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ninoexchange2015-06-21 08:31 pm
nino-mod.livejournal.com) wrote in ninoexchange2015-06-21 08:31 pm
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lysanderpuck (1/2)
For: lysanderpuck
From:calerine
Title: living is the best revenge
Pairing/Focus: Nino/Aiba/Ohno, mention of Junta/Akito/Hamada and Becky/Shihori.
Rating: PG-13.
Warnings: alcohol mention, food mention, violence mention, transphobia.
Summary: 8UPPERS Arashi, and the families that come with them.
Notes: Hilysanderpuck, I genuinely hope this is what you were looking for! It kind of got away from me, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. Super huge thanks to my betas C and H for sticking by me and making sure that I don’t make silly spelling mistakes. There are endnotes that you can click and will lead you out of the Nino Exchange comm and into another journal for more funtimes!
i.
It starts with a baby - this baby, on a damp autumn morning in August. Nino finds her on the steps of their back door, wrapped up in swathes of cotton and plastic bags, her cheeks flushed from the cold. The cardboard box she lies in is damp from the overnight rain, and even from afar, the leaves hang low with dew. The morning is hazy, so misty Nino can’t make out the lines of the street converging in the distance.
It’s 6am and Nino’s phone is sticking out of his pocket, still alight with the text from Jun: walking from the station, lemme in. The screen’d fogged up instantly when he rolled out from between Aiba’s tentacle arms and Ohno’s slow, even breathing, wriggling from under their duvet and into Ohno’s cardigan that smells like dried clay and yesterday night’s curry rice. Instinctively, Nino pulls it tighter around himself. It’s far too early, he thinks, his eyelids sticking with leftover sleep; the things he does for Jun.
He presses a hand to his mouth mid-yawn, and in that moment, his fluffy bunny slipper bumps into the damp cardboard box. The baby makes a curious noise. Down the street, Jun’s jogging over, his shined shoes splashing through puddles. He lifts a hand to wave, and there’s a single moment before Nino looks back down -
- the baby starts wailing.
*
“Whoever left her there either knew what time Matsujun comes home or left her there for hours,” Aiba points out later, when they’re all gathered in the living room upstairs. He’s blinking at the baby on his knees and the horror in his voice shivers in the air. She stares back at him, wide-eyed, curious and unaware. All their gazes keep drifting restlessly back to her; they’ve gotten weird assignments before but never like this.
“How did they even know about us? No, scratch that, why would they give us a baby - whoever it was.” Sho chews on his leftover ogura toast with a fierce thoughtfulness that someone on three hours of sleep shouldn’t be capable of. He’d slept curled up on the floor in his scrubs; reckoned that since he had to get to the hospital in the morning anyway, pulling out his futon and doing laundry were too much trouble. Jun’s given up telling him off for it.
Beside Sho, Jun’s falling asleep in his damp clothes, having splashed his way through Aiba’s displays of flowers downstairs in search of a towel, then upstairs when he couldn’t find one. “I think the most important question right now is what are we going to do. Leader?” He glances at Ohno.
“We have to keep her for now. Maybe someone will come back for her,” Ohno says, firm despite the way he’s leaning against Aiba, pliant and still futon-warm.
Nino thinks, what if they don’t, maybe that’s it, that’s the job; maybe this is the whole point.
“There’s no space in the house,” Nino blurts the same time that Sho goes, “We can’t.” They meet each other’s eyes over Aiba’s hands and Jun’s frown. Nino looks away first.
“Nobody just leaves babies laying around if they’re coming back for them.” Aiba says. His face twists. His voice trembles. He inhales, and it smoothes out into a whisper, “right?”
A thick dread settles at the bottom of Nino’s stomach. He cup his palm over the back of Aiba’s neck, and he leans into it gratefully. There’s only the sound of Sho crunching on bread crust and Ohno rubbing the side of his foot absently on the tatami floor. Jun exhales, then gets to his feet. His trousers drip. “It’s too early for this. Aiba-chan, go open the shop. Sho-chan, go to work. We’ll think of something.”
Nino pushes back on his hands, runs his eyes across the way Jun’s white shirt clings to his torso that makes the definition of his abs all the more pronounced. “That’s a good look on you, MJ. Maybe you should consider putting it in your work, branch out? Bit of showmanship, maybe?”
Jun flips him off, shaking out an arm so water droplets fly and Sho shields his toast protectively. “You’d better sleep with your taser tonight.”
Aiba laughs. “Nino and Matsujun have been trying to kill each other since I was 13, you’ll get used to it soon." The baby takes one look at his smile, and drools all over his fingers happily.
ii.
“We can’t not,” Nino says in the evening, after Sho’s shift. They’re sitting on tatami of the living room while their feet rest on the veranda, and a breeze sweeps through the trees and into their open door, early autumn, the air smells like damp earth. Somebody’s frying croquettes.
The baby lies on Nino’s lap, her head on his boney inclined knees, cooing and reaching out whenever she catches sight of his painted nails. They’re teal this week. Aiba had watched him while he painted them, offered up unhelpful colour advice of matching yellow with shocking pink. Nino had rolled his eyes. In response, Aiba grabbed ahold of Nino’s feet and proceeded to paint his toenails exactly those shades. They look horrendous; it’s a mystery how Aiba manages to make a livelihood from arranging bouquets. “You don’t want her to end up like us. Or worse. There’s always a chance she could actually end up worse off than us, you know Sho-chan.”
“Mmm.” Sho exhales, smoke pouring out through his nose. “Doesn’t make it easier though.”
Nino sighs, lets the baby catch one of his fingers and dangles it away again. This close up, Nino cannot bear to refuse her anything, let alone a place in their home. He thinks of the dim rooms of the orphanage; it hadn’t been all bad but that was only because Aiba hid flowers under his pillow and Ohno crawled into his bed after curfew. Everything else - Nino had let time turn foggy. If they dropped her off too, what are the chances she’d be okay? “Will anything make things easier though?”
“More money? Less thinking?” Sho turns to meet Nino’s eyes, his face lit in a wry grin. Nino remembers the year when Sho had smiled like that all the time; 22 and perpetually sleep-deprived from burning midnight oils and doing them proud. It’s over ten years ago now, but some days it feels like Sho’s still trying to make up for some kind of guilt.
“See this is why we keep you around, Sho-chan, so there’s someone level-headed enough to stop Aiba from giving too many flowers away for free.” Sho laughs for real this time, as he flicks cigarette ash into the ashtray by his feet.1
Nino stares out onto the street, listens to Aiba’s voice drifting up. Thank you, please have a safe journey! He nudges Sho’s shoulder. “Don’t smoke around her. We don’t want her to have Aiba-standard lungs.”
Sho lets out a low chuckle. “No one should have Aiba-standard lungs,” he agrees, twisting out the ember glow against the turtle-shaped porcelain ashtray that Ohno made and watching, as the wind takes some of the soot away.
iii.
Two nights after - Friday - Jun and Ohno return home with split lips and bruises under their dress shirts. Jun drops himself heavily in the corner of the living room, his tie tugged loose. Ohno’s already pulling a squashed pack of cigarettes from his jacket and smoothing out one. The movement jostles, and his closed switchblade rolls out of his trouser pocket, into the dim fluorescent light.2
“They were waiting,” Jun says, catching the bottle of iodine that Aiba lobs from the toilet. He tilts it onto his fingertip and hisses when the purple touches his blood-stained lips. In Nino’s bed, the baby’s been fast asleep for hours.
“And the money?” Sho frowns, closing his textbook. Nino mirrors his concern, turns off the television with his big toe on the switch. It doesn’t make sense, the request had come in through the regular channels. It was supposed to be a quick in-and-out, cash in hand, no surprises.
Ohno sighs, one long breath. Smoke billows. His eyes open, and he’s flicking ash out of the veranda door. “Wasn’t there, the safes were empty. There were more men than necessary, too.”
“Seemed privately hired to me. I think it was a test. They were definitely expecting all five of us.” Ohno makes an agreeing sound. Jun exhales and rests his head on Ohno’s shoulder. His right eye is red and puffy. Nino imagines it’ll be swollen in a bit, his fingers itch with faded sense memories of that muffled pain. “There was something about a scandal. D’you think it concerns us?”
Sho is in their tiny kitchen, balancing filling glasses with tap water with pulling two packets of frozen chahan out of the freezer. He manages. “Can’t tell at this stage. We’ll have to wait it out. You guys doing okay?”
Jun accepts the water, presses the chahan against his face and swallows around a sound of pain. He nods while Ohno leans back into his side, sweeps his open palm soothingly against his back. Outside, the night is calm, steady with slowly-revolving planets making their rounds around the sun, only rippling whenever someone opens the door to the bar across the road and the cacophony of conversations drifts up toward them.
“We’ve had worse,” and Nino finds himself moving, standing up, turning the television back on so the sound of a late-night variety show fills the silence, an audience laughing and a comedian doing a Shimura Ken gag. Sometimes, their reality makes ordinary life seem too bright, garish in comparison to those black-white tuxedos and shadowy places.
“Anyone want food?” Everyone’s hand goes up, gazes already set on the screen. Aiba shuffles into the space between Jun and Ohno, looping an arm around Jun’s shoulders and pushing his fingers gently into his hair. He kisses Ohno’s hair, lingering for a moment longer than necessary, inhales and exhales deeply. He’s done that to all of them, for as long as Nino can remember. Breathing them in so deeply Nino hears the air whooshing in and out of his lungs and his hands warm on their skin, making sure they’re okay and they’re there. Jun reaches out, clasps a hand around Aiba’s wrist and closes his eyes. He skipped work tonight for this.
Beside them, Sho’s trying to grab Ohno’s toes with his own for some reason; he keeps cracking himself up. After a while, Ohno starts giggling as well.
Lips twisting, Nino pulls out eggs and packets of instant ramen from the cupboard, bak choy from the vegetable drawer and puts the kettle on to boil.
*
The next morning, Nino wakes up to Aiba and Ohno making out groggily, like a pair of teenagers beside him.
The sunrays are pale, bleached through the windows that Ohno just washed in spring, when he sat on a low stool for an afternoon, drawing spirals on the glass with one of Nino's old shirts. He listens to their lips touch. Their sleepy slow breaths grow into sync gradually, two steady ins and two steady outs. Nino stretches out to make all his frozen extremities fall into that patch of sun in the middle of Ohno and his futons. The coffee machine in the kitchen chimes, something falls and Sho makes a panicked sound. Jun's voice murmurs faintly, disapprovingly.
On their windowsill sit those pressed morning glories Ohno made last week, and sunlight streams through one of his glass vases, casting shadows of dinosaur outlines on the wall. Nino blinks up at the ceiling and watches their ceiling fan rotate slowly, its clicking a faint rhythm in the background of his mind.
Then Ohno rolls over, and Aiba reaches across his hip for Nino's hand,
"It's nice to have you here in the morning, Nino-chan," Aiba mumbles, his tongue thick with the early hours. Ohno nods and yawning, tucks his hand flat under his head.
Nino finds himself smiling, a smart comment dying on his tongue. It must be the warm sun on his cold toes, or the way Ohno and Aiba look at him, their hair mussed from sleep and each other's fingers. Then again, he's never been very strong when it comes to the both of them.
Ohno pulls Nino in by the worn fabric of his shirt, snuffs a little at his cheek and Nino's about to tell him off, but then he's leaning in, warm breath, warmer lips. He tastes like morning breath and smells like sleep, the cakey kind that you find in the corners of your eyes in the bathroom mirror. Nino traces his fingers across pillow marks on the underside of his arms, listens closely when Aiba makes a small happy noise and tangles all their legs together.
When Sho gets home, he recounts the aftermath of their scuffle, like he’s done a million times before. He sits at the dining table, back pushed up against the wall and with his hands pressed over his eyes, he talks about 23 patient records made within ten minutes of each other; five with knife wounds, three with concussions and all of them with the smell of gunpowder on their soiled shirts.
“They were all accounted for,” he says. “Paid up front, for the exact period of treatment they’ll need.” Nino feels a chill run down his spine, his heart begins its measured march in his ears. A sudden rush of adrenaline makes him light-headed. Sho scrubs his hands over his head, straightens and rolls his shoulders. His spine makes a loud cracking sound.
Ohno fiddles with the TV remote in his hands. “This is bigger than we expected,” he says. “We need to keep all ears on lookout. Aiba-chan, check if the intel getting in has been toyed with in any way.”
Aiba frowns, nodding. Then, Jun sighs exasperatedly. “Sho-kun, you seriously need to stop sleeping on the floor.”
iv.
Maru loves her. They should all have expected it.
The moment he catches sight of her, he cajoles Hina to take over at the counter. Nino hands her over carefully, accompanied with a threat that no one will find Maru’s body if he drops her.
“She’s Aiba-chan’s niece,” Jun’s clamouring to explain before Maru sits. He cups her back, cooing like he’s an amateur birdwatcher trying to get birds to land on his hand. After five minutes, he looks up at Jun and Nino, perfectly serious.
“Do you think she likes coffee?”
Jun shrugs, his hands huddled around his own short black. His black eye has turned purple today; everyone seems to think they do really serious recreational boxing. “She seems to like the smell of it well enough. I don’t have much experiences with babies but I’m don’t think we should be feeding her any additives.”
“You don’t want her to end up with a kissaten and three idiots when she grows up, do you,” Nino adds, grinning.
“Says the guy in a kissaten with those three idiots,” Hina retorts. He turns the steam knob deftly, holding a canister filled with milk to it and watching carefully for smaller bubbles to form.
It’s usually Sho and Ohno who’s here, the former drinking copious amounts of coffee to stay standing through ten-hour shifts and the latter who likes dozing off on the counter during conversations with Yasu. Nino just enjoys the luxurious normality of this; of sitting in a coffee shop, soothed by the coolness of dark wood while the harsh deafening grinding of beans swallows up the world, leaving in its wake the scent of coffee and hay that clings to his clothes for days. It makes him feel like he's stepped a foot out from the world.
And there’s Hina. There’s the way he talks, whip-fast, always ready with the right words to chide, tease and comfort, always acutely aware of the nuances in Nino’s words, just like Jun. It's familiar, comforting.
Now, Maru nods thoughtfully. “That’s true, huh. What about chocolate!”
Hina reaches across the small space just to smack him over his head. Yasu chokes on giggles, manages Sorry, ma’am I just - into the change in his hands.
v.
Aiba doesn’t say anything about it - Nino suspects he doesn’t even realise - but in typical Aiba-fashion, he starts calling her Hoshii, as in ‘wanted’, as in ‘important’, ‘treasured’, and ‘loved’. The effect is spoilt immediately though, by how he follows that with incoherent mumbling, to which Hoshii-chan always responds delightedly. Nino wonders a lot about her understanding of the world, and the possibility that she’s just being patient with her bumbling humans.
But then, Ohno mishears and calls her Hoshi. When he’s not at work, she lets him draw stars all over her soft arms and legs, in his tiny studio under the stairs. 3 She holds still for him for entire stretches of twenty minutes, even though she kicked Sho in the face last week while he tried to change her diapers.
After a while, Jun adopts the name Shii-chan. It’s the most stylish name ever. Nino doesn’t even know adult Shii-chans who have managed to live up to that expectation. But then, she’s wearing that grey bodysuit that Aiba and Jun bought her, the one with tiny pugs all over and Nino thinks, maybe she’ll do okay.
It’s not supposed to be a competition but it’s just the way things inevitably end up in their house. Sho watching her one morning as he eats his breakfast, calls her bara-bara when she crawls all around him, staccato beats of her hands and knees on the tatami, and leaves her toys on his feet. It’s not quite morning yet, dawn shifts outside their open doors. Sho is swaying on his feet from far too many hours at the hospital, and Nino would say something about it, but maybe not now.
“Bara-bara-chan,” he murmurs between bites, wriggling his toes when she becomes fascinated with his polka-dotted socks.
Nino’s phone buzzes. It’s Jun. Leaving station, come get me. He peers up, over his game. “Are you calling her a rose? Or are you just being critical about her lack of organisation?”
Sho’s face spreads slowly into a smile. “Definitely a rose,” he replies, and bends to sit cross-legged on the ground so she can crawl all over him instead.
vi.
A call comes in a week after she gets to them.
Four days after Sho makes a space for her by his futon, six after Aiba and Nino get home laden with a pram and library books on what she can and cannot eat. They don’t know what they were going to do with her, but for now she is part of the family, and they’ve always taken care of their own.
The shop’s landline rings just after they open on Wednesday, and Ohno’s the one who picks up. He tells them later, in the evening upstairs when Jun’s standing in the kitchen checking the pasta and Sho’s falling asleep in his scrubs, that there was an office lady looking at lavender in the fridge. Aiba’s talking her ear off about how he’d read about making scented oil from dried stalks, the process of pressing them in huge machines and rooms that smell like summers in Hokkaido.
Ohno leans back in his seat behind the counter, pulls his feet up onto the bottom rung of his chair. “Hi, it’s Storm Makers. What can I do for you today?”
There’s no reply. Ohno frowns. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
Then a voice, frayed around the edges goes, “The baby - I was the one who left her there.”
Ohno sits up straighter, suddenly hyper conscious of the doorbell ringing as a middle-aged man enters, the teenager talking into her phone outside. Across the street, someone enters the bar; his own tantou and Aiba’s chigiriki lay on the bottom shelf of the counter behind Nino’s half-done tax returns. Aiba’s still talking, gestures turned slow, weighted. Ohno knows he’s now listening too.
He balances the phone in the crook of his neck, and pulls out a notepad to make as if he’s taking orders. “Yes, what kind of flowers would you like for us to include? We also do deliveries.”
The voice, feminine, hesitant turns confused in a single moment, says, “did you hear what I said?”
“Yes, ma’am. I understand. We can do that. It’s a little late in lavender season right now, but we have some in stock. Do you have a delivery address and preferred time and day?” There is a swallowing sound on the other end. Ohno hums thoughtfully. “If you prefer, you can come collect your order too.”
“Yes, I would prefer that.” The voice says, catching on, realisation dawning.
“Ah, that’s fine. What time would suit you? We open until 5pm daily, you can come by afterwards? We’ll have your arrangement prepared for you. ”
“Thursday,” they say, firm, no room for argument. Ohno glances at the date on the computer screen. It’s Wednesday.
“Okay,” he says, scribbling on the notepad. Aiba’s started gesturing again, having heard the loosening in Ohno’s voice. “We’ll see you then.”
*
They’re there to meet her, even if Ohno had to call in sick at the combini and Sho cut through several red lights to get here on time. He's just descending the stairs, clean feet squeaking against the wood and his hair dripping from the bath. Aiba transfers some of the older sunflowers from their individual wrappers into a glass vase for Maru. It has a print of grass running around the bottom rim, made by Ohno’s hands and blown in Akito’s woodfired oven that’s meant for pizzas, but is versatile when they need it to be, which really, is whenever Ohno decides to make teacups for everyone he knows.4
Jun has Shii-chan. He sits with one of Sho’s old shirts over his fancy silk one, just so he won’t be covered in baby puke at work tonight. She dozes, still sleepy from taking a nap with him a few hours ago.
She comes in at 5.05pm, just after Aiba’s lowered the blinds behind the front door but left it unlocked, a wispy woman, long hair tucked into a messy bun and her eyes hidden behind tortoise shell spectacle frames. Nino doesn’t know what he expected, perhaps someone with red-rimmed eyes and a nervous disposition, or maybe a stutter and trembling hands. But not this, definitely not this gentle, quiet surety, a firmness in the line of her back when she bows and asks for the man on the phone yesterday. She makes him think of the bamboo forests on Arashiyama; thin, strong trunks reaching towards the heavens and blurring out the sun.
Ohno lifts a hand from folded arms, and pushes off from the counter’s edge. “I’m Ohno Satoshi, it’s good to finally meet you.”
“My name is Kitagawa Keiko,” she says and takes the hand he holds out. “I apologise deeply for the trouble I’ve brought you.”
Later, she tells them the whole story upstairs, starting from the beginning with her hands around a mug of steaming mugicha that Sho made her take. Her glasses keep fogging over intermittently and when she exhales, the steam clouds and envelops her face. She speaks about an illicit affair with a higher-up government official, between writing articles for Tokyo Shimbun and reporting on Japan’s improving relations with China, afternoons spent in five-star hotels and lunch at cleared-out double Michelin star restaurants, love-making that makes Sho fidget.
It wasn’t necessarily for love or money, she says as she pushes her glasses up her nose. Her mug sits cold and empty by her knee. She shrugs. But it definitely wasn’t just sex either. She doesn’t clarify that, only speaks with a deliberate detachment that Nino comes to admire.
All through it, her eyes keep finding Shii-chan, who’s nestled in Ohno’s arms by the end of the evening. By the time Kitagawa gets to her birth - autumn last year just as the leaves were turning orange and the air acquired a chill that made hands search out warmth - Jun’s left for work and Shii-chan is awake and fussing.
“Would you like to take a break?” Aiba asks, not pushing. Nino takes Shii-chan from Ohno. There's a milk bottle soaking in a warm water bath that Jun prepared just before he left. They’d read about this in one of the library books, and he'd taken to it like he was born to keep small humans alive.
It’s almost seven in the evening and from the open kitchen window, he hears Hina saying goodbye to Yasu, the tinkling acknowledgement of a bicycle bell and another voice, Yoko’s, offering to take the coffee grounds out. The streetlights flicker on with the crackle of static, and he remembers it’s Thursday as he holds the bottle’s teat to Shii-chan’s mouth. Yoko only works Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.5
Kitagawa exhales. “Can I have more tea, please,” and Sho’s already taking her cup, moving towards the kitchen. He meets Nino’s eyes in the small space and cocking his eyebrows, conveying disbelief and exhaustion in one expression. He has to get up at two tomorrow morning. Usually, he’d be asleep by now.
Nino gives him a grin, sharp. “All part of the job, isn’t it, Sho-chan. Who was it who said how cool it would be to lead a double life.”
Sho’s shoulders drop dramatically. It creates a steeper shoulder gradient than the world has ever seen. He sets Kitagawa’s cup on the countertop, chuckling helplessly, “you’re never going to let that one go, are you.”
Nino lets out a giggle, “Not any time soon. Oh, I’ll get Aiba-chan to set the time on the coffee machine before he goes to bed tonight.”
“If you’re trying to be nice, shouldn’t you do it yourself.” Sho looks thoughtful for a moment, then pulls out another four mugs and proceeds to fill them up as well.
“Ha, who said anything about being nice?” Nino says as he bounces on his knees so Shii-chan bounces too. She loves it when he does that, and she’s smiling now, showing off her four teeth and a whole lot of pink gum as she tries to grab Nino’s nose but ends up bopping it instead. Nino growls playfully, and she seems to take that as a sign of enjoyment so she does it again.
Sho laughs, his eyes crinkle. “You’re terrible,” and Nino salutes him with as much smugness as he can muster.
Kitagawa looks up when they emerge. “You’ve been looking after her well,” she says. It’s an expression of awe and gratitude, but somehow it comes out wrong. She looks so small in the dim light of the living room, the expanse of pale tatami like a sea on all sides.
Sho shrugs, almost languid with how tense he’s become in the span of a moment. He sets the cups on the ground and stretches out, takes up space with the sheer volume of his restrained anger. “Well, we know how it feels like." It’s a jab that just glances the surface of all the things that they've all been thinking for days, but none have even come close to voicing. In their line of work, it’s dangerous to get attached in their assignments, and these - Shii-chan, Kitagawa, all those new baby things in their house - are only here because they hit too close to home.
Ohno uncrosses his legs, “I think I need some air.” He touches Sho’s white knuckles with his fingertips, “cigarette break?” They disappear out onto the veranda and slide the door shut. Nino watches their silhouettes through the paper, the orange glow of flame to cigarette end and in his head, the grey, toxic scent of smoke fills his lungs too.
“What are you going to do?” Nino asks, because as much as Aiba and Ohno are willing to, they can’t keep Shii-chan forever.
Kitagawa pulls her knees to her chest. “I can’t look after her at the moment. Two weeks ago, a man approached me, saying -” here, her voice shudders minutely,” - Yamashita wanted to see me, to talk about Chie. I threatened to pepper spray him on the street if he came any closer.”
“Did he know? About Shii -- Chie-chan?” Nino passes Shii-chan to Aiba, who holds her out to Kitagawa. She blinks for a moment, then accepts her and presses her to her heart.
“He didn’t know I was pregnant. I knew he would want me to get an abortion, so I cut off all communication with him when I found out. I suppose, he did, in the end. Find out, I mean.” Kitagawa lifts her eyes from Shii-chan, and swallows. “I’m trying to figure out what to do from here, but I can’t protect her if they decide to take a harder method, and I’d heard about you, during an interview once. Someone told me off record that you helped them. That you kept them safe even when you were fighting others. So I - did what I had to.”
Something in Nino’s memory sparks. “Listen, last week our Matsumoto-kun and Ohno-san responded to intel about some dirty money that the yakuzas had stashed away for someone else - someone called Ueno? We were told that security was minimal but there were more men than we expected, fully armed. Do you think it’s - Is there a possibility that this is linked to Chie somehow?”
Kitagawa’s throat works for a moment, gaze darting, calculating. Then she swallows and her body braces as if anticipating a fight. “There’s a high chance it’s linked. Hiroshi - he likes to plan before he acts. Make sure he knows what he’s getting into and - I don't know how but maybe he heard.”
Aiba gets to his feet, reaching out a hand to help her up. “Kitagawa-san, I promise we’ll do everything we can to protect her, but please make sure you are safe too." Fumbling for the right words, “tell me: did you know Matsujun was going to come home at that time?”
Kitagawa looks him square in his eyes and nods, “I knew.”
That night, Ohno puts Shii-chan to bed. Recently she’s been sleeping between the three of them, but today he tucks her into an extra futon, making a nest from extra blankets. Then he crawls into Nino’s futon and pushes his head into his shoulder, exhaling when Nino presses his cold fingers to the back of Ohno’s head, stroking skin to reach the top of his spine. It’s been a long week, Nino feels it too, memories surfacing, sitting in his bones and waiting to be brought to light again. He’s fought them for too long to let them out now.
Ohno’s exhales fall warm on Nino’s collarbones and they shift when Aiba joins them, so Ohno is sandwiched in the middle.
“You’re doing great, Oh-chan.” Nino murmurs into his hair, meets Aiba’s eyes over his head. They’re shiny in the semi-darkness, and Nino’s heart burns with ache. He reaches over and finds the valley of Aiba’s waist, his hip, that jut of bone and the familiar rhythm of his breathing, then the nape of Ohno’s neck, that gentle slope of hair and smooth skin.
Aiba kisses the back of Ohno's neck between the gaps of Nino’s fingers, staying for long moments. The streetlights are glancing through the trees, leaving dapples of leaf shadows on their walls, and in the next room, Sho starts snoring.
Exhaling, Aiba tucks his hand against Ohno’s belly, like he used to when they were kids and wrung out from those endless, empty days. Then Nino hears the shifting of worn fabric on bare skin, and Aiba pressing words into the curve of Ohno’s shoulder, saying “it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”6
Part 2
lysanderpuckFrom:
calerineTitle: living is the best revenge
Pairing/Focus: Nino/Aiba/Ohno, mention of Junta/Akito/Hamada and Becky/Shihori.
Rating: PG-13.
Warnings: alcohol mention, food mention, violence mention, transphobia.
Summary: 8UPPERS Arashi, and the families that come with them.
Notes: Hi
lysanderpuck, I genuinely hope this is what you were looking for! It kind of got away from me, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. Super huge thanks to my betas C and H for sticking by me and making sure that I don’t make silly spelling mistakes. There are endnotes that you can click and will lead you out of the Nino Exchange comm and into another journal for more funtimes!i.
It starts with a baby - this baby, on a damp autumn morning in August. Nino finds her on the steps of their back door, wrapped up in swathes of cotton and plastic bags, her cheeks flushed from the cold. The cardboard box she lies in is damp from the overnight rain, and even from afar, the leaves hang low with dew. The morning is hazy, so misty Nino can’t make out the lines of the street converging in the distance.
It’s 6am and Nino’s phone is sticking out of his pocket, still alight with the text from Jun: walking from the station, lemme in. The screen’d fogged up instantly when he rolled out from between Aiba’s tentacle arms and Ohno’s slow, even breathing, wriggling from under their duvet and into Ohno’s cardigan that smells like dried clay and yesterday night’s curry rice. Instinctively, Nino pulls it tighter around himself. It’s far too early, he thinks, his eyelids sticking with leftover sleep; the things he does for Jun.
He presses a hand to his mouth mid-yawn, and in that moment, his fluffy bunny slipper bumps into the damp cardboard box. The baby makes a curious noise. Down the street, Jun’s jogging over, his shined shoes splashing through puddles. He lifts a hand to wave, and there’s a single moment before Nino looks back down -
- the baby starts wailing.
*
“Whoever left her there either knew what time Matsujun comes home or left her there for hours,” Aiba points out later, when they’re all gathered in the living room upstairs. He’s blinking at the baby on his knees and the horror in his voice shivers in the air. She stares back at him, wide-eyed, curious and unaware. All their gazes keep drifting restlessly back to her; they’ve gotten weird assignments before but never like this.
“How did they even know about us? No, scratch that, why would they give us a baby - whoever it was.” Sho chews on his leftover ogura toast with a fierce thoughtfulness that someone on three hours of sleep shouldn’t be capable of. He’d slept curled up on the floor in his scrubs; reckoned that since he had to get to the hospital in the morning anyway, pulling out his futon and doing laundry were too much trouble. Jun’s given up telling him off for it.
Beside Sho, Jun’s falling asleep in his damp clothes, having splashed his way through Aiba’s displays of flowers downstairs in search of a towel, then upstairs when he couldn’t find one. “I think the most important question right now is what are we going to do. Leader?” He glances at Ohno.
“We have to keep her for now. Maybe someone will come back for her,” Ohno says, firm despite the way he’s leaning against Aiba, pliant and still futon-warm.
Nino thinks, what if they don’t, maybe that’s it, that’s the job; maybe this is the whole point.
“There’s no space in the house,” Nino blurts the same time that Sho goes, “We can’t.” They meet each other’s eyes over Aiba’s hands and Jun’s frown. Nino looks away first.
“Nobody just leaves babies laying around if they’re coming back for them.” Aiba says. His face twists. His voice trembles. He inhales, and it smoothes out into a whisper, “right?”
A thick dread settles at the bottom of Nino’s stomach. He cup his palm over the back of Aiba’s neck, and he leans into it gratefully. There’s only the sound of Sho crunching on bread crust and Ohno rubbing the side of his foot absently on the tatami floor. Jun exhales, then gets to his feet. His trousers drip. “It’s too early for this. Aiba-chan, go open the shop. Sho-chan, go to work. We’ll think of something.”
Nino pushes back on his hands, runs his eyes across the way Jun’s white shirt clings to his torso that makes the definition of his abs all the more pronounced. “That’s a good look on you, MJ. Maybe you should consider putting it in your work, branch out? Bit of showmanship, maybe?”
Jun flips him off, shaking out an arm so water droplets fly and Sho shields his toast protectively. “You’d better sleep with your taser tonight.”
Aiba laughs. “Nino and Matsujun have been trying to kill each other since I was 13, you’ll get used to it soon." The baby takes one look at his smile, and drools all over his fingers happily.
ii.
“We can’t not,” Nino says in the evening, after Sho’s shift. They’re sitting on tatami of the living room while their feet rest on the veranda, and a breeze sweeps through the trees and into their open door, early autumn, the air smells like damp earth. Somebody’s frying croquettes.
The baby lies on Nino’s lap, her head on his boney inclined knees, cooing and reaching out whenever she catches sight of his painted nails. They’re teal this week. Aiba had watched him while he painted them, offered up unhelpful colour advice of matching yellow with shocking pink. Nino had rolled his eyes. In response, Aiba grabbed ahold of Nino’s feet and proceeded to paint his toenails exactly those shades. They look horrendous; it’s a mystery how Aiba manages to make a livelihood from arranging bouquets. “You don’t want her to end up like us. Or worse. There’s always a chance she could actually end up worse off than us, you know Sho-chan.”
“Mmm.” Sho exhales, smoke pouring out through his nose. “Doesn’t make it easier though.”
Nino sighs, lets the baby catch one of his fingers and dangles it away again. This close up, Nino cannot bear to refuse her anything, let alone a place in their home. He thinks of the dim rooms of the orphanage; it hadn’t been all bad but that was only because Aiba hid flowers under his pillow and Ohno crawled into his bed after curfew. Everything else - Nino had let time turn foggy. If they dropped her off too, what are the chances she’d be okay? “Will anything make things easier though?”
“More money? Less thinking?” Sho turns to meet Nino’s eyes, his face lit in a wry grin. Nino remembers the year when Sho had smiled like that all the time; 22 and perpetually sleep-deprived from burning midnight oils and doing them proud. It’s over ten years ago now, but some days it feels like Sho’s still trying to make up for some kind of guilt.
“See this is why we keep you around, Sho-chan, so there’s someone level-headed enough to stop Aiba from giving too many flowers away for free.” Sho laughs for real this time, as he flicks cigarette ash into the ashtray by his feet.1
Nino stares out onto the street, listens to Aiba’s voice drifting up. Thank you, please have a safe journey! He nudges Sho’s shoulder. “Don’t smoke around her. We don’t want her to have Aiba-standard lungs.”
Sho lets out a low chuckle. “No one should have Aiba-standard lungs,” he agrees, twisting out the ember glow against the turtle-shaped porcelain ashtray that Ohno made and watching, as the wind takes some of the soot away.
iii.
Two nights after - Friday - Jun and Ohno return home with split lips and bruises under their dress shirts. Jun drops himself heavily in the corner of the living room, his tie tugged loose. Ohno’s already pulling a squashed pack of cigarettes from his jacket and smoothing out one. The movement jostles, and his closed switchblade rolls out of his trouser pocket, into the dim fluorescent light.2
“They were waiting,” Jun says, catching the bottle of iodine that Aiba lobs from the toilet. He tilts it onto his fingertip and hisses when the purple touches his blood-stained lips. In Nino’s bed, the baby’s been fast asleep for hours.
“And the money?” Sho frowns, closing his textbook. Nino mirrors his concern, turns off the television with his big toe on the switch. It doesn’t make sense, the request had come in through the regular channels. It was supposed to be a quick in-and-out, cash in hand, no surprises.
Ohno sighs, one long breath. Smoke billows. His eyes open, and he’s flicking ash out of the veranda door. “Wasn’t there, the safes were empty. There were more men than necessary, too.”
“Seemed privately hired to me. I think it was a test. They were definitely expecting all five of us.” Ohno makes an agreeing sound. Jun exhales and rests his head on Ohno’s shoulder. His right eye is red and puffy. Nino imagines it’ll be swollen in a bit, his fingers itch with faded sense memories of that muffled pain. “There was something about a scandal. D’you think it concerns us?”
Sho is in their tiny kitchen, balancing filling glasses with tap water with pulling two packets of frozen chahan out of the freezer. He manages. “Can’t tell at this stage. We’ll have to wait it out. You guys doing okay?”
Jun accepts the water, presses the chahan against his face and swallows around a sound of pain. He nods while Ohno leans back into his side, sweeps his open palm soothingly against his back. Outside, the night is calm, steady with slowly-revolving planets making their rounds around the sun, only rippling whenever someone opens the door to the bar across the road and the cacophony of conversations drifts up toward them.
“We’ve had worse,” and Nino finds himself moving, standing up, turning the television back on so the sound of a late-night variety show fills the silence, an audience laughing and a comedian doing a Shimura Ken gag. Sometimes, their reality makes ordinary life seem too bright, garish in comparison to those black-white tuxedos and shadowy places.
“Anyone want food?” Everyone’s hand goes up, gazes already set on the screen. Aiba shuffles into the space between Jun and Ohno, looping an arm around Jun’s shoulders and pushing his fingers gently into his hair. He kisses Ohno’s hair, lingering for a moment longer than necessary, inhales and exhales deeply. He’s done that to all of them, for as long as Nino can remember. Breathing them in so deeply Nino hears the air whooshing in and out of his lungs and his hands warm on their skin, making sure they’re okay and they’re there. Jun reaches out, clasps a hand around Aiba’s wrist and closes his eyes. He skipped work tonight for this.
Beside them, Sho’s trying to grab Ohno’s toes with his own for some reason; he keeps cracking himself up. After a while, Ohno starts giggling as well.
Lips twisting, Nino pulls out eggs and packets of instant ramen from the cupboard, bak choy from the vegetable drawer and puts the kettle on to boil.
*
The next morning, Nino wakes up to Aiba and Ohno making out groggily, like a pair of teenagers beside him.
The sunrays are pale, bleached through the windows that Ohno just washed in spring, when he sat on a low stool for an afternoon, drawing spirals on the glass with one of Nino's old shirts. He listens to their lips touch. Their sleepy slow breaths grow into sync gradually, two steady ins and two steady outs. Nino stretches out to make all his frozen extremities fall into that patch of sun in the middle of Ohno and his futons. The coffee machine in the kitchen chimes, something falls and Sho makes a panicked sound. Jun's voice murmurs faintly, disapprovingly.
On their windowsill sit those pressed morning glories Ohno made last week, and sunlight streams through one of his glass vases, casting shadows of dinosaur outlines on the wall. Nino blinks up at the ceiling and watches their ceiling fan rotate slowly, its clicking a faint rhythm in the background of his mind.
Then Ohno rolls over, and Aiba reaches across his hip for Nino's hand,
"It's nice to have you here in the morning, Nino-chan," Aiba mumbles, his tongue thick with the early hours. Ohno nods and yawning, tucks his hand flat under his head.
Nino finds himself smiling, a smart comment dying on his tongue. It must be the warm sun on his cold toes, or the way Ohno and Aiba look at him, their hair mussed from sleep and each other's fingers. Then again, he's never been very strong when it comes to the both of them.
Ohno pulls Nino in by the worn fabric of his shirt, snuffs a little at his cheek and Nino's about to tell him off, but then he's leaning in, warm breath, warmer lips. He tastes like morning breath and smells like sleep, the cakey kind that you find in the corners of your eyes in the bathroom mirror. Nino traces his fingers across pillow marks on the underside of his arms, listens closely when Aiba makes a small happy noise and tangles all their legs together.
When Sho gets home, he recounts the aftermath of their scuffle, like he’s done a million times before. He sits at the dining table, back pushed up against the wall and with his hands pressed over his eyes, he talks about 23 patient records made within ten minutes of each other; five with knife wounds, three with concussions and all of them with the smell of gunpowder on their soiled shirts.
“They were all accounted for,” he says. “Paid up front, for the exact period of treatment they’ll need.” Nino feels a chill run down his spine, his heart begins its measured march in his ears. A sudden rush of adrenaline makes him light-headed. Sho scrubs his hands over his head, straightens and rolls his shoulders. His spine makes a loud cracking sound.
Ohno fiddles with the TV remote in his hands. “This is bigger than we expected,” he says. “We need to keep all ears on lookout. Aiba-chan, check if the intel getting in has been toyed with in any way.”
Aiba frowns, nodding. Then, Jun sighs exasperatedly. “Sho-kun, you seriously need to stop sleeping on the floor.”
iv.
Maru loves her. They should all have expected it.
The moment he catches sight of her, he cajoles Hina to take over at the counter. Nino hands her over carefully, accompanied with a threat that no one will find Maru’s body if he drops her.
“She’s Aiba-chan’s niece,” Jun’s clamouring to explain before Maru sits. He cups her back, cooing like he’s an amateur birdwatcher trying to get birds to land on his hand. After five minutes, he looks up at Jun and Nino, perfectly serious.
“Do you think she likes coffee?”
Jun shrugs, his hands huddled around his own short black. His black eye has turned purple today; everyone seems to think they do really serious recreational boxing. “She seems to like the smell of it well enough. I don’t have much experiences with babies but I’m don’t think we should be feeding her any additives.”
“You don’t want her to end up with a kissaten and three idiots when she grows up, do you,” Nino adds, grinning.
“Says the guy in a kissaten with those three idiots,” Hina retorts. He turns the steam knob deftly, holding a canister filled with milk to it and watching carefully for smaller bubbles to form.
It’s usually Sho and Ohno who’s here, the former drinking copious amounts of coffee to stay standing through ten-hour shifts and the latter who likes dozing off on the counter during conversations with Yasu. Nino just enjoys the luxurious normality of this; of sitting in a coffee shop, soothed by the coolness of dark wood while the harsh deafening grinding of beans swallows up the world, leaving in its wake the scent of coffee and hay that clings to his clothes for days. It makes him feel like he's stepped a foot out from the world.
And there’s Hina. There’s the way he talks, whip-fast, always ready with the right words to chide, tease and comfort, always acutely aware of the nuances in Nino’s words, just like Jun. It's familiar, comforting.
Now, Maru nods thoughtfully. “That’s true, huh. What about chocolate!”
Hina reaches across the small space just to smack him over his head. Yasu chokes on giggles, manages Sorry, ma’am I just - into the change in his hands.
v.
Aiba doesn’t say anything about it - Nino suspects he doesn’t even realise - but in typical Aiba-fashion, he starts calling her Hoshii, as in ‘wanted’, as in ‘important’, ‘treasured’, and ‘loved’. The effect is spoilt immediately though, by how he follows that with incoherent mumbling, to which Hoshii-chan always responds delightedly. Nino wonders a lot about her understanding of the world, and the possibility that she’s just being patient with her bumbling humans.
But then, Ohno mishears and calls her Hoshi. When he’s not at work, she lets him draw stars all over her soft arms and legs, in his tiny studio under the stairs. 3 She holds still for him for entire stretches of twenty minutes, even though she kicked Sho in the face last week while he tried to change her diapers.
After a while, Jun adopts the name Shii-chan. It’s the most stylish name ever. Nino doesn’t even know adult Shii-chans who have managed to live up to that expectation. But then, she’s wearing that grey bodysuit that Aiba and Jun bought her, the one with tiny pugs all over and Nino thinks, maybe she’ll do okay.
It’s not supposed to be a competition but it’s just the way things inevitably end up in their house. Sho watching her one morning as he eats his breakfast, calls her bara-bara when she crawls all around him, staccato beats of her hands and knees on the tatami, and leaves her toys on his feet. It’s not quite morning yet, dawn shifts outside their open doors. Sho is swaying on his feet from far too many hours at the hospital, and Nino would say something about it, but maybe not now.
“Bara-bara-chan,” he murmurs between bites, wriggling his toes when she becomes fascinated with his polka-dotted socks.
Nino’s phone buzzes. It’s Jun. Leaving station, come get me. He peers up, over his game. “Are you calling her a rose? Or are you just being critical about her lack of organisation?”
Sho’s face spreads slowly into a smile. “Definitely a rose,” he replies, and bends to sit cross-legged on the ground so she can crawl all over him instead.
vi.
A call comes in a week after she gets to them.
Four days after Sho makes a space for her by his futon, six after Aiba and Nino get home laden with a pram and library books on what she can and cannot eat. They don’t know what they were going to do with her, but for now she is part of the family, and they’ve always taken care of their own.
The shop’s landline rings just after they open on Wednesday, and Ohno’s the one who picks up. He tells them later, in the evening upstairs when Jun’s standing in the kitchen checking the pasta and Sho’s falling asleep in his scrubs, that there was an office lady looking at lavender in the fridge. Aiba’s talking her ear off about how he’d read about making scented oil from dried stalks, the process of pressing them in huge machines and rooms that smell like summers in Hokkaido.
Ohno leans back in his seat behind the counter, pulls his feet up onto the bottom rung of his chair. “Hi, it’s Storm Makers. What can I do for you today?”
There’s no reply. Ohno frowns. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
Then a voice, frayed around the edges goes, “The baby - I was the one who left her there.”
Ohno sits up straighter, suddenly hyper conscious of the doorbell ringing as a middle-aged man enters, the teenager talking into her phone outside. Across the street, someone enters the bar; his own tantou and Aiba’s chigiriki lay on the bottom shelf of the counter behind Nino’s half-done tax returns. Aiba’s still talking, gestures turned slow, weighted. Ohno knows he’s now listening too.
He balances the phone in the crook of his neck, and pulls out a notepad to make as if he’s taking orders. “Yes, what kind of flowers would you like for us to include? We also do deliveries.”
The voice, feminine, hesitant turns confused in a single moment, says, “did you hear what I said?”
“Yes, ma’am. I understand. We can do that. It’s a little late in lavender season right now, but we have some in stock. Do you have a delivery address and preferred time and day?” There is a swallowing sound on the other end. Ohno hums thoughtfully. “If you prefer, you can come collect your order too.”
“Yes, I would prefer that.” The voice says, catching on, realisation dawning.
“Ah, that’s fine. What time would suit you? We open until 5pm daily, you can come by afterwards? We’ll have your arrangement prepared for you. ”
“Thursday,” they say, firm, no room for argument. Ohno glances at the date on the computer screen. It’s Wednesday.
“Okay,” he says, scribbling on the notepad. Aiba’s started gesturing again, having heard the loosening in Ohno’s voice. “We’ll see you then.”
*
They’re there to meet her, even if Ohno had to call in sick at the combini and Sho cut through several red lights to get here on time. He's just descending the stairs, clean feet squeaking against the wood and his hair dripping from the bath. Aiba transfers some of the older sunflowers from their individual wrappers into a glass vase for Maru. It has a print of grass running around the bottom rim, made by Ohno’s hands and blown in Akito’s woodfired oven that’s meant for pizzas, but is versatile when they need it to be, which really, is whenever Ohno decides to make teacups for everyone he knows.4
Jun has Shii-chan. He sits with one of Sho’s old shirts over his fancy silk one, just so he won’t be covered in baby puke at work tonight. She dozes, still sleepy from taking a nap with him a few hours ago.
She comes in at 5.05pm, just after Aiba’s lowered the blinds behind the front door but left it unlocked, a wispy woman, long hair tucked into a messy bun and her eyes hidden behind tortoise shell spectacle frames. Nino doesn’t know what he expected, perhaps someone with red-rimmed eyes and a nervous disposition, or maybe a stutter and trembling hands. But not this, definitely not this gentle, quiet surety, a firmness in the line of her back when she bows and asks for the man on the phone yesterday. She makes him think of the bamboo forests on Arashiyama; thin, strong trunks reaching towards the heavens and blurring out the sun.
Ohno lifts a hand from folded arms, and pushes off from the counter’s edge. “I’m Ohno Satoshi, it’s good to finally meet you.”
“My name is Kitagawa Keiko,” she says and takes the hand he holds out. “I apologise deeply for the trouble I’ve brought you.”
Later, she tells them the whole story upstairs, starting from the beginning with her hands around a mug of steaming mugicha that Sho made her take. Her glasses keep fogging over intermittently and when she exhales, the steam clouds and envelops her face. She speaks about an illicit affair with a higher-up government official, between writing articles for Tokyo Shimbun and reporting on Japan’s improving relations with China, afternoons spent in five-star hotels and lunch at cleared-out double Michelin star restaurants, love-making that makes Sho fidget.
It wasn’t necessarily for love or money, she says as she pushes her glasses up her nose. Her mug sits cold and empty by her knee. She shrugs. But it definitely wasn’t just sex either. She doesn’t clarify that, only speaks with a deliberate detachment that Nino comes to admire.
All through it, her eyes keep finding Shii-chan, who’s nestled in Ohno’s arms by the end of the evening. By the time Kitagawa gets to her birth - autumn last year just as the leaves were turning orange and the air acquired a chill that made hands search out warmth - Jun’s left for work and Shii-chan is awake and fussing.
“Would you like to take a break?” Aiba asks, not pushing. Nino takes Shii-chan from Ohno. There's a milk bottle soaking in a warm water bath that Jun prepared just before he left. They’d read about this in one of the library books, and he'd taken to it like he was born to keep small humans alive.
It’s almost seven in the evening and from the open kitchen window, he hears Hina saying goodbye to Yasu, the tinkling acknowledgement of a bicycle bell and another voice, Yoko’s, offering to take the coffee grounds out. The streetlights flicker on with the crackle of static, and he remembers it’s Thursday as he holds the bottle’s teat to Shii-chan’s mouth. Yoko only works Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.5
Kitagawa exhales. “Can I have more tea, please,” and Sho’s already taking her cup, moving towards the kitchen. He meets Nino’s eyes in the small space and cocking his eyebrows, conveying disbelief and exhaustion in one expression. He has to get up at two tomorrow morning. Usually, he’d be asleep by now.
Nino gives him a grin, sharp. “All part of the job, isn’t it, Sho-chan. Who was it who said how cool it would be to lead a double life.”
Sho’s shoulders drop dramatically. It creates a steeper shoulder gradient than the world has ever seen. He sets Kitagawa’s cup on the countertop, chuckling helplessly, “you’re never going to let that one go, are you.”
Nino lets out a giggle, “Not any time soon. Oh, I’ll get Aiba-chan to set the time on the coffee machine before he goes to bed tonight.”
“If you’re trying to be nice, shouldn’t you do it yourself.” Sho looks thoughtful for a moment, then pulls out another four mugs and proceeds to fill them up as well.
“Ha, who said anything about being nice?” Nino says as he bounces on his knees so Shii-chan bounces too. She loves it when he does that, and she’s smiling now, showing off her four teeth and a whole lot of pink gum as she tries to grab Nino’s nose but ends up bopping it instead. Nino growls playfully, and she seems to take that as a sign of enjoyment so she does it again.
Sho laughs, his eyes crinkle. “You’re terrible,” and Nino salutes him with as much smugness as he can muster.
Kitagawa looks up when they emerge. “You’ve been looking after her well,” she says. It’s an expression of awe and gratitude, but somehow it comes out wrong. She looks so small in the dim light of the living room, the expanse of pale tatami like a sea on all sides.
Sho shrugs, almost languid with how tense he’s become in the span of a moment. He sets the cups on the ground and stretches out, takes up space with the sheer volume of his restrained anger. “Well, we know how it feels like." It’s a jab that just glances the surface of all the things that they've all been thinking for days, but none have even come close to voicing. In their line of work, it’s dangerous to get attached in their assignments, and these - Shii-chan, Kitagawa, all those new baby things in their house - are only here because they hit too close to home.
Ohno uncrosses his legs, “I think I need some air.” He touches Sho’s white knuckles with his fingertips, “cigarette break?” They disappear out onto the veranda and slide the door shut. Nino watches their silhouettes through the paper, the orange glow of flame to cigarette end and in his head, the grey, toxic scent of smoke fills his lungs too.
“What are you going to do?” Nino asks, because as much as Aiba and Ohno are willing to, they can’t keep Shii-chan forever.
Kitagawa pulls her knees to her chest. “I can’t look after her at the moment. Two weeks ago, a man approached me, saying -” here, her voice shudders minutely,” - Yamashita wanted to see me, to talk about Chie. I threatened to pepper spray him on the street if he came any closer.”
“Did he know? About Shii -- Chie-chan?” Nino passes Shii-chan to Aiba, who holds her out to Kitagawa. She blinks for a moment, then accepts her and presses her to her heart.
“He didn’t know I was pregnant. I knew he would want me to get an abortion, so I cut off all communication with him when I found out. I suppose, he did, in the end. Find out, I mean.” Kitagawa lifts her eyes from Shii-chan, and swallows. “I’m trying to figure out what to do from here, but I can’t protect her if they decide to take a harder method, and I’d heard about you, during an interview once. Someone told me off record that you helped them. That you kept them safe even when you were fighting others. So I - did what I had to.”
Something in Nino’s memory sparks. “Listen, last week our Matsumoto-kun and Ohno-san responded to intel about some dirty money that the yakuzas had stashed away for someone else - someone called Ueno? We were told that security was minimal but there were more men than we expected, fully armed. Do you think it’s - Is there a possibility that this is linked to Chie somehow?”
Kitagawa’s throat works for a moment, gaze darting, calculating. Then she swallows and her body braces as if anticipating a fight. “There’s a high chance it’s linked. Hiroshi - he likes to plan before he acts. Make sure he knows what he’s getting into and - I don't know how but maybe he heard.”
Aiba gets to his feet, reaching out a hand to help her up. “Kitagawa-san, I promise we’ll do everything we can to protect her, but please make sure you are safe too." Fumbling for the right words, “tell me: did you know Matsujun was going to come home at that time?”
Kitagawa looks him square in his eyes and nods, “I knew.”
That night, Ohno puts Shii-chan to bed. Recently she’s been sleeping between the three of them, but today he tucks her into an extra futon, making a nest from extra blankets. Then he crawls into Nino’s futon and pushes his head into his shoulder, exhaling when Nino presses his cold fingers to the back of Ohno’s head, stroking skin to reach the top of his spine. It’s been a long week, Nino feels it too, memories surfacing, sitting in his bones and waiting to be brought to light again. He’s fought them for too long to let them out now.
Ohno’s exhales fall warm on Nino’s collarbones and they shift when Aiba joins them, so Ohno is sandwiched in the middle.
“You’re doing great, Oh-chan.” Nino murmurs into his hair, meets Aiba’s eyes over his head. They’re shiny in the semi-darkness, and Nino’s heart burns with ache. He reaches over and finds the valley of Aiba’s waist, his hip, that jut of bone and the familiar rhythm of his breathing, then the nape of Ohno’s neck, that gentle slope of hair and smooth skin.
Aiba kisses the back of Ohno's neck between the gaps of Nino’s fingers, staying for long moments. The streetlights are glancing through the trees, leaving dapples of leaf shadows on their walls, and in the next room, Sho starts snoring.
Exhaling, Aiba tucks his hand against Ohno’s belly, like he used to when they were kids and wrung out from those endless, empty days. Then Nino hears the shifting of worn fabric on bare skin, and Aiba pressing words into the curve of Ohno’s shoulder, saying “it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”6
Part 2