Chapter Text
Ohno had waited for Jun to finish with his photo shoot, so that they could head back together. There was a new desserts shop that opened near their apartment two weeks ago, and Ohno was thinking of trying it out when Jun walked into the green room.
“Thanks for waiting, Oh-chan.” Instead of waiting for Ohno to get up, Jun sat down and rested his head on the drummer’s shoulder. “I’m so tired,” he said, yawning. “I don’t even know why. I mean, yeah, I was out with Aiba until pretty late last night, but we didn’t have that much to do today so I shouldn’t be this tired, you know?”
“You were with Aiba?”
Jun straightened up a little at Ohno’s tone. “Yeah,” he said, looking at Ohno closely. He didn’t know why, but he felt nothing mattered more than Ohno’s reaction at the moment. But Ohno kept a guarded expression, and betrayed none of the uneasiness that he was feeling.
“I see,” Ohno said. “Well, we should leave soon. I’m going out with some friends from my old band and I want to go home and change first.” He stood up and grabbed his bag, leaving Jun to swallow his disappointment and follow.
})i({
Nino followed Ryuta, who was walking fast, turning into corners and down long hallways Nino haven’t explored. “What’s the story behind that hideous outfit, anyway?” Ryuta asked, not slowing down one bit.
“It’s for a photo shoot,” Nino said, as briefly as he could. “For our next single.”
“I went to get your first single the other day,” Ryuta told him. “It was good.”
Nino was surprised at the pleasure he felt from the compliment. “Thanks.”
“I’m just telling the truth.” Ryuta spoke matter-of-factly, as if he was discussing Nino’s music with a stranger instead of a friend. “That Sakurai Sho... his own music may be sappy poppy stuff that I don’t really go for, but I have to admit that his arrangements for Red Shift was spot on.”
“Thanks,” Nino said again, gloomily this time, thinking of all the times he and Sho argued about the song arrangements.
“Your bassist is really good, and the lyrics are simple, but quirky, which I like.”
“Thanks. I guess.”
“What’s with that attitude? I’m complimenting you, you know.” Ryuta suddenly stopped, and Nino followed suit. He looked ahead of them and noticed that Ryuta stopped because there was nowhere else to go. “Okay. This is far enough from everyone else, I think. So what did you want to talk about?”
“I wanted to apologise for being a jerk.”
Ryuta just raised an eyebrow at the statement. “I don’t know if ‘jerk’ is even sufficient enough a word to describe what you were.”
“Give me a break,” Nino said complainingly. “I’m emotionally challenged, okay? So, okay. I was a jerk. I was a complete asshole for ignoring you and not explaining why. I’m sorry.”
“Okay. Care to explain why exactly you felt that you had to be one in the first place?”
An impatient shrug from Nino. “I don’t know! One moment I was asking Aiba about his relationship and then he’s saying all these weird stuff and the next thing I know I was thinking I know what he means and it completely freaked me out and the thing is, I still don’t know what’s going on between us.”
“I thought ‘friendship’ pretty much covers what’s going on between us,” Ryuta said drily, which only made Nino roll his eyes.
“Haha.” He made an annoyed sound before saying, “I think we’re more than that. Don’t you?”
“I don’t know.” Ryuta thought about the way he felt the times they were together, and he thought of how he felt when Nino was ignoring him. He thought about Kazuki’s sly glances and jokes whenever he mentions Nino. He thought about how he was feeling at the moment, and his eyes strayed to Nino’s lips, wondering for the first time what it might be like to kiss him. He swallowed. “Maybe.”
“So I’m not going crazy here? There really is something going on?”
“Yeah, but what exactly is that something, though?” Ryuta always thought if he liked someone, he would immediately know. Nino was complicated. He knew that Nino was the first person he wanted to see to when he woke up, and that lately Nino was the last one he talked to before he slept. He knew that playing music with Nino felt more electrifying, more intimate than playing with his own band. He knew that seeing Nino made his heart feel lighter. He knew that despite all of his friends, none of them had ever made him feel the way Nino did. But did that really mean that he liked Nino?
“I’m not sure.” All Nino knew was that he didn’t want them to be like Aiba and Sho. But, he thought then, he and Ryuta were different people. His hand reached for Ryuta’s experimentally, and held them. He liked how Ryuta’s hand felt in his. He thought of Ryuta’s calm reaction when he found out that Nino had been keeping secrets from him. He thought about how Ryuta didn’t seem to be holding a grudge despite what he did to Ryuta the day before. He thought about how he didn’t really want to keep any secrets from Ryuta, how Ryuta was the only person that made him want to talk about everything. It scared him. “I’m still freaked out,” he admitted.
He never made any really close friends, other than Aiba, and in high school, there was Sho. Now there was Jun and Ohno, and there was Red Shift, but Nino knew that he still tended to divide his life into neat compartments, and he never let his friends into other aspects of his life. He dated, but only very casually, and he never talked about his dates with his friends. It was as if he was determined to keep everything and everyone separate so that he could easily leave any of them, if he wanted to. Red Shift had made things messy. He knew that Aiba was someone he could never let go of, and the band had become more important to him than he wanted to admit. And now there was Ryuta, and Nino wasn’t sure if he was ready to accept another thing that would mess up his neatly compartmentalised world.
“Well,” Ryuta said, after a long pause. “Why don’t we take things slowly?” Taking the cue from Nino holding his hand, he stepped closer to the guitarist. Close enough that they were almost touching, and that they both wondered if the other’s heart was pounding as wildly as theirs, but instead of closing the gap Ryuta just looked expectantly at Nino.
“How slowly?” Nino breathed out. He was thinking that he would go crazy if he had to be this close to Ryuta every day and nothing else happened.
“I don’t know,” Ryuta said with a lazy grin. “Maybe you want to stick to hanging out like we used to, but with the understanding that we’re dating, now?” His hand left Nino’s, and started trailing lightly up Nino’s arm, barely touching the green jacket, but Nino felt like his skin tingle underneath as if they had made contact. He made a low sound in his throat, which only made Ryuta chuckle. “It’s up to you.”
“What about -” Nino’s breath caught when Ryuta’s fingers reached his collarbone, still not quite touching. “Are you going to kiss me or not?” he demanded.
Ryuta’s grin only widened. “I don’t know,” he murmured, although his face was now only half a centimeter apart from Nino’s. Nino could feel the younger man’s breath mingling with his. “Wouldn’t that, like, freak you out more?”
Nino wasn’t used to being teased. There was banter, and there were verbal jabs between him and Sho on occasion, and sometimes he’d tease Aiba (although mostly he and Aiba would team up to torture Sho), but he always had the upper hand in his interactions with people. He had a feeling that Ryuta was exactly the same, despite the innocent, wide-eyed look the singer had. And that big grin of his. At the moment, nothing irked Nino more than Ryuta’s way-too-wholesome grin. So he reached up for Ryuta’s shirt collar and grasped at it, pulling slightly to bring Ryuta’s lips to his.
})i({
“Sho-chan? Are you busy?”
Sho looked busy, going through a stack of papers that made Aiba frown a little. He took a glance at the coffee table. The folders of omiai candidates that Aiba had placed neatly there still looked untouched. But Sho just motioned for Aiba to come in, and patted the empty seat beside him on the sofa lightly.
“Just going through my old contracts,” Sho said. “I wonder if I could manage to put my solo career on hiatus for awhile, after my new album’s done.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Well, I’d like to do more with Red Shift, for one. I miss being in a band. I know I’m just a temporary member, but I’d like to focus all my energy into that right now. And if I had a little more free time, I may be able to look after my father’s company from afar. There’s a lot to work out before that could happen, but we’ll see... I just have to keep it running long enough until my brother’s ready to take over.”
“You’ve got everything figured out,” Aiba murmured. “And here I was, coming in to give you encouragement and stuff. And also to rag on you for not waking me up before leaving this morning.”
“You needed the rest,” Sho said. He put his papers away and pulled Aiba closer, as if he needed the reassurance that Aiba was really there. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. In his voice Aiba could hear all the tiredness and the pressure that Sho had been feeling. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Sleep more, maybe?” Aiba said lightly, but he felt his throat closing up, and he gave a long sigh, betraying the hesitations he had been feeling for a long time. “Sho-chan, are you free next Tuesday?”
“Why?”
“Well... it’s Star Wars Day. And I have plans. For us.”
Sho wanted to ask about the significance of Star Wars day, since neither of them had ever been particularly obsessed about Star Wars, but he looked at how brightly Aiba was smiling at him, and clammed up. It had been a long time since he'd seen Aiba look that happy.
“I’ll make sure we’re both free on that day,” Sho promised.
})i({
Aiba was whistling to himself as he took the elevator down from Sho’s floor. Sho would be done with work in a few hours, so he said that he’d wait in Red Shift’s green room. When the elevator opened, he was surprised to see the couple waiting for the elevator on the other side.
“Hey,” he said cautiously, looking from Nino to Ryuta.
“Hey,” Nino said back, but apparently he was done with scolding Aiba, because he was smiling. Aiba looked at the way Nino and Ryuta stood closely to each other, and nodded in understanding.
“I’m probably going over to Sho’s tonight,” he said. “You’ll be alone again. Sorry.”
“Oh, Ryuta’s coming over,” Nino said casually. To Ryuta, he said, “this is Aiba, by the way.”
Ryuta and Aiba smiled at each other awkwardly, something unspoken passing between them. Take care of Nino, Aiba thought. He knew that Nino puts on a tough image, but Aiba didn’t believe that that was all there was to Nino. He remembered when Nino was in his glass-blowing phase in junior high. Aiba’s mother had taken them both down to a factory that made souvenirs - key chains and paper weighs and pretty but useless figurines - out of glass. One of the workers had shown them a teardrop-shaped bit of glass. Aiba had been bored throughout the trip, but the tiny piece of glass captivated him. It seemed like a plain see-through glass at first, but when the worker held it up to the light, Aiba could see all the colors of the rainbow, and the bright yellowish light shining through the glass made it even more beautiful. The man then took a hard object and hit the small teardrop-shaped piece, and it didn’t break at all. But when he twisted the glass gently on its narrow, tapering side, it cracked into pieces. Nino was like that, Aiba thought. So strong, yet so easy to break.
Giving Aiba a slight, imperceptible nod, Ryuta placed a hand on Nino’s elbows as the two walked into the elevator. Aiba gave both of them a quick wave as the door closed.
Nino hid so much of himself from others, Aiba thought. But maybe Ryuta would be like that light that shone through the glass to show off the colors it hid. The thought made Aiba smile, delighted.
He turned to head for the green room, to wait. Maybe I'm like that light, too, for Sho-chan.