone screams.
“Fuck this,” Nino says, turning the TV off.
It is difficult to fall asleep again after that.
The sun is bright the next day, making the frozen street seem marginally more hospitable than the night before. Nino decides to strike at least one touristy item off his list.
He wanders out of the silent hotel, shoes crunching in the snow. The chill sweeps quickly in, and he curses his choice of destination once again.
Nino reaches into his bag for an onigiri from yesterday’s Family Mart foray. He doesn’t realize that he’s walked the same route as he did yesterday until he’s standing right in front of the train station.
The onigiri is just as cold as the air around him, but Nino takes comfort in chewing steadily, watching his breath come out in puffs before him.
There is the occasional trickle of fools like him, emerging from the warmth of the station into the reality of their frigid holiday. Nino watches them, but the last thing he expects is to recognize someone.
His first instinct is to bolt.
But they’re both fools, anyway, and he’s run enough.
“Nino,” Ohno says, and Nino wordlessly reaches into his bag for another onigiri, holding it out to Ohno.
Ohno takes it and sits by him on the bench. Nino doesn’t bother to point out how he’s sitting in a spot where the ice melted.
It’s beginning to feel more and more like a Murakami novel.
Nino just wishes he had finished the damn book.
If they had been anyone else, Nino would say why are you here, and Ohno would respond with something like please come back, and they would go back to the hotel and have sex in the shower with the hot water on because that was the only way people could have sex in that kind of weather.
But Nino’s never seen Ohno naked, and he doesn’t like to ask stupid questions.
“Another onigiri?” he says, instead, and Ohno nods. “Didn’t you eat on the train here, you idiot.”
“I’d finished my bento by the time we pulled out of the station,” Ohno says, and Nino laughs.
“We’ll have something fancy tomorrow,” Nino says. “Hotpot, or something.”
“Sounds good,” Ohno says. Nino sees how happy he already looks.
The hotel bed is warmer with Ohno in it. Nino doesn’t bother taking his jacket or shoes off, just to show that he doesn’t care, that Ohno’s presence doesn't change things one way or the other.
Ohno hums as he unlaces Nino’s shoes, pulling them off his feet and placing them neatly at the foot of the bed. Nino pokes his stomach with a socked toe.
“Your jacket, too,” Ohno says, mildly.
“What are you, Sho?” Nino complains, but takes it off anyway.
They fall asleep, Nino’s hand in Ohno’s and the afternoon sunlight on their faces.
It is evening when Nino wakes up. He gets up and pads to his bag on the dresser. There is only one more onigiri.
“I propose that we split,” he says, loudly. A beat later, he hears how the words would sound without the onigiri in his hands, and it is strange that the thought is like a punch in his gut. But Ohno only stirs. Nino shakes his shoulder slightly harder than necessary. “I propose that we share,” he amends.
Ohno opens his eyes. “Why don’t you have it?”
“Because,” Nino says, rolling his eyes, “you clearly need more food than I do. Look at you. You’re practically going into hibernation.”
Ohno sits up. It appears to take some effort.
“Okay,” he says. “But only if you don’t say split.”
“Idiot. Did you come all the way here just to be witty?” Nino says.
Ohno shrugs. “It’s an important word not to use,” he says.
After eating the onigiri, it is too cold to think about getting out of bed. They huddle up under the covers, Ohno’s breaths tickling Nino’s forehead.
“Did you come here just to be witty?” Nino asks.
“No,” Ohno says. “I came here because you were here.”
“You have to stop saying stuff like that,” Nino tells him.
Sometime around three in the morning, Nino shifts and wakes up.
Ohno is already awake. Nino lays his head against the steady rise and fall of his chest, and tries to fall back asleep.
The night is terribly still, and Nino wonders what it’d take to make Ohno’s heart beat faster.
“Let’s watch a horror movie,” he suggests. His voice is much louder than he intended it to be.
“I’m hungry,” Ohno says. “It’s already a horror movie.”
There is no horror movie, only a rerun of the late night news. The news is all about the government. Nino knows he should care, but four in the morning is not the time to pretend he does.
“Goodnight,” he tells Ohno, shifting closer to get warmer. Their legs tangle and in the silence Nino thinks he hears Ohno’s heartbeat speed up.
It’s hard to tell apart from his own, though.
They are both hungry enough in the morning to ignore the fact that the sun hasn’t bothered to break through the clouds.
“There must be something to eat around here,” Nino says. “Why didn’t you bring Jun-kun? He’d read the travel guides and make an itinerary.”
Ohno smiles. “He’d also tell you to get your shit together and drag your butt home.”
“What would you tell me?”
“Nothing,” Ohno shrugs. “I didn’t travel a thousand kilometres here just to go right back.”
They find a tiny restaurant selling oden.
The booth is cramped but Nino finds himself not minding. He warms his hands on his bowl and watches Ohno burn his tongue.
“You know you should be patient,” Nino tells him.
“I know,” Ohno says, “but I can't always be.”
They walk for hours that day, on the solemn crunch of ice beneath their soles, the reassuring balance of a foreign place and a familiar face.
By four, Nino’s heels hurt and the sun is setting. Ohno’s nose looks frostbitten and Nino hasn’t any idea what they’re doing, except that he’s enjoying it.
“Are they going to come for us if we don’t go back?” Nino says.
“No,” Ohno says. He doesn’t explain and Nino doesn't ask.
Dinner is in a quiet sushi bar, the first place they get recognized. Ohno goes in the door first, and the years have taught Nino to sense it coming.
He makes a hundred and eighty degree turn and is gone before they see him, too.
Nino can hear the words ‘Arashi’ and ‘Leader’ through the door. They made it seem so simple, sometimes. Nino wonders if it is.
Ohno excuses himself after five long minutes, reemerging with a pretty lacquer box of sashimi don. Nino raises an eyebrow.
“I couldn’t say no,” Ohno says. “Why didn’t you come in?”
“What would it have looked like,” Nino says. “You and I, here, two-fifths of a whole, your nose so red it looks like it’s about to fall off.”
“You think too much,” Ohno tells him.
Nino thinks that maybe sometimes this is true, but this time it isn’t.
“What did you tell them?” Nino asks. “When you left?”
Ohno rolls onto his stomach to look at Nino. “I said, ‘I’m going’, and they knew where.”
“I would have come back even if Sho was the one retrieving me, you know,” Nino says. “This is not that big a deal.”
Ohno shrugs. “Sho couldn’t come. He said he was catching the flu.”
Nino stares at him for a moment.
“It’s not that small a deal, either.” Nino flops onto his back, staring at the sheep he’s imagined for himself on the ceiling. “Not even a deal.”
“It’s a holiday, right?” Ohno says, and Nino is torn between punching him and something else.
Nino wakes Ohno up two hours past midnight. Ohno’s eyes take a long time to open fully, and even then, Nino isn’t sure if he’s awake or just extremely adept at pretending to be.
“Oh-chan,” Nino says. “Leader.”
“I’m awake,” Ohno says, sounding surprisingly convincing and actually quite Leader-like. “What is it?”
Nino might have wanted to say something else, something more like the truth – but, as truths often do, it gets stuck in his throat. He swallows, gasps for a moment, glad that Ohno cannot see him in this darkness.
Ohno has patience for all the right things, however. He gathers Nino in. “Cold?” he says, and Nino shakes his head. “Headache? Insomnia? Lovesickness?”
Nino’s shoulders shake under Ohno’s touch. “Cowardice?” he tries.
“Next time,” Ohno tells him, and Nino falls asleep to sleepy circles on his back and the reassurance of yet another chance.
“I think love didn’t always come so hard,” Nino says, in the morning.
Ohno laughs. “It doesn’t. You don't know?”
Nino is silent. Ohno stops walking.
“There are sunsets. Pictures. Your favourite music. The way Aiba says you can do it, and you believe he believes it and that makes you believe it, too.”
It happens the other way around, for once – You’re stupid, Oh-chan, Nino thinks. “And you,” is what he says.
Ohno’s smile is so, so wide. “And sunrises, too.”
Nino calls Aiba that night.
“You were right,” he says. “When you told me I could do it.”
Aiba’s peal of laughter comes a beat later. “You should listen to me about these things, Nino-chan.”
“Not always,” Nino says, “but this one’s yours.”
“Are you two coming home?”
Nino hesitates. “Not yet.” Ohno is next to him. “I’m not, at least.”
“Nino-chan?” Aiba says.
“What?”
“I said you both could do it,” Aiba says, and Nino thinks that Aiba could carry enough hope for the entire world. “Just so you don’t forget.”
Nino wakes Ohno up at night again. The words are already on his tongue, but he’s forgotten to make sure that Ohno’s awake enough to hear them.
“I’m scared,” he says, slowly, deliberately, “scared of what I didn't want to face. Scared that it was big enough to make me run all the way here.”
“Is it so hard to believe that you like me?” Ohno says, quietly.
Nino stares at him, doesn’t see it coming, the sudden anger that explodes in his chest.
“I believe it,” Nino says, voice tight. “I believe it so much I ran all the way here and it followed me.”
“I followed you, Nino,” Ohno says. Nino doesn't know what that changes.
“Do you know what Aiba told me before I bought the ticket?” Ohno says.
“What?”
“He said, ‘Nino’s train won’t wait, but Nino will.’”
Nino frowns. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Ohno shrugs. “It makes sense when Aiba says it.”
Nino is struck with a sudden sense of responsibility. He calls Jun in the afternoon. “How many days of leave did you wrangle for us?”
“You,” Jun says, and Nino hears a mix of sharpness and relief. “I know I’ve said this in the past without meaning it, but I truly could strangle you. The only thing stopping me is how Aiba would cry for days.”
“Thank you,” Nino says. The seconds that pass are tense.
Jun sighs, finally. “Take as long as you need,” he says. “You might as well figure it out now.” The tension dissipates just as quickly.
“Jun-pon,” Nino says. “I don’t know what to do.”
Jun hesitates. Nino knows he’s probably made him uncomfortable, but at this point he can’t really bring himself to care.
“Ohno does,” Jun says. “Why don’t you ask him?”
Maybe Nino should.
They finally have seafood that night. It is ridiculously expensive, but the lobster is ridiculously fresh. Ohno looks delighted.
“You know this isn’t a real holiday,” Nino tells Ohno.
“I know,” Ohno says. He is eating pink ginger and appearing to enjoy it considerably.
“It’s an epic journey,” Nino says. “It’s self-actualization.”
“I know,” Ohno nods. “I’ve watched that sort of movie.”
“It isn’t a movie,” Nino says. “Movies have romance. We have this.”
“Which is sort of better,” Ohno replies, laying his hand over Nino’s. Nino thinks that Ohno might be more difficult to decipher than a Murakami novel.
Then again, there’s nothing much to decipher about this. Ohno continues eating the rest of his meal one-handed. Nino turns his hand over and laces their fingers together.
Nino calls Sho outside the restaurant.
“Nino?” is what Sho says, when he picks up. Like he’s been waiting for this call.
“Sho-chan,” Nino says. “You should come eat the lobster here sometime.”
“I have,” Sho says. “Are you cold? You kind of left your real coat here.”
Nino belatedly realizes why he’s been so cold while Ohno seems hardly as bothered.
“Oh.” Nino says. “Yes.”
“Okay,” Sho says. “Well, try not to get pneumonia.”
“Okay,” Nino says.
They’ve known each other long enough not to need apologies. Nino clutches the phone to his ear and knows this by instinct.
Nino feels Ohno’s hand sneak into his pocket. He smiles. Ohno smiles back.
“I’ll see you, Sho-chan,” Nino says. “I just wanted to call.”
“I’m glad you did,” Sho says. “Bye, Nino.”
Nino hangs up.
“Oh-chan,” he says.
Ohno pulls Nino’s hand out of his pocket.
“What if I chose Arashi over this?” Nino asks. “And what if that thought made me run?”
“Sho-chan didn't mean it when he said you had to choose,” Ohno tells him.
“But I would,” Nino says. “And what if.”
Ohno’s expression is inscrutable, and Nino wonders if being too careful all these years means that he will finally hurt Ohno in a way that he couldn't before.
“What if I can never give you enough,” Nino says, his voice a rising whisper. “What if we get frustrated and nowhere is secret. What if Aiba breaks up with his girlfriend and the sight of us breaks his heart.”
Ohno grips Nino’s hand, and Nino closes his eyes against the pressure.
“What if this ends up in more hurt than love?” he says. There’d be no turning back. He doesn’t have to say that part.
“What if I followed you all the way to Hokkaido?” Ohno says. “What if you were wrong and this is right? What if you were the most important person I had and I just knew?”
“You told Jun,” Nino says, quietly.
“You wouldn’t let me tell you,” Ohno says. “But you know it, don’t you?”
Nino has always known it.
On the walk back that night there are stars to be counted. Nino lifts his head and watches those pricks of light swim and blur before his eyes.
“I’d choose you,” says Ohno, as if to no one in particular. But Nino is the only one there. “Between the two of us, someone has to.”
“I’d choose us,” says Nino. “Doesn’t that bother you?”
“What if it didn’t?” Ohno says, and Nino feels a maddening beauty surge beneath his fingertips, just within reach. The stars are too many to count but he doesn't stop trying.
Nino wakes Ohno up by fumbling in the dark for a kiss.
He immediately feels stupid. Ohno stirs quickly, this time.
“What if I was wrong and this is right?” Nino murmurs, just the edge of desperate, and Ohno’s hands go to Nino’s waist, pulling him closer. “What if you were pretty important to me and I never dared tell you?”
Nino can hear Ohno smile in that complete stillness, that heart-thudding proximity.
“What if you told me now?” Ohno says.
“What if I just wanted you to know?” Nino says.
All the what-ifs disappear when Ohno kisses him, fingers on his cheek, Nino leaning down into the gravity of his heart singing.
The lack of light is a good excuse for Nino to find his way around Ohno’s body entirely by touch. Ohno rucks his shirt up, too, careful and reckless all at the same time, and Nino shudders at the sudden warmth of Ohno’s hands on his bare skin.
In the end, it is as simple as breathing, as holding hands, as laughing. Ohno kisses him like he’s meant to for years, and Nino hears all the things Ohno ever wanted to say.
Nino wakes up to a happiness already settled under his skin.
The winter sun is just coming up.
And love, it didn't always come so easy, either. But sometimes.
Nino dozes while waiting for his second sunrise. Ohno’s eyes open hours later.
“Hello,” Nino says, wondering if it is okay to be quite this coy. He’s known Ohno for years, after all.
“Hi,” Ohno says, his beam wide, and Nino thinks it must be okay, if Ohno can be quite this loudly content.
“Let’s go back,” Nino says.
“You sure?” Ohno says, not bothering to move, save his fingers tracing Nino’s skin.
Nino hauls him into a sitting position. “The epic journey is over,” he says. “It’s time to go home.”
Ohno nods, his arms snaking under Nino’s shirt. “Pretty epic,” he grins.
“Trust you to only hear that word,” Nino says.
“We brought you guys souvenirs,” Nino says.
“Ooh,” Aiba says, and spends five minutes choosing one out of the different fillings.
“You do realize it wasn’t a holiday, right?” Jun says, dryly.
“And that you can get these across the street,” Sho puts in. Clearly, he’d been hoping for something that really screamed Hokkaido.
“We know,” Ohno says. “We bought them in Family Mart. And it was an epic journey.”
Jun sighs. Aiba chews. Sho picks one.
Tokyo is his reality, with real schedules and the knowledge that he can’t hold anyone’s hand on the street. But here he is one-fifth of a whole, and Jun is clearly happy when things go back to normal, with photoshoots and interviews and his ambitious filming schedule.
Aiba sidles up to him one day and just grins, and Nino sighs in fond exasperation and allows Aiba to see how happy he is.
Sho catches sight of them. His newspaper doesn’t hide the way the corners of his mouth turn up.
Ohno’s head shifts in his lap, and Nino touches his hair, not caring that makeup will have to fix it again later.
And maybe it’s still foolish and crazy, but Nino’s four-fifths are here and what is just became better than all the what-ifs.
Dusk finds Nino behinds the building with Ohno, the cold not as harsh as a day ago. The sun is setting, but all they see are the long shadows, the icy concrete.
Out of sight of the city around them, Ohno takes Nino’s hand. He hides it in his own pocket.
“Come on,” Ohno says, “they’re probably waiting for us.”
Nino grins, and leans in.
Their lips meet, and it is soft and cold and lasts a future.
“They’re still waiting,” Ohno reminds him, and Nino nods, their hands clasped tightly as they step back in.
So maybe Nino has never really had to choose, because in the end, he has both.
Some loves come easy, and some loves come in five.
airairoFrom:
g_esquaredTitle: never was much of a romantic
Pairing/Focus: Nino/Ohno
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Summary: Nino runs from a choice he mightn’t need to make in the first place.
Notes: Dear
airairo, a lot of the time meant to be spent on my own writing, I was getting distracted and really charmed by yours. I hope you are able to enjoy this even a fraction of how much I have enjoyed your stuff! This was also surprisingly difficult, in a Character Building sort of way. All my love to the person who valiantly busted me through that, and to the one who always makes a bigger difference than she can imagine. Nino ends up in Hokkaido in a hotel that has a picture of a sheep in the lobby. It reminds him of a cryptic Murakami novel Jun lent him some time ago, and he vaguely wonders if the hotel will make him disappear.
Everything seems normal enough, however.
In the room, he discovers how badly he’d thought this out. He only has a phone and some cash and the jacket he’s wearing. Not even a toothbrush.
He sighs, and heads back out.
The street is freezing and deserted. Two streets away, a Family Mart appears like an oasis. Nino goes in to buy a toothbrush and dinner, studiously avoiding the magazine stand.
“Not many people this time of year,” says the guy behind the counter. “You sightseeing?”
Nino looks at him like he’s crazy, then remembers to avert his eyes. “Um. Yes?” he pauses. “Any recommendations?”
The man shrugs. “Seafood. Hot springs. Skiing.” He bags Nino’s travel dental kit. “Not much to do in this cold.”
He steps back out. Thinks that maybe he should have gone to Kyoto, or something.
He spends the evening sitting on the hotel bed eating his Family Mart bento and watching TV. There’s a travel programme on what to do in the summer, which only reminds Nino how it won’t be summer anytime soon.
He falls asleep to a late night horror movie, jerking awake when someone screams.
“Fuck this,” Nino says, turning the TV off.
It is difficult to fall asleep again after that.
The sun is bright the next day, making the frozen street seem marginally more hospitable than the night before. Nino decides to strike at least one touristy item off his list.
He wanders out of the silent hotel, shoes crunching in the snow. The chill sweeps quickly in, and he curses his choice of destination once again.
Nino reaches into his bag for an onigiri from yesterday’s Family Mart foray. He doesn’t realize that he’s walked the same route as he did yesterday until he’s standing right in front of the train station.
The onigiri is just as cold as the air around him, but Nino takes comfort in chewing steadily, watching his breath come out in puffs before him.
There is the occasional trickle of fools like him, emerging from the warmth of the station into the reality of their frigid holiday. Nino watches them, but the last thing he expects is to recognize someone.
His first instinct is to bolt.
But they’re both fools, anyway, and he’s run enough.
“Nino,” Ohno says, and Nino wordlessly reaches into his bag for another onigiri, holding it out to Ohno.
Ohno takes it and sits by him on the bench. Nino doesn’t bother to point out how he’s sitting in a spot where the ice melted.
It’s beginning to feel more and more like a Murakami novel.
Nino just wishes he had finished the damn book.
If they had been anyone else, Nino would say why are you here, and Ohno would respond with something like please come back, and they would go back to the hotel and have sex in the shower with the hot water on because that was the only way people could have sex in that kind of weather.
But Nino’s never seen Ohno naked, and he doesn’t like to ask stupid questions.
“Another onigiri?” he says, instead, and Ohno nods. “Didn’t you eat on the train here, you idiot.”
“I’d finished my bento by the time we pulled out of the station,” Ohno says, and Nino laughs.
“We’ll have something fancy tomorrow,” Nino says. “Hotpot, or something.”
“Sounds good,” Ohno says. Nino sees how happy he already looks.
The hotel bed is warmer with Ohno in it. Nino doesn’t bother taking his jacket or shoes off, just to show that he doesn’t care, that Ohno’s presence doesn't change things one way or the other.
Ohno hums as he unlaces Nino’s shoes, pulling them off his feet and placing them neatly at the foot of the bed. Nino pokes his stomach with a socked toe.
“Your jacket, too,” Ohno says, mildly.
“What are you, Sho?” Nino complains, but takes it off anyway.
They fall asleep, Nino’s hand in Ohno’s and the afternoon sunlight on their faces.
It is evening when Nino wakes up. He gets up and pads to his bag on the dresser. There is only one more onigiri.
“I propose that we split,” he says, loudly. A beat later, he hears how the words would sound without the onigiri in his hands, and it is strange that the thought is like a punch in his gut. But Ohno only stirs. Nino shakes his shoulder slightly harder than necessary. “I propose that we share,” he amends.
Ohno opens his eyes. “Why don’t you have it?”
“Because,” Nino says, rolling his eyes, “you clearly need more food than I do. Look at you. You’re practically going into hibernation.”
Ohno sits up. It appears to take some effort.
“Okay,” he says. “But only if you don’t say split.”
“Idiot. Did you come all the way here just to be witty?” Nino says.
Ohno shrugs. “It’s an important word not to use,” he says.
After eating the onigiri, it is too cold to think about getting out of bed. They huddle up under the covers, Ohno’s breaths tickling Nino’s forehead.
“Did you come here just to be witty?” Nino asks.
“No,” Ohno says. “I came here because you were here.”
“You have to stop saying stuff like that,” Nino tells him.
Sometime around three in the morning, Nino shifts and wakes up.
Ohno is already awake. Nino lays his head against the steady rise and fall of his chest, and tries to fall back asleep.
The night is terribly still, and Nino wonders what it’d take to make Ohno’s heart beat faster.
“Let’s watch a horror movie,” he suggests. His voice is much louder than he intended it to be.
“I’m hungry,” Ohno says. “It’s already a horror movie.”
There is no horror movie, only a rerun of the late night news. The news is all about the government. Nino knows he should care, but four in the morning is not the time to pretend he does.
“Goodnight,” he tells Ohno, shifting closer to get warmer. Their legs tangle and in the silence Nino thinks he hears Ohno’s heartbeat speed up.
It’s hard to tell apart from his own, though.
They are both hungry enough in the morning to ignore the fact that the sun hasn’t bothered to break through the clouds.
“There must be something to eat around here,” Nino says. “Why didn’t you bring Jun-kun? He’d read the travel guides and make an itinerary.”
Ohno smiles. “He’d also tell you to get your shit together and drag your butt home.”
“What would you tell me?”
“Nothing,” Ohno shrugs. “I didn’t travel a thousand kilometres here just to go right back.”
They find a tiny restaurant selling oden.
The booth is cramped but Nino finds himself not minding. He warms his hands on his bowl and watches Ohno burn his tongue.
“You know you should be patient,” Nino tells him.
“I know,” Ohno says, “but I can't always be.”
They walk for hours that day, on the solemn crunch of ice beneath their soles, the reassuring balance of a foreign place and a familiar face.
By four, Nino’s heels hurt and the sun is setting. Ohno’s nose looks frostbitten and Nino hasn’t any idea what they’re doing, except that he’s enjoying it.
“Are they going to come for us if we don’t go back?” Nino says.
“No,” Ohno says. He doesn’t explain and Nino doesn't ask.
Dinner is in a quiet sushi bar, the first place they get recognized. Ohno goes in the door first, and the years have taught Nino to sense it coming.
He makes a hundred and eighty degree turn and is gone before they see him, too.
Nino can hear the words ‘Arashi’ and ‘Leader’ through the door. They made it seem so simple, sometimes. Nino wonders if it is.
Ohno excuses himself after five long minutes, reemerging with a pretty lacquer box of sashimi don. Nino raises an eyebrow.
“I couldn’t say no,” Ohno says. “Why didn’t you come in?”
“What would it have looked like,” Nino says. “You and I, here, two-fifths of a whole, your nose so red it looks like it’s about to fall off.”
“You think too much,” Ohno tells him.
Nino thinks that maybe sometimes this is true, but this time it isn’t.
“What did you tell them?” Nino asks. “When you left?”
Ohno rolls onto his stomach to look at Nino. “I said, ‘I’m going’, and they knew where.”
“I would have come back even if Sho was the one retrieving me, you know,” Nino says. “This is not that big a deal.”
Ohno shrugs. “Sho couldn’t come. He said he was catching the flu.”
Nino stares at him for a moment.
“It’s not that small a deal, either.” Nino flops onto his back, staring at the sheep he’s imagined for himself on the ceiling. “Not even a deal.”
“It’s a holiday, right?” Ohno says, and Nino is torn between punching him and something else.
Nino wakes Ohno up two hours past midnight. Ohno’s eyes take a long time to open fully, and even then, Nino isn’t sure if he’s awake or just extremely adept at pretending to be.
“Oh-chan,” Nino says. “Leader.”
“I’m awake,” Ohno says, sounding surprisingly convincing and actually quite Leader-like. “What is it?”
Nino might have wanted to say something else, something more like the truth – but, as truths often do, it gets stuck in his throat. He swallows, gasps for a moment, glad that Ohno cannot see him in this darkness.
Ohno has patience for all the right things, however. He gathers Nino in. “Cold?” he says, and Nino shakes his head. “Headache? Insomnia? Lovesickness?”
Nino’s shoulders shake under Ohno’s touch. “Cowardice?” he tries.
“Next time,” Ohno tells him, and Nino falls asleep to sleepy circles on his back and the reassurance of yet another chance.
“I think love didn’t always come so hard,” Nino says, in the morning.
Ohno laughs. “It doesn’t. You don't know?”
Nino is silent. Ohno stops walking.
“There are sunsets. Pictures. Your favourite music. The way Aiba says you can do it, and you believe he believes it and that makes you believe it, too.”
It happens the other way around, for once – You’re stupid, Oh-chan, Nino thinks. “And you,” is what he says.
Ohno’s smile is so, so wide. “And sunrises, too.”
Nino calls Aiba that night.
“You were right,” he says. “When you told me I could do it.”
Aiba’s peal of laughter comes a beat later. “You should listen to me about these things, Nino-chan.”
“Not always,” Nino says, “but this one’s yours.”
“Are you two coming home?”
Nino hesitates. “Not yet.” Ohno is next to him. “I’m not, at least.”
“Nino-chan?” Aiba says.
“What?”
“I said you both could do it,” Aiba says, and Nino thinks that Aiba could carry enough hope for the entire world. “Just so you don’t forget.”
Nino wakes Ohno up at night again. The words are already on his tongue, but he’s forgotten to make sure that Ohno’s awake enough to hear them.
“I’m scared,” he says, slowly, deliberately, “scared of what I didn't want to face. Scared that it was big enough to make me run all the way here.”
“Is it so hard to believe that you like me?” Ohno says, quietly.
Nino stares at him, doesn’t see it coming, the sudden anger that explodes in his chest.
“I believe it,” Nino says, voice tight. “I believe it so much I ran all the way here and it followed me.”
“I followed you, Nino,” Ohno says. Nino doesn't know what that changes.
“Do you know what Aiba told me before I bought the ticket?” Ohno says.
“What?”
“He said, ‘Nino’s train won’t wait, but Nino will.’”
Nino frowns. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Ohno shrugs. “It makes sense when Aiba says it.”
Nino is struck with a sudden sense of responsibility. He calls Jun in the afternoon. “How many days of leave did you wrangle for us?”
“You,” Jun says, and Nino hears a mix of sharpness and relief. “I know I’ve said this in the past without meaning it, but I truly could strangle you. The only thing stopping me is how Aiba would cry for days.”
“Thank you,” Nino says. The seconds that pass are tense.
Jun sighs, finally. “Take as long as you need,” he says. “You might as well figure it out now.” The tension dissipates just as quickly.
“Jun-pon,” Nino says. “I don’t know what to do.”
Jun hesitates. Nino knows he’s probably made him uncomfortable, but at this point he can’t really bring himself to care.
“Ohno does,” Jun says. “Why don’t you ask him?”
Maybe Nino should.
They finally have seafood that night. It is ridiculously expensive, but the lobster is ridiculously fresh. Ohno looks delighted.
“You know this isn’t a real holiday,” Nino tells Ohno.
“I know,” Ohno says. He is eating pink ginger and appearing to enjoy it considerably.
“It’s an epic journey,” Nino says. “It’s self-actualization.”
“I know,” Ohno nods. “I’ve watched that sort of movie.”
“It isn’t a movie,” Nino says. “Movies have romance. We have this.”
“Which is sort of better,” Ohno replies, laying his hand over Nino’s. Nino thinks that Ohno might be more difficult to decipher than a Murakami novel.
Then again, there’s nothing much to decipher about this. Ohno continues eating the rest of his meal one-handed. Nino turns his hand over and laces their fingers together.
Nino calls Sho outside the restaurant.
“Nino?” is what Sho says, when he picks up. Like he’s been waiting for this call.
“Sho-chan,” Nino says. “You should come eat the lobster here sometime.”
“I have,” Sho says. “Are you cold? You kind of left your real coat here.”
Nino belatedly realizes why he’s been so cold while Ohno seems hardly as bothered.
“Oh.” Nino says. “Yes.”
“Okay,” Sho says. “Well, try not to get pneumonia.”
“Okay,” Nino says.
They’ve known each other long enough not to need apologies. Nino clutches the phone to his ear and knows this by instinct.
Nino feels Ohno’s hand sneak into his pocket. He smiles. Ohno smiles back.
“I’ll see you, Sho-chan,” Nino says. “I just wanted to call.”
“I’m glad you did,” Sho says. “Bye, Nino.”
Nino hangs up.
“Oh-chan,” he says.
Ohno pulls Nino’s hand out of his pocket.
“What if I chose Arashi over this?” Nino asks. “And what if that thought made me run?”
“Sho-chan didn't mean it when he said you had to choose,” Ohno tells him.
“But I would,” Nino says. “And what if.”
Ohno’s expression is inscrutable, and Nino wonders if being too careful all these years means that he will finally hurt Ohno in a way that he couldn't before.
“What if I can never give you enough,” Nino says, his voice a rising whisper. “What if we get frustrated and nowhere is secret. What if Aiba breaks up with his girlfriend and the sight of us breaks his heart.”
Ohno grips Nino’s hand, and Nino closes his eyes against the pressure.
“What if this ends up in more hurt than love?” he says. There’d be no turning back. He doesn’t have to say that part.
“What if I followed you all the way to Hokkaido?” Ohno says. “What if you were wrong and this is right? What if you were the most important person I had and I just knew?”
“You told Jun,” Nino says, quietly.
“You wouldn’t let me tell you,” Ohno says. “But you know it, don’t you?”
Nino has always known it.
On the walk back that night there are stars to be counted. Nino lifts his head and watches those pricks of light swim and blur before his eyes.
“I’d choose you,” says Ohno, as if to no one in particular. But Nino is the only one there. “Between the two of us, someone has to.”
“I’d choose us,” says Nino. “Doesn’t that bother you?”
“What if it didn’t?” Ohno says, and Nino feels a maddening beauty surge beneath his fingertips, just within reach. The stars are too many to count but he doesn't stop trying.
Nino wakes Ohno up by fumbling in the dark for a kiss.
He immediately feels stupid. Ohno stirs quickly, this time.
“What if I was wrong and this is right?” Nino murmurs, just the edge of desperate, and Ohno’s hands go to Nino’s waist, pulling him closer. “What if you were pretty important to me and I never dared tell you?”
Nino can hear Ohno smile in that complete stillness, that heart-thudding proximity.
“What if you told me now?” Ohno says.
“What if I just wanted you to know?” Nino says.
All the what-ifs disappear when Ohno kisses him, fingers on his cheek, Nino leaning down into the gravity of his heart singing.
The lack of light is a good excuse for Nino to find his way around Ohno’s body entirely by touch. Ohno rucks his shirt up, too, careful and reckless all at the same time, and Nino shudders at the sudden warmth of Ohno’s hands on his bare skin.
In the end, it is as simple as breathing, as holding hands, as laughing. Ohno kisses him like he’s meant to for years, and Nino hears all the things Ohno ever wanted to say.
Nino wakes up to a happiness already settled under his skin.
The winter sun is just coming up.
And love, it didn't always come so easy, either. But sometimes.
Nino dozes while waiting for his second sunrise. Ohno’s eyes open hours later.
“Hello,” Nino says, wondering if it is okay to be quite this coy. He’s known Ohno for years, after all.
“Hi,” Ohno says, his beam wide, and Nino thinks it must be okay, if Ohno can be quite this loudly content.
“Let’s go back,” Nino says.
“You sure?” Ohno says, not bothering to move, save his fingers tracing Nino’s skin.
Nino hauls him into a sitting position. “The epic journey is over,” he says. “It’s time to go home.”
Ohno nods, his arms snaking under Nino’s shirt. “Pretty epic,” he grins.
“Trust you to only hear that word,” Nino says.
“We brought you guys souvenirs,” Nino says.
“Ooh,” Aiba says, and spends five minutes choosing one out of the different fillings.
“You do realize it wasn’t a holiday, right?” Jun says, dryly.
“And that you can get these across the street,” Sho puts in. Clearly, he’d been hoping for something that really screamed Hokkaido.
“We know,” Ohno says. “We bought them in Family Mart. And it was an epic journey.”
Jun sighs. Aiba chews. Sho picks one.
Tokyo is his reality, with real schedules and the knowledge that he can’t hold anyone’s hand on the street. But here he is one-fifth of a whole, and Jun is clearly happy when things go back to normal, with photoshoots and interviews and his ambitious filming schedule.
Aiba sidles up to him one day and just grins, and Nino sighs in fond exasperation and allows Aiba to see how happy he is.
Sho catches sight of them. His newspaper doesn’t hide the way the corners of his mouth turn up.
Ohno’s head shifts in his lap, and Nino touches his hair, not caring that makeup will have to fix it again later.
And maybe it’s still foolish and crazy, but Nino’s four-fifths are here and what is just became better than all the what-ifs.
Dusk finds Nino behinds the building with Ohno, the cold not as harsh as a day ago. The sun is setting, but all they see are the long shadows, the icy concrete.
Out of sight of the city around them, Ohno takes Nino’s hand. He hides it in his own pocket.
“Come on,” Ohno says, “they’re probably waiting for us.”
Nino grins, and leans in.
Their lips meet, and it is soft and cold and lasts a future.
“They’re still waiting,” Ohno reminds him, and Nino nods, their hands clasped tightly as they step back in.
So maybe Nino has never really had to choose, because in the end, he has both.
Some loves come easy, and some loves come in five.
no subject
Somehow I had chills the whole time I was reading this! Maybe it was Hokkaido or the cold separation. I wanted them to be closer, but I wanted to know why they were so far apart and why all of that tension was there and I loved uncovering every layer of it.
I loved that Nino said it wasn't a big or small deal or even a deal at all. I loved Ohno saying something that Nino didn't get but it "makes sense when Aiba says it." I loved Sho and Nino not needing apologies between them and how Ohno could be so steady while Nino was scared enough to run away. It's okay even if there are "what if's" and “What if I just wanted you to know?” I loved that so much. ;_;
This is a gorgeous fic, anon-san. <333 Thank you so, so much for writing this for me. This definitely won't be my last time reading it! Just. Thank you. X: <3333333
no subject
and really, know that i was super relieved when i saw this comment. as i said before, i had two other fics that refused to get done and i was so worried i wouldn't get anything out which would suck because i basically adore your writing and this exchaaange. so, yes, this helped shut up my freaking out. :D
and gosh, your response is just really heartening! i'm so glad this is an ohmiya story you enjoy, because it was so weirdly abstract and vignette-y. tbh before getting assigned you i'd decided on not writing ohmiya for a bit, but then i saw that you wanted ohmiya, so it was kind of a, how do i write a different sort of ohmiya for her? which is really a challenge when it comes to this pairing, right.
anyway, it's just wonderful to know the dynamics between all of them worked for you. i'm always afraid that these things won't work for anyone except myself, because so much is going on in my head but i'm only putting some of it down. and gosh, that line. ngl, i love that you mention it because it is one of my favourites. ♥
tl;dr -- i'm just really glad you liked this so much!! it was intimidating yet great to write for someone who writes like you, and your response makes it completely worth it, seriously. ♥ ♥ ♥
no subject
no subject
no subject
I really enjoyed reading this. Thank you. ♥
no subject
thank you so much for reading! i'm really glad to know you enjoyed this. ♥
no subject
no subject
no subject
This is really one of the best Ohmiya fic I have ever read <3 I love everything: Nino's feelings, Ohno's feelings, Arashi's feeling, the setting, the slow-paced flowing of the story, your writing style. Everything is so perfect. I think I'm going to read it again :)
no subject
but really, i'm super pleased to hear everything worked for you so well. the style, especially, since it is something i don't go with often? but enjoy rather a lot. thank you so much for reading and leaving this comment. ♥
no subject
This fic is beautiful and breathtaking and I love how it is actually Ohmiya wrapped in the loving blanket of OT5! Just the way I love my OTP :)
And I'm such a sucker for insecure!Nino and 'I'll-be-ready-when-you-are' patiently waiting!Ohno ♥♥
I adore how you managed to leave so many things between them unsaid, just because they don't HAVE to be said. There's so much understanding.. between all 5 of them!
Also, I love the progression of Nino facing and fighting his What-ifs, while Ohno just stays there and believes in him. In them!! T__T♥
Ugh, I want to say so much more, but I think I'll just go and re-read this once more! :)
no subject
anyway, this was such a great comment to receive! i also grinned at the ot5 mention -- that is pretty much what this is, yes!! you are very perceptive. :3 yeah it is difficult to express how glad i am that you picked up on that, but really, it is because i wanted the focus to not only be ohmiya themselves, but also the people around them, and the fact that even though they have each other they also have a reality that is just as important.
and because i am the hugest sucker for things unsaid, thank you for saying so! i'm really glad this wasn't ridiculously abstract and stuff.
thank you so much for leaving this wonderful comment! i really appreciate it. ♥
no subject
Nino's hesitation. Ohno's love. Jun, Sho and Aiba's understanding. perfect, perfect, perfect.
no subject
no subject
I love everything about this from Nino's doubts to Ohno's no doubts. From Jun's exasperation and wanting things to be as they were to AIBA AND HIS HOPE to Sho's just knowing. Everything was lovely. Simple, realistic, and full of love! <3
no subject
and lol, i love the way you put it re: ohno's no doubts. thank you for reading despite your lack of ohmiya-interest, you know it makes me happy. ♥
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
But seriously, it's really lovely and your style is just wonderful.
no subject
thank you so much! it is so good to know this worked for you, really. ♥
no subject
Can't wait to find out who you are and just give you all my creepy love! ♥♥♥
no subject
...confession: after you left this comment, i also popped over to get a look at your stuff, and i am horrible for not leaving you a comment but do know that i need to read everything one day and comment on everything!! because your words are utterly lovely, and i love the things you do with your characters. in particular, i was just rolling about in joy when you put jun/sho in singapore, because that is a fic-fantasy of mine and you carried it off perfectly. ♥
no subject
Can't believe you read that Sho/Jun Singapore ditty lol. Thank you so much! :)
no subject
no subject
no subject
loved this line...
"...And maybe it’s still foolish and crazy, but Nino’s four-fifths are here and what is just became better than all the what-ifs..."
anon-san... this was oh sooo amazing <333
Ohchan's love... Kazu's insecurities and the "what if's"... I loved everything
... simply beautiful... and now, one of my fav Ohmiya fic.
Thank you n.n
no subject
no subject
no subject
♥ ♥ ♥
no subject
no subject
no subject
Beautiful! Perfect <3<3<3!
no subject
no subject
Love when Ohno say “It makes sense when Aiba says it.”
Ok fine, I love it all, I love their epic journey.. Love Aiba in this...
no subject