Home of the Tigers
Oneshot: 2047wc
Title: Home of the Tigers
Rating: G (omg...that rating does exist!)
Pairing: Ohmiya
Genre: Chibi Nino, Sports...and a little fluff?
Summary: Ohno comes across an old notebook, and learns a little about Nino's childhood.
Disclaimer: I don't own Arashi, but I can promise you that this is Nino exact biography. So the timeline, events, oc's, all of it are exactly as Nino experienced in childhood. Yep, its all as real as tabloid articles.
Note: Um, yeah, this isn't my normal style. And not just because of the lack of porn. Its not a great work, but something to pass the time. (and I stole litany_sh's icon XD)
It was a rainy day, much to the melancholy of Ohno Satoshi, who’s rare day off, and fishing plans had been ruined, thanks to the weather.
Nino was busy, recording for something or other, so Ohno was left in the house alone, and listless.
After a time in which Ohno watched a movie, took a nap, and had an early beer, he decided, only slightly under the influence, that rain was no reason to cancel a fishing trip. All he needed was to outsmart the wetness of the rain. A poncho, Ohno determined, was the only thing standing between himself and his fish.
“Poncho…poncho…*hiccup*…” Ohno sang to himself, as he rummaged through their bedroom closet, looking for the wet weather wear. “Need a poncho…poncho…pon-eh? What’s this?”
On the top shelf of the closet, tucked loosely into an old, tattered cardboard box, was a worn blue notebook. Sobering up slightly, Ohno riffled through the pages expecting it to be either one of his old sketchbooks, or Nino’s song books.
It was neither. Blushing now, and quite sober, Ohno quickly looked over his shoulder self-consciously…knowing what he was about to do, a certain someone wouldn’t appreciate.
He should just close the notebook, and put it back on the shelf.
He should just continue looking for a poncho.
After finding the poncho, he should just go on that fishing trip, and pretend he never found this notebook.
Grinning mischievously, Ohno settled on the floor, leaning against their bed, with the notebook open on his lap, engrossed in the childhood of his lover.
Being poor sucks.
Well…we’re not poor, but we‘re not comfortable either.
Is it too much to ask for a baseball glove?
I guess it doesn’t matter, since I’m not in the club anyway.
But still, when I play with Sugi, and Mori, it sucks having to share.
That Sugi…
He thinks he’s so great, just because his team won the spring championship last year.
Okay, maybe he has a little talent, and so what if he’s been called a prodigy by the local papers….
I would be too….if I had been in the club last spring….
I guess it won’t matter after tomorrow….I’ll never see Sugi or Mori again…
One last game with my friends before my life changes forever.
For better or for worse.
“Are you still awake, Nari-touto?” Whispered my sister’s voice from the depths of the dark room.
“God, don’t call me that. Ughhh” I shivered at the horrible nickname given by my older sister.
“I don’t want to call you Nino like your friends though…”
“So don’t.”
“Then should I just call you Kazu?” She teased.
“No, that’s worse.” I rolled over to face her, across the room. “Only my lover gets to call me Kazu.”
“Aren’t you a bit young to be thinking about lovers?“ She laughed, and I bristled.
“Shut up. Its better then you, with all those cutouts from the idol magazines on your half of the room.”
“And who’s going to be one of those idols in a couple of weeks?”
“If I come home and find my face on your wall someday,… I’ll disown you.” I snarled, as she kept laughing at me. “Its not like I want to do this you know!”
“Then why didn’t you just throw the audition?”
“Go away.” I rolled back over to face the blank wall, my posters long since packed away.
“Good night to you too.”
I fingered a push pin hole, where my Suzuki Ichiro poster used to be.
Why didn’t I throw the audition?
Because Mom promised me a years allowance at once, and enrollment into the baseball club if I took the audition seriously.
I never thought I’d actually get a call back.
I never thought that because of me, we’d be moving to a better neighborhood, an actual house even, closer to the agency.
But that wasn’t important now. I would play the most important game of my life tomorrow.
And bid farewell to my Tiger Stadium.
Late in the afternoon, I made my way to an abandoned airport a few blocks away, to the third airplane hanger, facing the once paved runway.
I sighed happily, when the hanger came into view. My own personal ball park, Tiger Stadium.
“Ap, ap, aaaap! Nino!” Mori jogged out to greet me, at the end of the over grown runway. He pulled me into a rough one-armed man-to-man hug. “I’m gonna miss you so much buddy!”
“Yeah, me too, so let go.” I threw off his pudgy arm. “Just loose some weight before I see you again…it’ll make our next game easier.”
Mori laughed jollily, because we both knew that the odds of his loosing weight, even in this life time, were slim to none.
“You should be more worried about this game, then the next.” I looked over Mori’s shoulder, to Sugi, still a few insignificant centimeters taller then me. He stuck out his hand. “Lets have a good one, Nino.”
I shook his hand firmly, “Yeah.”
Mori, the pussy, had started crying. “I can’t believe you’re actually moving!”
Sugi rolled his eyes, and walked off to our makeshift baseball field. I grabbed Mori’s big shoulder. “Mori….there’s no crying in baseball.”
“I-I’m not crying!” He interrupted with a sniffle. “Its just raining on my face!”
“Ah…sure.” I looked after Sugi, who was warming up. “Let go and win this one for the Tigers!”
Mori nodded, wiping the ‘rain’ from his face, smiling again. “But we’ve never won against Sugi before….”
“We can do it today….I can feel it.” I inhaled deeply.
Victory was in the air.
Today, I will finally make this field mine.
I don’t care if it was just an abandoned airplane hanger, today, this is Tiger Stadium.
It was less annoying then usual to set up our improvised ball park. For today’s game, the infield consisted of a broken, splintery plank for home, half a frisbee for first base, the other half as second, and a cement block replacing third over tattered gravel and dirt.
There was nothing we could do about the overgrown paved runway that stretched across our outfield curving ten meters out, into a ditch, currently a milkweed jungle and death trap for baseballs.
Sugi checked his watch. “Its getting kind of late, so lets change a couple rules.”
I nodded, and Mori did the same.
“No foul balls, and home runs can be earned by hitting the rafters of the hanger or by knocking the ball beyond ditch. Each team gets one out an inning, and because we still lack proper sized teams, we’ll play by ‘ghosting’ or pretending someone was on a base. That sound good?”
“Lets just play already!” I groaned, leaning onto Mori.
“Fine then, its your funeral.” Laughed the Prodigy Sugi.
It really sucks how time flies when you’re having fun. One minute it’s the first inning, the next, it’s the last.
“Ready?!” Sugi hollered, cranking back his arm. I looked across the field to Mori, ready on third and our ghosts on second and first. I wiped the droplets of sweat from my forehead.
“Ready!” I yelled back. He snapped his arm around and unleashed a fast ball, at a billion miles an hour. If I hadn’t blinked I’m sure flames had been spinning off the ball. Sugi knew fastballs were my weakness, and he used them every chance. Sometimes though, I did beat the balls’ speed and sent that baby flyin’ for miles. I gripped the bat and swung with all my might, felt it connect with the metal, jolting my hand, and watched as it arched over my friend’s head and into the ditch. I flung the bat aside and made a bee-line for first. I rounded first and started in on second when my legs seemed to have disappeared from under me, and a leather glove was on my back.
“And that’s the inning.” Grinned Sugi, readjusting his new Orix hat.
“That’s not fair!” I cried, spiting out a mouthful of dirt. “Fine. What’s the score now?”
“Top of the ninth, Flying S, 48 to Tigers, 49.” I paused…Mori and I…were winning? And the numbers seem off…I began counting the innings back on my hands, when Sugi shouted, in batting position.
“Quit counting and trust me on the numbers. Just keep playing.”
Mori looked at me, for approval, and I shrugged, taking my turn at centerfeilding, while my large friend pitched.
“Those numbers are wrong…he’s either cheating us or giving us a handicap…” I grumbled to myself, flexing the borrowed glove.
“What did you say, Nino?” Mori asked from the pitching mound.
“Nothing, just pitch.” He did, and Sugi scored a lovely homerun effortlessly. I put my face in the large, peeling, black leather glove and groaned as the bases were rounded. “Mori…give him the special.”
“Okeydokey.” Mori got on his tiptoes and twirled around our makeshift pitchers mound in his signature ‘ballerina’ technique. In our group, it has become notorious as the most dangerous pitch ever, turning baseball into dodge ball. Needless to say, it was ball one, and Sugi demanded, for safety reasons, that I pitch.
I caught the sphere as Mori and I swapped positions, aligning the warn, ruby threads beneath my small, slick fingers, before I pulled my arm back, aimed and released. Sugi sent a grounder to my right. I ran, heart pumping, and swept the ball into my glove, tagging third, and threw it with all my strength to second. For once, Mori, my semi-athletically challenged friend, caught the ball, forcing Sugi out.
We were tied.
It was the bottom of the last inning…I only needed one run for my first, and last victory in Tiger Stadium.
I reached for the thermos of water and let the refreshing elixir cascade down my throat. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I handed the thermos to Mori and turned to the crimped hanger wall, where we had assembled an arsenal of hitting implements. I selected a short silver bat whose branding had long since faded and lacked grip and a crown. However, it was made of aluminum and easy to swing, which was vital when all other bats weighed more than I did.
I stepped up to the plate. Normally, Sugi saved his special moves, the Loogie, or the Tsunami for Mori, but I couldn’t rule anything out now. The sun was setting. Gold and cerise stripes poked through the trees behind Sugi‘s scrawny form. This would be the last pitch of the evening.
“Ready?!” His arm was pulled back, taught like a bow string. Fastball. I swallowed and nodded. A white blur rushed to me, and I felt it connect with the bat perfectly.
"Oh-chan? What have you got there?
Ohno jumped, startled by the sudden noise, and tried to hide the notebook behind his back. “K-kazu…you’re home early…”
“No, I’m home on time…Whats with that ‘I’ve been naughty’ look…and what did you just hide there?” Nino pointed to the notebook, poking out from behind Ohno.
“T-this? It nothing…” Ohno tried to shove it under the bed, but Nino was too quick.
“Oy, my old journal!” Surprised, Nino flipped through the pages. “How far did you get?”
“You were playing baseball…who were Sugi and Mori?” Ohno was almost frightened that Nino wasn’t yelling for the invasion of privacy.
“Childhood friends. They lived in my old neighborhood, before we moved. Haven’t seen them in ages.” Nino sank to the floor next to Ohno, leaning against the older man, as he continued to flip the pages.
“Oh…” Now that he could tell Nino wasn’t mad that Ohno had been reading the diary, Ohno felt a bit more bold. “Can I keep reading it?”
“No.” Nino didn’t even look up, as he read one of the newer passages. “I can’t have you finding out a few things…”
This of course only made Ohno more curious. “Things like what…Nari-touto?” That earned Ohno a smack on the head with the notebook.
“Don’t call me that. Ever.”
“Okay…Kazu.”
“That’s better.” Nino closed the notebook and tossed it across the room, before curling up in Ohno‘s lap with a yawn. “Its all boring history anyway…”
“Yeah….but who won that baseball game? The last one in Tiger Stadium?”
Nino smiled at the memory. “I wonder….”
Title: Home of the Tigers
Rating: G (omg...that rating does exist!)
Pairing: Ohmiya
Genre: Chibi Nino, Sports...and a little fluff?
Summary: Ohno comes across an old notebook, and learns a little about Nino's childhood.
Disclaimer: I don't own Arashi, but I can promise you that this is Nino exact biography. So the timeline, events, oc's, all of it are exactly as Nino experienced in childhood. Yep, its all as real as tabloid articles.
Note: Um, yeah, this isn't my normal style. And not just because of the lack of porn. Its not a great work, but something to pass the time. (and I stole litany_sh's icon XD)
It was a rainy day, much to the melancholy of Ohno Satoshi, who’s rare day off, and fishing plans had been ruined, thanks to the weather.
Nino was busy, recording for something or other, so Ohno was left in the house alone, and listless.
After a time in which Ohno watched a movie, took a nap, and had an early beer, he decided, only slightly under the influence, that rain was no reason to cancel a fishing trip. All he needed was to outsmart the wetness of the rain. A poncho, Ohno determined, was the only thing standing between himself and his fish.
“Poncho…poncho…*hiccup*…” Ohno sang to himself, as he rummaged through their bedroom closet, looking for the wet weather wear. “Need a poncho…poncho…pon-eh? What’s this?”
On the top shelf of the closet, tucked loosely into an old, tattered cardboard box, was a worn blue notebook. Sobering up slightly, Ohno riffled through the pages expecting it to be either one of his old sketchbooks, or Nino’s song books.
It was neither. Blushing now, and quite sober, Ohno quickly looked over his shoulder self-consciously…knowing what he was about to do, a certain someone wouldn’t appreciate.
He should just close the notebook, and put it back on the shelf.
He should just continue looking for a poncho.
After finding the poncho, he should just go on that fishing trip, and pretend he never found this notebook.
Grinning mischievously, Ohno settled on the floor, leaning against their bed, with the notebook open on his lap, engrossed in the childhood of his lover.
Being poor sucks.
Well…we’re not poor, but we‘re not comfortable either.
Is it too much to ask for a baseball glove?
I guess it doesn’t matter, since I’m not in the club anyway.
But still, when I play with Sugi, and Mori, it sucks having to share.
That Sugi…
He thinks he’s so great, just because his team won the spring championship last year.
Okay, maybe he has a little talent, and so what if he’s been called a prodigy by the local papers….
I would be too….if I had been in the club last spring….
I guess it won’t matter after tomorrow….I’ll never see Sugi or Mori again…
One last game with my friends before my life changes forever.
For better or for worse.
“Are you still awake, Nari-touto?” Whispered my sister’s voice from the depths of the dark room.
“God, don’t call me that. Ughhh” I shivered at the horrible nickname given by my older sister.
“I don’t want to call you Nino like your friends though…”
“So don’t.”
“Then should I just call you Kazu?” She teased.
“No, that’s worse.” I rolled over to face her, across the room. “Only my lover gets to call me Kazu.”
“Aren’t you a bit young to be thinking about lovers?“ She laughed, and I bristled.
“Shut up. Its better then you, with all those cutouts from the idol magazines on your half of the room.”
“And who’s going to be one of those idols in a couple of weeks?”
“If I come home and find my face on your wall someday,… I’ll disown you.” I snarled, as she kept laughing at me. “Its not like I want to do this you know!”
“Then why didn’t you just throw the audition?”
“Go away.” I rolled back over to face the blank wall, my posters long since packed away.
“Good night to you too.”
I fingered a push pin hole, where my Suzuki Ichiro poster used to be.
Why didn’t I throw the audition?
Because Mom promised me a years allowance at once, and enrollment into the baseball club if I took the audition seriously.
I never thought I’d actually get a call back.
I never thought that because of me, we’d be moving to a better neighborhood, an actual house even, closer to the agency.
But that wasn’t important now. I would play the most important game of my life tomorrow.
And bid farewell to my Tiger Stadium.
Late in the afternoon, I made my way to an abandoned airport a few blocks away, to the third airplane hanger, facing the once paved runway.
I sighed happily, when the hanger came into view. My own personal ball park, Tiger Stadium.
“Ap, ap, aaaap! Nino!” Mori jogged out to greet me, at the end of the over grown runway. He pulled me into a rough one-armed man-to-man hug. “I’m gonna miss you so much buddy!”
“Yeah, me too, so let go.” I threw off his pudgy arm. “Just loose some weight before I see you again…it’ll make our next game easier.”
Mori laughed jollily, because we both knew that the odds of his loosing weight, even in this life time, were slim to none.
“You should be more worried about this game, then the next.” I looked over Mori’s shoulder, to Sugi, still a few insignificant centimeters taller then me. He stuck out his hand. “Lets have a good one, Nino.”
I shook his hand firmly, “Yeah.”
Mori, the pussy, had started crying. “I can’t believe you’re actually moving!”
Sugi rolled his eyes, and walked off to our makeshift baseball field. I grabbed Mori’s big shoulder. “Mori….there’s no crying in baseball.”
“I-I’m not crying!” He interrupted with a sniffle. “Its just raining on my face!”
“Ah…sure.” I looked after Sugi, who was warming up. “Let go and win this one for the Tigers!”
Mori nodded, wiping the ‘rain’ from his face, smiling again. “But we’ve never won against Sugi before….”
“We can do it today….I can feel it.” I inhaled deeply.
Victory was in the air.
Today, I will finally make this field mine.
I don’t care if it was just an abandoned airplane hanger, today, this is Tiger Stadium.
It was less annoying then usual to set up our improvised ball park. For today’s game, the infield consisted of a broken, splintery plank for home, half a frisbee for first base, the other half as second, and a cement block replacing third over tattered gravel and dirt.
There was nothing we could do about the overgrown paved runway that stretched across our outfield curving ten meters out, into a ditch, currently a milkweed jungle and death trap for baseballs.
Sugi checked his watch. “Its getting kind of late, so lets change a couple rules.”
I nodded, and Mori did the same.
“No foul balls, and home runs can be earned by hitting the rafters of the hanger or by knocking the ball beyond ditch. Each team gets one out an inning, and because we still lack proper sized teams, we’ll play by ‘ghosting’ or pretending someone was on a base. That sound good?”
“Lets just play already!” I groaned, leaning onto Mori.
“Fine then, its your funeral.” Laughed the Prodigy Sugi.
It really sucks how time flies when you’re having fun. One minute it’s the first inning, the next, it’s the last.
“Ready?!” Sugi hollered, cranking back his arm. I looked across the field to Mori, ready on third and our ghosts on second and first. I wiped the droplets of sweat from my forehead.
“Ready!” I yelled back. He snapped his arm around and unleashed a fast ball, at a billion miles an hour. If I hadn’t blinked I’m sure flames had been spinning off the ball. Sugi knew fastballs were my weakness, and he used them every chance. Sometimes though, I did beat the balls’ speed and sent that baby flyin’ for miles. I gripped the bat and swung with all my might, felt it connect with the metal, jolting my hand, and watched as it arched over my friend’s head and into the ditch. I flung the bat aside and made a bee-line for first. I rounded first and started in on second when my legs seemed to have disappeared from under me, and a leather glove was on my back.
“And that’s the inning.” Grinned Sugi, readjusting his new Orix hat.
“That’s not fair!” I cried, spiting out a mouthful of dirt. “Fine. What’s the score now?”
“Top of the ninth, Flying S, 48 to Tigers, 49.” I paused…Mori and I…were winning? And the numbers seem off…I began counting the innings back on my hands, when Sugi shouted, in batting position.
“Quit counting and trust me on the numbers. Just keep playing.”
Mori looked at me, for approval, and I shrugged, taking my turn at centerfeilding, while my large friend pitched.
“Those numbers are wrong…he’s either cheating us or giving us a handicap…” I grumbled to myself, flexing the borrowed glove.
“What did you say, Nino?” Mori asked from the pitching mound.
“Nothing, just pitch.” He did, and Sugi scored a lovely homerun effortlessly. I put my face in the large, peeling, black leather glove and groaned as the bases were rounded. “Mori…give him the special.”
“Okeydokey.” Mori got on his tiptoes and twirled around our makeshift pitchers mound in his signature ‘ballerina’ technique. In our group, it has become notorious as the most dangerous pitch ever, turning baseball into dodge ball. Needless to say, it was ball one, and Sugi demanded, for safety reasons, that I pitch.
I caught the sphere as Mori and I swapped positions, aligning the warn, ruby threads beneath my small, slick fingers, before I pulled my arm back, aimed and released. Sugi sent a grounder to my right. I ran, heart pumping, and swept the ball into my glove, tagging third, and threw it with all my strength to second. For once, Mori, my semi-athletically challenged friend, caught the ball, forcing Sugi out.
We were tied.
It was the bottom of the last inning…I only needed one run for my first, and last victory in Tiger Stadium.
I reached for the thermos of water and let the refreshing elixir cascade down my throat. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I handed the thermos to Mori and turned to the crimped hanger wall, where we had assembled an arsenal of hitting implements. I selected a short silver bat whose branding had long since faded and lacked grip and a crown. However, it was made of aluminum and easy to swing, which was vital when all other bats weighed more than I did.
I stepped up to the plate. Normally, Sugi saved his special moves, the Loogie, or the Tsunami for Mori, but I couldn’t rule anything out now. The sun was setting. Gold and cerise stripes poked through the trees behind Sugi‘s scrawny form. This would be the last pitch of the evening.
“Ready?!” His arm was pulled back, taught like a bow string. Fastball. I swallowed and nodded. A white blur rushed to me, and I felt it connect with the bat perfectly.
"Oh-chan? What have you got there?
Ohno jumped, startled by the sudden noise, and tried to hide the notebook behind his back. “K-kazu…you’re home early…”
“No, I’m home on time…Whats with that ‘I’ve been naughty’ look…and what did you just hide there?” Nino pointed to the notebook, poking out from behind Ohno.
“T-this? It nothing…” Ohno tried to shove it under the bed, but Nino was too quick.
“Oy, my old journal!” Surprised, Nino flipped through the pages. “How far did you get?”
“You were playing baseball…who were Sugi and Mori?” Ohno was almost frightened that Nino wasn’t yelling for the invasion of privacy.
“Childhood friends. They lived in my old neighborhood, before we moved. Haven’t seen them in ages.” Nino sank to the floor next to Ohno, leaning against the older man, as he continued to flip the pages.
“Oh…” Now that he could tell Nino wasn’t mad that Ohno had been reading the diary, Ohno felt a bit more bold. “Can I keep reading it?”
“No.” Nino didn’t even look up, as he read one of the newer passages. “I can’t have you finding out a few things…”
This of course only made Ohno more curious. “Things like what…Nari-touto?” That earned Ohno a smack on the head with the notebook.
“Don’t call me that. Ever.”
“Okay…Kazu.”
“That’s better.” Nino closed the notebook and tossed it across the room, before curling up in Ohno‘s lap with a yawn. “Its all boring history anyway…”
“Yeah….but who won that baseball game? The last one in Tiger Stadium?”
Nino smiled at the memory. “I wonder….”