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ninoexchange2012-06-22 09:32 pm
nino-mod.livejournal.com) wrote in ninoexchange2012-06-22 09:32 pm
Entry tags:
fic for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fluffyneen
For: fluffyneen
From:honeyporridge
Title: when the well is dry, we know the worth of water.
Focus/Pairing: Nino-centric/None really? Everyone’s bros with everyone.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Super-powers. Internal conflict. Mentions of snuffing people out easily. No actual death that I'm aware of though. Hm.
Summary: "Nino is the Avatar. He is swift as a coursing river with all the force of a great typhoon. Then he will set fire to the rain, watch it burn as he touches your face." or Nino discovers his superpower. It’s not a happy series of events.
Notes: Basically superpower fic! I am so sorryfluffyneen. This might not be what you were looking for but I tried my best and I hope that you like it, OH MY GOD I REALLY AM SO SORRY IF YOU DON’T. Also to nino_mod I AM SO SORRY LET ME GROVEL AT YOUR FEET BECAUSE I AM A MESS WITH DEADLINES. Many, many thanks to Y, who helped me shape this idea, A, who fixed my typos halfway through, and everyone who held my hand. Special thanks to S who helped me end this thing. I LOVE YOU GUYS ;_; Also everyone has a superpower... kind of.
Three days before he turns 29, Nino discovers his superpower.
It’s a rainy day. Wet and miserable and disgustingly dreary but it’s a typical June and he almost hates it but the rains always been comfortable. He likes the sound of the droplets hitting the pavement, the sloshing of the river under the bridge as the water level rises, the rumble of thunder in the sky before the fat drops of water fell from the clouds. It’s like music and it has always been his inspiration.
Maybe he shouldn’t have given in to his whims but Nino is a man of many whims and he usually, if not always, gives in to them when he can afford to and really, this one isn’t off the scale. Something inside him had insisted on stopping to look at the river under the bridge. He can feel a sense of urgency at the back of his head, numbed by his drifting thoughts and exhaustion, and he looks over the metal railings.
He sees the bright pink, child-sized umbrella before he hears a splutter and a shriek.
Nino’s not a hero. He can’t even swim but he reaches into his pocket for his phone. The other people start to notice the little girl and then they’re swarming around him, pushing and shoving, gasping and saying, “Someone please help her!” even if no one’s actually rushing to help her.
“Hello, this is 911. What is t-“
The next thing Nino knows is that he’s falling and the surface of the water is getting closer to his face. He squeezes his eyes shut before he splashes into the water. Fear is his first response. His entire body tenses as he thinks, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t. I’m going to die.
Something wraps itself to him, warm and comforting, like home and safety and he’s drifting, slowly, not sinking but not floating and he opens his eyes cautiously. It’s just… water but he can feel the rapids slowly and before he can figure out what’s happening, there is a little person clutching to his side and then they’re both swimming upwards, getting pushed upwards to the surface.
The reporters are there as he pulls the girl to the banks and Nino’s still too scared to freak out about it because he can’t swim and he doesn’t understand what happened in the waters. He puts on his idol smile for the camera. The wail of the ambulance pierces the air.
He can hear, "Oh God, that’s Nino." from the crowd, which is immediately followed by an excited shriek and his smile turns brittle.
Suddenly, he feels tired. There’s something in him that’s warm, a tiny flicker of contentment, but the rest of him is cold and shaking. His clothes are wet and his umbrella must still be up there on the bridge. He hopes that his phone’s still there. It’s brand new and it matches Aiba’s (which is a muted pink) and Ohno’s (which is sleek black).
He gets up unsteadily when the paramedics arrive, wrapping his shoulders with a duvet. They lead him towards the ambulance and he is thankful for that, his knees are buckling and he just can’t stop shaking, but the reporters are walking step by step with him, flashing lights and irritating questions. Nino does what he has to do, wondering why Sho wasn’t here right now because at least one of them would have the right words to say.
The right words meaning, “Back off.” and a snarl. Maybe a flying umbrella. Nino hasn’t seen that one in a while.
There’s another question. Nino doesn’t hear it. Everything feels fuzzy around the edges, his vision is blurry and oh- it’s not the ground that’s tilting, it’s h-.
---
He was never liked much as a child. He was quiet, too content with being quiet, and the girls liked him and shared their sweets with him because he never laughed at their hair clips or their dolls. Also, they would never admit it but there was something eerie about him, the way he looked at the water in the inflatable pool and the way the lights reflected into his eyes.
When the teacher wasn’t looking, they pushed him into the pool and held him down. Water went up his nose and into his ears. He had gasped, out of surprise, and it choked him and everything hurt. His chest hurt, sharp and painful and he struggled against their hold but then there was a weight on his back and hands holding on so tight that he could imagine dark blotches forming on his skin.
He’s dripping wet in his t-shirt and shorts, shivering and shaking even in the summer heat. The teachers help him out of his clothes and wrap fluffy towels around him and they ask him what’s happened but they didn’t believe him.
He pursed his lips after that, head bowed, trying to remember whether everything was supposed to look so blue and gray.
---
Nino wakes up to Aiba’s voice, raspy and pleasant as he talked about the animals that appeared on the set that day. He blinks tiredly at the ceiling above him before he exhales deeply and promptly hates how that simple act reveals his exhaustion.
Aiba’s smile is soft around the edges when Nino turns to look at his friend. He doesn’t even try to smile.
He scowls instead but Aiba understands.
“Good morning, princess,” he says, voice full of mirth.
The mug on the table trembles.
---
Nino dozes in the car as Aiba drives him home. It’s comfortable, smells like Aiba, and there’s an old pop song on the radio, which reminds Nino of his mother’s smile as she swayed in the kitchen, humming along under her breath.
“Thank you,” he murmurs as he slips in and out of his dreams of rainclouds and thunderstorms.
Aiba’s hand is warm, like hot chocolate on a winter’s night, and steady like a port in the storm. Nino’s smile is small and barely noticeable as the city lights cast shadows all over his skin.
---
Nino would never admit it. He knew that he was going to fall in to the water, knew that his answers were ridiculous for this Mote Mote Arashi Dame Dame Arashi and well, people were getting bored of Sho failing left, right, and centre and Aiba learnt quickly.
He knew that he was going to fall because it was all planned but that didn’t stop the feeling that thrummed under his skin, telling him to get out of this situation, but he forced it down, tucked it away, believing that in the event of him drowning, someone would save him this time.
Jun would get his stupid designer jeans wet to get him out. They’d laugh about it and really, really, the water wasn’t deep enough to drown. Nino’s a lot bigger than he was when he was five.
He won’t drown, his mind murmured. He won’t.
When he fell into the water, he heard an apology whispered against his skin and again as the icy water dripped off his skin.
---
Nino sits at his kitchen table with a cup of water placed in front of him. He glares at it for a moment.
“This is so stupid,” he says to himself. He does feel ridiculous, thinking that he must have dreamt of today’s events but he had saved a little girl from drowning and he remembers the feeling of the water pressing against his skin, pushing him upwards once the little girl had clung on to him. He remembers turning, startled, at the trembling mug, half-filled with water.
He puts a hand on the table and he can hear the sloshing of water (he can feel the excitement and it sends little trembles up his spine) before he sees the cup trembling. He forces himself to calm down and the sloshing calms into tiny ripples. His hand is shaking as he lifts it. He touches the cup hesitantly and the water leaps out to greet him, clinging on to his skin in little droplets and, well, what do you know? he thinks.
Nino pulls his hand away from the cup, watches intently as the water leaves the cup and forms a wobbly arc towards his hand. It's amazing, like a game come true. He exhales deeply when he remembers to breathe and the water disperses, splashing all over the table.
It's like a whole new world of possibilities and Nino can't help but smile.
---
He dreams of walking on water, feeling the ripples under his feet, telling him stories of the width of the sea and the creatures that lived down in the ocean. There are schools of fish under the port, darting left to right and the water tells him where they’re going, how they’ll fare in this temperature because it’s the same every year.
It tells him that it’s happy that he’s here but it’ll be sad when the fishes are gone.
“They’ll come back, right?” he says and the water sloshes between his toes in agreement.
Yes, they always do.
He hums a soft tune as he walks towards the port and the water dances around him, every bit of it eager and fighting for his attention like his dogs used to. He hears reluctance and sorrow when he has one foot on solid ground.
“I’ll be back,” he says, like a promise between lovers.
The water retracts from him.
Not always, whispers the last drop of water before it slides off his foot.
---
Nino wakes up to his alarm clock blaring noisily in his ear. He flails around until he hits the snooze button as he snuffles into the pillow and hopes that it'll swallow him and he doesn't have to get up. Sleepily, he goes through his schedule for the day in his head.
It should be seven in the morning right now and he has to film for Himitsu no Arashi-chan somewhere on the other side of Tokyo and he's got to get there within forty minutes and that leaves about twenty to drink coffee, (he swears the there's more caffeine than blood in his veins, really) get his makeup done, and run through the scripts. He knows that he's not the main today so he doesn't have to talk as much but...
He rolls over, sprawled out on his back as he slowly opens his eyes. The blanket is soft, just a touch warm in his air-conditioned room (thank God for luxuries because Nino hates the humidity of summer) and he groans at the thought of getting out of bed.
Slowly, he drags himself out of bed and shuffles towards the bathroom, yawning loudly as he scratches his stomach.
He brushes his teeth mechanically and splashes water all over his face a few times before he looks up into the mirror. His hair is sticking out in all directions and he gives himself a tired smile. When he sees a droplet of water dance all over the shiny surface, he remembers what happened last night.
It's now that he wonders.
What on earth can he do with it?
It’s not like he can go moonlighting as a superhero. The world doesn’t need superheroes anyways. He pauses at that thought, wiping his hands with the towel repeatedly as if he was turning the idea around to look at it from a different angle.
It’s not as if the world doesn’t need superheroes but the world has no space for superheroes. He looks up from his hands and into the eyes of his reflection as the droplets dance restlessly.
He sighs and looks away as all the droplets slide off the mirror cleanly.
Nino isn’t the superhero type anyways.
---
The first time Nino uses his power in the presence of people is when Jun’s coffee turns cold. It’s rather anti-climatic and no one notices.
They’ve been scheduled for a photo-shoot together for the first time in a while.
Ohno is dozing lightly on Nino’s shoulder as Nino jams at the buttons of his 3DS. Aiba’s currently on the set with Sho and Jun’s been complaining about how the air-conditioning always makes his coffee cold so fast.
“Drink it faster then,” says Nino without looking up and the youngest glares half-heartedly from across the room.
He peeks over his 3DS when Jun’s flipping through a magazine and he wonders whether he can get it to become warm again. Maybe he’s too far, maybe coffee won’t work, maybe he doesn’t have the power to excite molecules enough for it to heat up but Nino figures that there’s no harm trying.
He inhales deeply and tries reaching for it with his thoughts.
His touch is tentative and the coffee recoils from him at the first touch. It’s not like water, a little more stubborn and he doesn’t even have much experience with water yet. The coffee yields after a moment of curious prodding and then it answers to him, almost reluctantly.
Just this once, it says and Nino agrees.
Jun takes a sip of his coffee and makes a soft sound of surprise and Nino can’t help the tiny feeling that blooms in his heart.
He can be Jun’s superhero today.
---
Of course things get out of control on Nino’s birthday. He’s been grouchy all day, having woken up at 5am for an early morning filming for his new drama in which he has to find the criminal on a fishing boat of all things, and the water answers to his grouchiness in spikes and trembling waves. They’re standing at the harbour and Nino’s good at keeping his emotion from his face but the liquid around him know and he can’t lie to something that reads his heart and his every movement.
“It’s funny, the forecast said that it’d be clear,” mutters the assistant producer but they can all hear the way the waters are sloshing angrily against the harbour walls and the rolling of thunder in the distance.
Nino taps his finger on the cover of his script-book for a while, listening to the sounds of the ocean. He stops and runs his hand over the cover, ending with his hand opened wide, palm pressed against the paper and fingers spread out. The water calms a little and the frustration inside only grows because Nino really doesn’t want to have to postpone filming because he can’t control his feelings.
“Just stop,” he hisses out under his breath. The water stills almost immediately. The knot in the back of Nino’s mind turns into a slow throbbing migraine.
That’s only the start of it.
The champagne tower in the filming for Arashi ni Shiyagare shatters in the middle of filming and everyone ends up with tiny nicks and scratches from when the glass flew and Nino counts his blessings that the shards didn’t go into anyone’s eyes. His hands are trembling as they apologise to the guests and the fans in the studio. The staff cleans up and everyone’s helping with the cleanup.
Nino tries to help but he can’t stop shaking. Sho takes one look at Nino’s hands and he smiles, apologetically, at the crowd before he steers Nino out of the room.
In the green room, Sho forces Nino to sit with a firm hand of his shoulders. Nino’s knees buckle and he’s sinking into the sofa and now that it’s just the two of them, Nino tries to breathe but he can’t. It hurts. It feels like the air is trying to burn his lungs and he’s choking and gasping, feels as if he’s drowning and he’s clawing at Sho as the older man rubs his back, murmuring gently.
Nino hears himself make a wounded sound but he can’t stop himself, feels as if he’s going to shrivel up as his heart threatens to leap out of his chest. He feels staticky under his skin, spent but vibrating with energy and everything’s spiralling out of reach and the only thing anchoring him down is Sho’s warm hands, one pinning his hands down, stopping Nino from biting into hands, and the other rubbing up and down his back.
He comes back to himself in what feels like long dragging moments and he stares at Sho. His vision is covered by a faint film of gray. It feels so distant but Sho is warm, no. Sho’s hands are hot, searing into Nino’s flesh and the contrast makes Nino shiver from head to toe.
Nino remembers feeling this cold the other day at the river bank.
He sucks in a deep breath and tries to calm himself down, breathing to Sho’s rhythm before easing his back into the sofa.
“Sorry,” he says and his voice is hoarse.
Sho smiles, indulgently, as if he understands.
Nino wonders, tries to look up into Sho’s eyes but his eyelids are sliding shut. Five minutes, that’s all he needs…
---
He’s in the middle of the city when he realises that he can feel the people around him. It’s not the way they bump into him, unseeing and murmuring apologies, or the way he can hear the chatter of voices, blending with the thrum of electronics and engines, that form a layer of white noise over his senses. The perfumes and colognes and barely-working deodorants and sweat are stronger than he remembers them being but that’s not the sensation that’s bothering him.
He estimates a radius of a couple of feet but he can tell how many people are there because of the water thrumming in their blood, flowing through their hearts and their veins, passing their lungs and transferring nutrients and gases. He stills at the realisation that losing control would mean danger, not to himself, but to the people around him as well.
He doesn’t like people. It’s not in his nature to like people but that doesn’t mean that he wants to be a literal ticking time bomb.
The first two days were spent amused, thinking about how it was like all those RPG games that he plays, and being charitable enough to warm coffees-gone-cold and keep the ice in his soda from melting. The third day, his birthday, ended up in an accident on the set and Nino’s joints creaking worse than ever before as they wrapped up filming and he’d been too spent to celebrate. The past few days have been spent recuperating and learning how to stop the liquids from reacting to every twitch of his fingers and the slight shift of his moods. So far, he’s learnt that coaxing the water like a petulant child works but he knows that he’s not always going to be rational enough to be able to do that.
He’d thought that a break away from the apartment would be nice and so he had grabbed his coat and walked out at one in the morning.
Now, he’s stuck at a junction as people pass without glancing at him and he listens to the lights beep, signalling for the pedestrians to cross but Nino can’t move. He looks up, looks around him, and suddenly he feels so alone.
He just wants to clear his thoughts but it’s Tokyo. Of course, there’s people everywhere even when the sun’s long gone and it’s quite literally a new day and some of them are people going home from work, others are those leaving their offices for a drink, and some are just friends grouping up on a late Thursday night. He doesn’t know what to do. It’s a crowd of unfamiliar faces and Nino feels so out of place.
It’s a familiar sensation, one that’s always haunted him since he was a child but he’s never felt it so strongly before. He turns around and goes to wherever his feet will take him as he wills himself to stop thinking.
---
Nino is dreaming.
He's standing on the pier and there is nothing but a thin layer of mist, shifting shadows over water, as far as the eye can see. He looks down at the umber planks under his feet. He steps closer to the edge, wonders whether if it's alright to step on to the water.
"It's okay, you know?" says a familiar voice.
Nino whips around, startled.
Ohno's sitting in a collapsible chair, fishing rod in his hand and a box of bait beside him. He looks up from the water and looks at Nino in the eye.
"It's okay to let go and relax."
---
Aiba opens his door even before Nino raises his hand to press the buzzer. His smile is easy, relaxed and a burst of emotion flares up in Nino's chest. He tries to shove it aside, names it anger because he is angry because Aiba is everything that he isn't. Aiba isn't battling inner demons that sprung out from nowhere. Aiba is relaxed. Aiba is normal...
Nino swallows it and tries for a smile and feels it fail. Aiba's smile falters, his eyes suddenly sad and Nino looks away.
It's not Aiba's fault, Nino concedes to himself and a tiny sigh escapes his lips as Aiba lets him in. He is toeing off his shoes at the genkan when Aiba says, quietly, "It's not your fault either."
Nino's not sure whether he's meant to catch it but he does. His eyes narrow, lips curling into the beginning of a snarl. Before he can even turn around, Aiba chest is pressed to his back, catching Nino into a loose hug. The knot inside Nino loosens a little even if he fights it. He doesn't understand. He doesn't. His eyes squeeze shut and he flails a little, making a show even though he doesn't really want to get out of Aiba's embrace.
"Sho-chan said that we shouldn't because your powers were lashing out," says Aiba, in that same quiet tone. "Leader's probably tried in the beginning."
This is when Nino pulls away from Aiba, turning around to face the older man while trying to take a step back. He trips over the step at the genkan and falls as he asks, "What-"
What have you been hiding from me? What do you know? What do you mean? What are we?
Nino doesn't know which one he's asking, doesn't know which one he wants to ask. He hears a rattling in the distance. Agitated. Fix it, something inside him pleads. He reaches for that something, desperate.
Calm down, says a different voice but Nino ignores it, tries reaching for it but there is a wall blocking his path. Aiba's hands are warm when they pick Nino up and he snaps out of it. He looks up without seeing. Aiba is there and his face is grim and apologetic.
"I'm sorry," he says. He feels a jolt and something like the pinprick of a needle.
Everything fades to black.
---
Nino never did like change. He threw a tantrum when his mother had told him that they were moving back to grandpa's place. Nino didn't want to go.
He liked the neighbourhood, liked that his sister's school was close to his nursery so she could pick him up after school and they'd go home together. He liked the fountain in the playground (until someone pushed him in three weeks ago) and he liked that girl who lives two blocks away in a house with a blue roof.
He sulked in a corner of his room, under his blanket, when he realised that he'd passed the auditions for Johnny's because that meant less time for baseball, less time for everything that was part of his life right now. He hated it but he knew that they could use some extra money and Johnny's did pay relatively well for their Juniors and it was reluctant to but he stopped sulking and started attending practices.
His mother's smile had been tired and Nino could never question the idea that his mother would always know him best.
---
It's Ohno that he wakes up to.
He smiles sleepily at Nino as if he's the one who just woke up. His hands are close to Nino but not touching and Nino can't feel anything but a wash of calm. He looks at the older man for an answer, eyes searching for something, anything. The corners of Ohno's lips twitches a little as he shrugs.
"Sho-chan will be back. He went to look for a letter," says Ohno. Nino sighs, feels his exhaustion all the way to his fingertips, which he tries wriggling a little but his hand just twitches. He's sore everywhere from his neck to his ankles and to the joints of his fingers.
Ohno hums under his breath and holds Nino's hand. Nino glances down at their hands. Ohno's touch reminds him of the first time he stepped into a stream, laughing as the fishes darted between his scrawny legs, slippery against his ankles, the way it trickles and bubbles.
For a moment, he forgets the memories of burning lungs and the wretched feeling of hacking and coughing hard enough that it hurts.
Nino breathes.
---
Days, weeks, months, years later, he wonders how much his mother knows about this. He doesn't think about it very much but he knows that he'll talk to her about it one day.
He glances in the mirror and suppresses the laugh that bubbles in his chest when he sees Jun lose another ring. It slips off his finger as if nothing is holding it up, clinking softly against the floor before it rolls off, unnoticed, towards the dressing tables.
Nino smiles.
He'll help Jun look for it later.
---
Work resumes and Nino keeps a better lid on his emotions. It's still difficult for him to separate himself from the water but they're both trying. Some days, the water answers to his every breath and on other days, he was answering to their call. There’s an excitement in the molecules that hasn’t died and Nino’s starting to believe that it never will.
He still doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with the murmur under his skin and as the days go by and his ability to rein it in improves at the speed of a snail’s crawl. On most days, the murmur translates into frustration, escalating into a full-bodied shiver as his skin grows colder with the power forced from his veins but on those days, either Sho or Aiba will be there to bring him back. Ohno is a quiet force, giving suggestions that Nino cannot help but fulfill. Some days, it irritates Nino but on most days, Nino is a quivering mess, trying to hold himself together from the aftershock.
They've always been warmth and comfort to Nino but now, it means so much more than it ever did before.
They keep him grounded, cover his mistakes and he’s allowed to be silent and to collect himself. Sho places a hand on Nino's lower back, intimate as it burns into his skin, and Nino looks up to see Aiba waggling his eyebrows. Nino stifles a laugh as he bumps shoulders with Ohno comfortably, sharing small, secretive smiles. Jun casts curious glances every once in a while, a tiny hint of fondness apparent on his features, but Nino can see what Jun doesn't see yet.
Today's going to be okay.
fluffyneenFrom:
honeyporridgeTitle: when the well is dry, we know the worth of water.
Focus/Pairing: Nino-centric/None really? Everyone’s bros with everyone.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Super-powers. Internal conflict. Mentions of snuffing people out easily. No actual death that I'm aware of though. Hm.
Summary: "Nino is the Avatar. He is swift as a coursing river with all the force of a great typhoon. Then he will set fire to the rain, watch it burn as he touches your face." or Nino discovers his superpower. It’s not a happy series of events.
Notes: Basically superpower fic! I am so sorry
fluffyneen. This might not be what you were looking for but I tried my best and I hope that you like it, OH MY GOD I REALLY AM SO SORRY IF YOU DON’T. Also to nino_mod I AM SO SORRY LET ME GROVEL AT YOUR FEET BECAUSE I AM A MESS WITH DEADLINES. Many, many thanks to Y, who helped me shape this idea, A, who fixed my typos halfway through, and everyone who held my hand. Special thanks to S who helped me end this thing. I LOVE YOU GUYS ;_; Also everyone has a superpower... kind of.Three days before he turns 29, Nino discovers his superpower.
It’s a rainy day. Wet and miserable and disgustingly dreary but it’s a typical June and he almost hates it but the rains always been comfortable. He likes the sound of the droplets hitting the pavement, the sloshing of the river under the bridge as the water level rises, the rumble of thunder in the sky before the fat drops of water fell from the clouds. It’s like music and it has always been his inspiration.
Maybe he shouldn’t have given in to his whims but Nino is a man of many whims and he usually, if not always, gives in to them when he can afford to and really, this one isn’t off the scale. Something inside him had insisted on stopping to look at the river under the bridge. He can feel a sense of urgency at the back of his head, numbed by his drifting thoughts and exhaustion, and he looks over the metal railings.
He sees the bright pink, child-sized umbrella before he hears a splutter and a shriek.
Nino’s not a hero. He can’t even swim but he reaches into his pocket for his phone. The other people start to notice the little girl and then they’re swarming around him, pushing and shoving, gasping and saying, “Someone please help her!” even if no one’s actually rushing to help her.
“Hello, this is 911. What is t-“
The next thing Nino knows is that he’s falling and the surface of the water is getting closer to his face. He squeezes his eyes shut before he splashes into the water. Fear is his first response. His entire body tenses as he thinks, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t. I’m going to die.
Something wraps itself to him, warm and comforting, like home and safety and he’s drifting, slowly, not sinking but not floating and he opens his eyes cautiously. It’s just… water but he can feel the rapids slowly and before he can figure out what’s happening, there is a little person clutching to his side and then they’re both swimming upwards, getting pushed upwards to the surface.
The reporters are there as he pulls the girl to the banks and Nino’s still too scared to freak out about it because he can’t swim and he doesn’t understand what happened in the waters. He puts on his idol smile for the camera. The wail of the ambulance pierces the air.
He can hear, "Oh God, that’s Nino." from the crowd, which is immediately followed by an excited shriek and his smile turns brittle.
Suddenly, he feels tired. There’s something in him that’s warm, a tiny flicker of contentment, but the rest of him is cold and shaking. His clothes are wet and his umbrella must still be up there on the bridge. He hopes that his phone’s still there. It’s brand new and it matches Aiba’s (which is a muted pink) and Ohno’s (which is sleek black).
He gets up unsteadily when the paramedics arrive, wrapping his shoulders with a duvet. They lead him towards the ambulance and he is thankful for that, his knees are buckling and he just can’t stop shaking, but the reporters are walking step by step with him, flashing lights and irritating questions. Nino does what he has to do, wondering why Sho wasn’t here right now because at least one of them would have the right words to say.
The right words meaning, “Back off.” and a snarl. Maybe a flying umbrella. Nino hasn’t seen that one in a while.
There’s another question. Nino doesn’t hear it. Everything feels fuzzy around the edges, his vision is blurry and oh- it’s not the ground that’s tilting, it’s h-.
---
He was never liked much as a child. He was quiet, too content with being quiet, and the girls liked him and shared their sweets with him because he never laughed at their hair clips or their dolls. Also, they would never admit it but there was something eerie about him, the way he looked at the water in the inflatable pool and the way the lights reflected into his eyes.
When the teacher wasn’t looking, they pushed him into the pool and held him down. Water went up his nose and into his ears. He had gasped, out of surprise, and it choked him and everything hurt. His chest hurt, sharp and painful and he struggled against their hold but then there was a weight on his back and hands holding on so tight that he could imagine dark blotches forming on his skin.
He’s dripping wet in his t-shirt and shorts, shivering and shaking even in the summer heat. The teachers help him out of his clothes and wrap fluffy towels around him and they ask him what’s happened but they didn’t believe him.
He pursed his lips after that, head bowed, trying to remember whether everything was supposed to look so blue and gray.
---
Nino wakes up to Aiba’s voice, raspy and pleasant as he talked about the animals that appeared on the set that day. He blinks tiredly at the ceiling above him before he exhales deeply and promptly hates how that simple act reveals his exhaustion.
Aiba’s smile is soft around the edges when Nino turns to look at his friend. He doesn’t even try to smile.
He scowls instead but Aiba understands.
“Good morning, princess,” he says, voice full of mirth.
The mug on the table trembles.
---
Nino dozes in the car as Aiba drives him home. It’s comfortable, smells like Aiba, and there’s an old pop song on the radio, which reminds Nino of his mother’s smile as she swayed in the kitchen, humming along under her breath.
“Thank you,” he murmurs as he slips in and out of his dreams of rainclouds and thunderstorms.
Aiba’s hand is warm, like hot chocolate on a winter’s night, and steady like a port in the storm. Nino’s smile is small and barely noticeable as the city lights cast shadows all over his skin.
---
Nino would never admit it. He knew that he was going to fall in to the water, knew that his answers were ridiculous for this Mote Mote Arashi Dame Dame Arashi and well, people were getting bored of Sho failing left, right, and centre and Aiba learnt quickly.
He knew that he was going to fall because it was all planned but that didn’t stop the feeling that thrummed under his skin, telling him to get out of this situation, but he forced it down, tucked it away, believing that in the event of him drowning, someone would save him this time.
Jun would get his stupid designer jeans wet to get him out. They’d laugh about it and really, really, the water wasn’t deep enough to drown. Nino’s a lot bigger than he was when he was five.
He won’t drown, his mind murmured. He won’t.
When he fell into the water, he heard an apology whispered against his skin and again as the icy water dripped off his skin.
---
Nino sits at his kitchen table with a cup of water placed in front of him. He glares at it for a moment.
“This is so stupid,” he says to himself. He does feel ridiculous, thinking that he must have dreamt of today’s events but he had saved a little girl from drowning and he remembers the feeling of the water pressing against his skin, pushing him upwards once the little girl had clung on to him. He remembers turning, startled, at the trembling mug, half-filled with water.
He puts a hand on the table and he can hear the sloshing of water (he can feel the excitement and it sends little trembles up his spine) before he sees the cup trembling. He forces himself to calm down and the sloshing calms into tiny ripples. His hand is shaking as he lifts it. He touches the cup hesitantly and the water leaps out to greet him, clinging on to his skin in little droplets and, well, what do you know? he thinks.
Nino pulls his hand away from the cup, watches intently as the water leaves the cup and forms a wobbly arc towards his hand. It's amazing, like a game come true. He exhales deeply when he remembers to breathe and the water disperses, splashing all over the table.
It's like a whole new world of possibilities and Nino can't help but smile.
---
He dreams of walking on water, feeling the ripples under his feet, telling him stories of the width of the sea and the creatures that lived down in the ocean. There are schools of fish under the port, darting left to right and the water tells him where they’re going, how they’ll fare in this temperature because it’s the same every year.
It tells him that it’s happy that he’s here but it’ll be sad when the fishes are gone.
“They’ll come back, right?” he says and the water sloshes between his toes in agreement.
Yes, they always do.
He hums a soft tune as he walks towards the port and the water dances around him, every bit of it eager and fighting for his attention like his dogs used to. He hears reluctance and sorrow when he has one foot on solid ground.
“I’ll be back,” he says, like a promise between lovers.
The water retracts from him.
Not always, whispers the last drop of water before it slides off his foot.
---
Nino wakes up to his alarm clock blaring noisily in his ear. He flails around until he hits the snooze button as he snuffles into the pillow and hopes that it'll swallow him and he doesn't have to get up. Sleepily, he goes through his schedule for the day in his head.
It should be seven in the morning right now and he has to film for Himitsu no Arashi-chan somewhere on the other side of Tokyo and he's got to get there within forty minutes and that leaves about twenty to drink coffee, (he swears the there's more caffeine than blood in his veins, really) get his makeup done, and run through the scripts. He knows that he's not the main today so he doesn't have to talk as much but...
He rolls over, sprawled out on his back as he slowly opens his eyes. The blanket is soft, just a touch warm in his air-conditioned room (thank God for luxuries because Nino hates the humidity of summer) and he groans at the thought of getting out of bed.
Slowly, he drags himself out of bed and shuffles towards the bathroom, yawning loudly as he scratches his stomach.
He brushes his teeth mechanically and splashes water all over his face a few times before he looks up into the mirror. His hair is sticking out in all directions and he gives himself a tired smile. When he sees a droplet of water dance all over the shiny surface, he remembers what happened last night.
It's now that he wonders.
What on earth can he do with it?
It’s not like he can go moonlighting as a superhero. The world doesn’t need superheroes anyways. He pauses at that thought, wiping his hands with the towel repeatedly as if he was turning the idea around to look at it from a different angle.
It’s not as if the world doesn’t need superheroes but the world has no space for superheroes. He looks up from his hands and into the eyes of his reflection as the droplets dance restlessly.
He sighs and looks away as all the droplets slide off the mirror cleanly.
Nino isn’t the superhero type anyways.
---
The first time Nino uses his power in the presence of people is when Jun’s coffee turns cold. It’s rather anti-climatic and no one notices.
They’ve been scheduled for a photo-shoot together for the first time in a while.
Ohno is dozing lightly on Nino’s shoulder as Nino jams at the buttons of his 3DS. Aiba’s currently on the set with Sho and Jun’s been complaining about how the air-conditioning always makes his coffee cold so fast.
“Drink it faster then,” says Nino without looking up and the youngest glares half-heartedly from across the room.
He peeks over his 3DS when Jun’s flipping through a magazine and he wonders whether he can get it to become warm again. Maybe he’s too far, maybe coffee won’t work, maybe he doesn’t have the power to excite molecules enough for it to heat up but Nino figures that there’s no harm trying.
He inhales deeply and tries reaching for it with his thoughts.
His touch is tentative and the coffee recoils from him at the first touch. It’s not like water, a little more stubborn and he doesn’t even have much experience with water yet. The coffee yields after a moment of curious prodding and then it answers to him, almost reluctantly.
Just this once, it says and Nino agrees.
Jun takes a sip of his coffee and makes a soft sound of surprise and Nino can’t help the tiny feeling that blooms in his heart.
He can be Jun’s superhero today.
---
Of course things get out of control on Nino’s birthday. He’s been grouchy all day, having woken up at 5am for an early morning filming for his new drama in which he has to find the criminal on a fishing boat of all things, and the water answers to his grouchiness in spikes and trembling waves. They’re standing at the harbour and Nino’s good at keeping his emotion from his face but the liquid around him know and he can’t lie to something that reads his heart and his every movement.
“It’s funny, the forecast said that it’d be clear,” mutters the assistant producer but they can all hear the way the waters are sloshing angrily against the harbour walls and the rolling of thunder in the distance.
Nino taps his finger on the cover of his script-book for a while, listening to the sounds of the ocean. He stops and runs his hand over the cover, ending with his hand opened wide, palm pressed against the paper and fingers spread out. The water calms a little and the frustration inside only grows because Nino really doesn’t want to have to postpone filming because he can’t control his feelings.
“Just stop,” he hisses out under his breath. The water stills almost immediately. The knot in the back of Nino’s mind turns into a slow throbbing migraine.
That’s only the start of it.
The champagne tower in the filming for Arashi ni Shiyagare shatters in the middle of filming and everyone ends up with tiny nicks and scratches from when the glass flew and Nino counts his blessings that the shards didn’t go into anyone’s eyes. His hands are trembling as they apologise to the guests and the fans in the studio. The staff cleans up and everyone’s helping with the cleanup.
Nino tries to help but he can’t stop shaking. Sho takes one look at Nino’s hands and he smiles, apologetically, at the crowd before he steers Nino out of the room.
In the green room, Sho forces Nino to sit with a firm hand of his shoulders. Nino’s knees buckle and he’s sinking into the sofa and now that it’s just the two of them, Nino tries to breathe but he can’t. It hurts. It feels like the air is trying to burn his lungs and he’s choking and gasping, feels as if he’s drowning and he’s clawing at Sho as the older man rubs his back, murmuring gently.
Nino hears himself make a wounded sound but he can’t stop himself, feels as if he’s going to shrivel up as his heart threatens to leap out of his chest. He feels staticky under his skin, spent but vibrating with energy and everything’s spiralling out of reach and the only thing anchoring him down is Sho’s warm hands, one pinning his hands down, stopping Nino from biting into hands, and the other rubbing up and down his back.
He comes back to himself in what feels like long dragging moments and he stares at Sho. His vision is covered by a faint film of gray. It feels so distant but Sho is warm, no. Sho’s hands are hot, searing into Nino’s flesh and the contrast makes Nino shiver from head to toe.
Nino remembers feeling this cold the other day at the river bank.
He sucks in a deep breath and tries to calm himself down, breathing to Sho’s rhythm before easing his back into the sofa.
“Sorry,” he says and his voice is hoarse.
Sho smiles, indulgently, as if he understands.
Nino wonders, tries to look up into Sho’s eyes but his eyelids are sliding shut. Five minutes, that’s all he needs…
---
He’s in the middle of the city when he realises that he can feel the people around him. It’s not the way they bump into him, unseeing and murmuring apologies, or the way he can hear the chatter of voices, blending with the thrum of electronics and engines, that form a layer of white noise over his senses. The perfumes and colognes and barely-working deodorants and sweat are stronger than he remembers them being but that’s not the sensation that’s bothering him.
He estimates a radius of a couple of feet but he can tell how many people are there because of the water thrumming in their blood, flowing through their hearts and their veins, passing their lungs and transferring nutrients and gases. He stills at the realisation that losing control would mean danger, not to himself, but to the people around him as well.
He doesn’t like people. It’s not in his nature to like people but that doesn’t mean that he wants to be a literal ticking time bomb.
The first two days were spent amused, thinking about how it was like all those RPG games that he plays, and being charitable enough to warm coffees-gone-cold and keep the ice in his soda from melting. The third day, his birthday, ended up in an accident on the set and Nino’s joints creaking worse than ever before as they wrapped up filming and he’d been too spent to celebrate. The past few days have been spent recuperating and learning how to stop the liquids from reacting to every twitch of his fingers and the slight shift of his moods. So far, he’s learnt that coaxing the water like a petulant child works but he knows that he’s not always going to be rational enough to be able to do that.
He’d thought that a break away from the apartment would be nice and so he had grabbed his coat and walked out at one in the morning.
Now, he’s stuck at a junction as people pass without glancing at him and he listens to the lights beep, signalling for the pedestrians to cross but Nino can’t move. He looks up, looks around him, and suddenly he feels so alone.
He just wants to clear his thoughts but it’s Tokyo. Of course, there’s people everywhere even when the sun’s long gone and it’s quite literally a new day and some of them are people going home from work, others are those leaving their offices for a drink, and some are just friends grouping up on a late Thursday night. He doesn’t know what to do. It’s a crowd of unfamiliar faces and Nino feels so out of place.
It’s a familiar sensation, one that’s always haunted him since he was a child but he’s never felt it so strongly before. He turns around and goes to wherever his feet will take him as he wills himself to stop thinking.
---
Nino is dreaming.
He's standing on the pier and there is nothing but a thin layer of mist, shifting shadows over water, as far as the eye can see. He looks down at the umber planks under his feet. He steps closer to the edge, wonders whether if it's alright to step on to the water.
"It's okay, you know?" says a familiar voice.
Nino whips around, startled.
Ohno's sitting in a collapsible chair, fishing rod in his hand and a box of bait beside him. He looks up from the water and looks at Nino in the eye.
"It's okay to let go and relax."
---
Aiba opens his door even before Nino raises his hand to press the buzzer. His smile is easy, relaxed and a burst of emotion flares up in Nino's chest. He tries to shove it aside, names it anger because he is angry because Aiba is everything that he isn't. Aiba isn't battling inner demons that sprung out from nowhere. Aiba is relaxed. Aiba is normal...
Nino swallows it and tries for a smile and feels it fail. Aiba's smile falters, his eyes suddenly sad and Nino looks away.
It's not Aiba's fault, Nino concedes to himself and a tiny sigh escapes his lips as Aiba lets him in. He is toeing off his shoes at the genkan when Aiba says, quietly, "It's not your fault either."
Nino's not sure whether he's meant to catch it but he does. His eyes narrow, lips curling into the beginning of a snarl. Before he can even turn around, Aiba chest is pressed to his back, catching Nino into a loose hug. The knot inside Nino loosens a little even if he fights it. He doesn't understand. He doesn't. His eyes squeeze shut and he flails a little, making a show even though he doesn't really want to get out of Aiba's embrace.
"Sho-chan said that we shouldn't because your powers were lashing out," says Aiba, in that same quiet tone. "Leader's probably tried in the beginning."
This is when Nino pulls away from Aiba, turning around to face the older man while trying to take a step back. He trips over the step at the genkan and falls as he asks, "What-"
What have you been hiding from me? What do you know? What do you mean? What are we?
Nino doesn't know which one he's asking, doesn't know which one he wants to ask. He hears a rattling in the distance. Agitated. Fix it, something inside him pleads. He reaches for that something, desperate.
Calm down, says a different voice but Nino ignores it, tries reaching for it but there is a wall blocking his path. Aiba's hands are warm when they pick Nino up and he snaps out of it. He looks up without seeing. Aiba is there and his face is grim and apologetic.
"I'm sorry," he says. He feels a jolt and something like the pinprick of a needle.
Everything fades to black.
---
Nino never did like change. He threw a tantrum when his mother had told him that they were moving back to grandpa's place. Nino didn't want to go.
He liked the neighbourhood, liked that his sister's school was close to his nursery so she could pick him up after school and they'd go home together. He liked the fountain in the playground (until someone pushed him in three weeks ago) and he liked that girl who lives two blocks away in a house with a blue roof.
He sulked in a corner of his room, under his blanket, when he realised that he'd passed the auditions for Johnny's because that meant less time for baseball, less time for everything that was part of his life right now. He hated it but he knew that they could use some extra money and Johnny's did pay relatively well for their Juniors and it was reluctant to but he stopped sulking and started attending practices.
His mother's smile had been tired and Nino could never question the idea that his mother would always know him best.
---
It's Ohno that he wakes up to.
He smiles sleepily at Nino as if he's the one who just woke up. His hands are close to Nino but not touching and Nino can't feel anything but a wash of calm. He looks at the older man for an answer, eyes searching for something, anything. The corners of Ohno's lips twitches a little as he shrugs.
"Sho-chan will be back. He went to look for a letter," says Ohno. Nino sighs, feels his exhaustion all the way to his fingertips, which he tries wriggling a little but his hand just twitches. He's sore everywhere from his neck to his ankles and to the joints of his fingers.
Ohno hums under his breath and holds Nino's hand. Nino glances down at their hands. Ohno's touch reminds him of the first time he stepped into a stream, laughing as the fishes darted between his scrawny legs, slippery against his ankles, the way it trickles and bubbles.
For a moment, he forgets the memories of burning lungs and the wretched feeling of hacking and coughing hard enough that it hurts.
Nino breathes.
---
Days, weeks, months, years later, he wonders how much his mother knows about this. He doesn't think about it very much but he knows that he'll talk to her about it one day.
He glances in the mirror and suppresses the laugh that bubbles in his chest when he sees Jun lose another ring. It slips off his finger as if nothing is holding it up, clinking softly against the floor before it rolls off, unnoticed, towards the dressing tables.
Nino smiles.
He'll help Jun look for it later.
---
Work resumes and Nino keeps a better lid on his emotions. It's still difficult for him to separate himself from the water but they're both trying. Some days, the water answers to his every breath and on other days, he was answering to their call. There’s an excitement in the molecules that hasn’t died and Nino’s starting to believe that it never will.
He still doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with the murmur under his skin and as the days go by and his ability to rein it in improves at the speed of a snail’s crawl. On most days, the murmur translates into frustration, escalating into a full-bodied shiver as his skin grows colder with the power forced from his veins but on those days, either Sho or Aiba will be there to bring him back. Ohno is a quiet force, giving suggestions that Nino cannot help but fulfill. Some days, it irritates Nino but on most days, Nino is a quivering mess, trying to hold himself together from the aftershock.
They've always been warmth and comfort to Nino but now, it means so much more than it ever did before.
They keep him grounded, cover his mistakes and he’s allowed to be silent and to collect himself. Sho places a hand on Nino's lower back, intimate as it burns into his skin, and Nino looks up to see Aiba waggling his eyebrows. Nino stifles a laugh as he bumps shoulders with Ohno comfortably, sharing small, secretive smiles. Jun casts curious glances every once in a while, a tiny hint of fondness apparent on his features, but Nino can see what Jun doesn't see yet.
Today's going to be okay.
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It's an enjoyable read!
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And I love the Avatar (and Mulan!!) references in your header, anon. I was worried that Nino was going to turn into a cray cray blood bender if he didn't learn how to control his new abilities ;)
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And then the hero thing. This was wonderful and deep and so dramatic in a way that I just couldn't stop my heart from beating like crazy when I read this sentence:
He can be Jun’s superhero today.
One of my favourite moments in your story ♥
And then, there's Arashi. So caring, so heartwarming, especially when Nino understands, that they understand, that he's not alone. And Ohno's calmness was wonderful.
Also, Jun is next, isn't he? So it starts right before the 29th birthday? When I think about it, I'm craving for more, for a backstory about the rest of Arashi, how they got their power and learned to live with it, and about Jun, how things will go with him. Will read this again and again, only to stop this craving a bit. See what you did here to me, awesome author-san! :) ♥
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