The Life and Death of Samuel Selwyn, 2/2
Title: The Life and Death of Samuel Selwyn, Part Two
Rating: Both parts together - Hard R
Characters/Pairings: Sakurai Sho/Ninomiya Kazunari; Sakurai Sho/Becky
Summary: “Would it be at all possible for Mr. Ninomiya to pass his summer with you?” Jun inquired.
Notes/Warnings: And now, the conclusion.
The only reminder that Ninomiya was still in town came in a letter two weeks later. Aiba came into his study with the mail, looking nervous. He usually brought the mail directly to Rebecca, and Sho only found out about parties and births and things if she told him.
“There's a letter here for Nino,” Aiba said quietly, shaking an envelope. “It's marked urgent.”
He looked up from his notes, setting down his glasses. “Then have one of the boys bring it to him at the King's Arms. Why consult me for something so easily rectified when I've work to do?”
“Aren't you even curious?” Aiba asked.
“To read the man's private mail? No.”
“That's not what I meant,” Aiba protested. “Sho, what did he ever do to you? I've never seen you like this before.”
He turned back to his desk, settling his glasses back upon his nose. “Have one of the boys bring it to the King's Arms. Dismissed.”
He'd write to Jun in the morning and tell him he'd finance a thousand vulgar plays if it got Kazunari Ninomiya out of Dorset.
-
But the letter to Jun wouldn't materialize. Aiba woke him in the wee hours of the morning, shaking him. The other side of the bed was still cold with Rebecca's absence, and he opened his eyes slowly.
“He's outside,” Aiba was telling him. “Sho, he's outside.”
“What do you mean outside?”
But Aiba had never been one to stand on ceremony, and he half-carried, half-dragged Sho out of the room and down the stairs. Half a dozen domestics were huddled in the hall in their night dresses with candles, whispering up a storm.
“Get back to your beds,” he scolded, doing Aiba's job for him. The air was chillier at night, even at the peak of summer, and Sho wished Aiba had let him grab a robe before pulling him outside.
Sho had little time to consider a punishment for his butler when they turned on the gravel path to the bushes just outside Sho's study. “Ninomiya,” he gasped, seeing the man curled up in the gravel. He and Aiba lifted the man, bringing him into the house.
He noticed as soon as they got him on the couch in the drawing room that Ninomiya smelled of cheap liquor and was in some kind of waking sleep. The envelope Aiba had showed him only that afternoon was clutched in his fist. It was a four mile walk at least from the King's Arms, and Ninomiya had walked all the way to his home in this state?
“What do we do? Does he need a doctor?” Aiba asked, pacing the floor.
“No,” Ninomiya muttered, groaning. His jacket was stained from falling into the gravel, and he was even more pale than usual. “Just drunk. I'm just drunk.”
Aiba looked to Sho helplessly. He sighed. “Go fetch some water,” Sho ordered, hopefully with the implication that he and Nino be allowed to chat briefly. In all these weeks, Ninomiya had been confident and arrogant. He was showing a completely different side.
“She's dead,” Nino said, voice quaking. He opened his fingers and the envelope fluttered to the ground. Sho bent down to pick it up. There was a tersely written note inside, informing Nino that his mother had passed away and would he be so kind as to come to London to clear up her remaining debts.
Sho didn't want to feel bad for him after the sneaky way Ninomiya had behaved all these weeks, but if the man's mother was truly dead, then he had to return to London for the arrangements. This meant that it was Sho's responsibility to pay his way there.
“Don't want your money,” Nino complained, seeming to read Sho's mind. “Not for this. I don't want your god damned money for this.”
“Then why walk four miles in the dead of night?” Sho asked, putting the letter back in the envelope and dropping it onto Ninomiya's chest. With Ninomiya's sorry expression and tear-stained face, he wasn't sure he wanted to know why. Because it might have meant that Sho was the only person in the world that Nino could turn to, and that shook him.
Nino looked at him, shaking his head and laughing as fresh tears rolled from the corners of his eyes. “You know why.”
Sho took a step back, nearly tripping over the rug. Mercifully, Aiba entered then with water and a cool rag. “I'll watch him, Sho.”
“Prepare the coach for first light,” he said quietly, knowing that Nino was probably a sharp listener even while intoxicated. “I'm accompanying Mr. Ninomiya to London.”
-
The ride back to London was eerily quiet. Nino curled up on his side of the coach, legs tucked beneath him as he had done on their first meeting. But where at that time he'd worked his hardest to rile Sho up, instead he said nothing at all. They dined in silence, went to their rooms at a roadside inn in silence. Sho would have preferred Nino say something, but his grief was so potent it was unnerving.
Jun met them upon arrival, looking almost shocked to see Sho accompanying Nino. The playwright departed alone for the seedier part of the city, undoubtedly making arrangements for burial and whatever debts his mother had incurred. Sho hadn't bothered to offer the name of his man at the bank - Ninomiya would have refused anyhow.
“Was he close to her?” he asked Jun over dinner that evening.
Jun sipped his wine and shook his head. “Quite the opposite, as far as I understand it. The father abandoned them, the mother had him working from the age of four so she could drink and gamble and waste away on opium.”
Sho poked at his plate, frowning. “Then why is he so upset? He always acts as though nothing could ever bother him.”
Jun stared at him for a few moments, making Sho decidedly uncomfortable. “She was nothing but a burden. She beat him, hated the sight of him. But every bit of money he earned from me went to her. He makes enough to live on his own. Didn't you think it strange that he has to live with others or with you? He chose to take care of her instead of himself. He loved her, even if she didn't feel the same.” Jun looked disappointed in him. “He's not who you think he is, Sakurai.”
Sho finished his food in silence, trying to reconcile the Ninomiya he thought he knew with the one who was mourning vice-ridden trash at the other end of the city. “We both hide,” Ninomiya had hinted that day. And he'd been telling the truth.
-
Nino returned to Jun's home in the West End three days later, looking exhausted but back in his usual spirits. The coach ride started off quietly, Nino still sitting opposite and staring out at the gray skies as they slowly left London behind them.
There was a lot Sho was reluctant to forgive Ninomiya for. His intrusions into his personal life were inexcusable, even if it was just the man's way of creating art. There'd be ground rules this time. Nino had challenged him, told Sho not to let him get away with so much. He'd go back to the drafty room. He'd leave Sho's study. He'd come to supper properly and treat Sho's wife as the lady of the house rather than as a school chum.
Of course, he'd wait until they returned to set out these ultimatums. Sho wasn't entirely heartless.
“I'm sorry,” he said, staring out the coach window as the tightly packed buildings gave way to green fields. “About your mother. I know you ask nothing of me, but if there is anything you require, I'll do what I can.”
Nino leaned forward, grasping for Sho's hand. He wanted to pull away, didn't want to see the gratitude or the mischief or the victory in Nino's eyes. Instead he kept his eyes focused outside, allowing Nino to hold onto his hand until they stopped for the night.
-
Rebecca rejoined him for supper on the night they returned. “He shouldn't have to stay in that room if it's too drafty,” she argued as Aiba poured the wine.
“He'll stay in there, or he can go to hell,” Sho replied, but with a smile threatening to reveal itself.
She just shook her head at him. Ninomiya arrived for supper fifteen minutes late, but he had come after all. He was bundled up in a few shirts and asked Aiba for a blanket for his lap.
“Thank you, Mrs. Sakurai,” Nino said politely as he spread some butter on his bread. “Thank you for welcoming me back to your home.” Nino's gaze shifted. “And thank you as well, Mr. Sakurai, for your continued generosity. You are a true friend.”
The candlelight did little to mask Sho's flush.
-
Within two weeks, Ninomiya had already broken the study rule.
Sho found him in there, asleep on the couch, when he entered after lunch one afternoon. He made no effort to mask his noise as he pulled his chair out and sat down, arranging his papers. He got to work, expecting Nino to wake and depart.
A few hours passed, and he was making considerable progress when he finally felt a tap on his shoulder. Ninomiya was awfully fond of invading personal space. Sho's inkwell nearly upended, but Nino righted it with a grin.
“It's not so horrible to share, now is it?” Nino said, waving a stack of papers with his tiny handwriting at him. “I've gotten a lot done, even though you talk to yourself while you write. Statistics, nothing but statistics. You're so dull.”
“I apologize if Samuel Selwyn is not the exciting protagonist you dreamed about,” he shot back, arranging things on his desk to return to in the morning.
Nino seemed a bit startled that Sho was well aware of Selwyn but masked it quickly. How much had Nino masked before that Sho simply hadn't noticed?
“Shall I read the first act after supper? Mrs. Sakurai has been pestering me for days.”
“Do as you wish,” Sho said, backing his chair up and getting to his feet. This time, Ninomiya did not block his exit.
-
Rebecca and Aiba were beside themselves laughing, while Sho stayed in the corner of the library reading his newspapers, grumbling at the contents of the first act.
Ninomiya had a flair for theatrics, which made it all the more strange that he did not participate in any stagings for his works. He had a voice and distinct mannerisms for each of his characters. Samuel Selwyn was, like Sho himself, an Oxford-educated son of a wealthy landowner and art patron. But as far as Sho was concerned, that was where the similarities ended.
Mr. Selwyn was a gambling addict, and Sho only went to the track when school friends had coerced him. Mr. Selwyn had married an exotic beauty during a wild trek to India, and she was everything Rebecca wasn't - dark, mysterious, coarse. Rebecca, of course, gobbled it up, obviously fancying herself some beauty from the Orient in silks and jewels. Aiba was just laughing his usual screechy laugh any time Selwyn lost money at the track.
“Sho does curse like that when he's angry and thinks no one can hear him,” Aiba was crying, slapping his leg in his usual common manner, forgetting his place. Sho turned the page.
At the conclusion of the first act, Mr. Selwyn had embarked on a fantastic journey back to India with his wife, as the whole of London refused to accept the match and had greatly ostracized them both.
Rebecca was at the edge of her seat. “Will they be all right? Will they make it to India?”
“Ah, I've only just started pondering,” Nino replied, bowing deeply. “I'll work my hardest to write something worthy of your interest, Mrs. Sakurai.”
Aiba cleared away their empty glasses. “You're much more interesting when you're a gambler, Sho. Much more interesting.”
He snorted, reading an editorial for the fifth or sixth time. Because truth be told, the story of Samuel Selwyn was meant to be symbolic of him. But Sho couldn't understand what Nino was trying to get at. Sho didn't have gambling as a vice, didn't have an exotic wife, and he certainly had never been to India.
Rebecca departed for the night, leaving him and Ninomiya alone in the library. He stayed in the corner with his papers while Nino muttered to himself on the couch, scratching down whatever new ideas for the second act that he was having.
A few hours passed, and his eyes were screaming for rest. “You've got Chaucer, haven't you?” Ninomiya asked from the couch. “Bring it here?”
Sho sighed. He folded up his newspapers and set his glasses aside, standing up to scan the shelves. Probably thieving a quote for Selwyn, who was far more fond of literature than Sho was himself. Chaucer. Chaucer. Chaucer. He squinted at the book spines. He knew it was here, where on Earth had it gone?
He could feel a prickling at the back of his neck, could almost feel Ninomiya standing behind him as though they were nearly melded together. “Ah,” he heard, seeing the hand come stretching past his shoulder. “It seems I've had it all this time.”
Ninomiya set the book down on the shelf, and Sho knew he was trapped. Far more trapped than he'd ever been before, and despite the tired state of his eyes, his body was suddenly alight with Nino's closeness, his staunch refusal to respect boundaries. He turned, and Ninomiya rested a hand on either side of him, pressing him back against the shelves.
“You offered no opinions on the first act.”
“Give a man space to breathe if you wish for a fair opinion,” Sho protested, feeling the man's warmth as he kept Sho sequestered between the books and himself.
Nino cocked his head. “Why? Does this make you uncomfortable?”
“You know it does.”
Nino's eyes were sharper than ever, and Sho's stomach seemed to twist and squeeze as his tongue seized up, unable to utter any other protest. “From the first time you saw me, you detested me,” Nino reminded him. “And yet here I remain under your roof. Here I remain, friends with Aiba and friends with Becky.”
“You...if you've intentions about my wife,” he stammered, “then this is over. She is my wife.”
Nino chuckled darkly, pressing one of his cold fingers to Sho's lips. “You think all this time I've been rattling you to steal your wife away? You think that's why I stood by and watched her take you in her mouth that day?”
“I don't have times for your tricks, Ninomiya...” He shut his eyes, wishing the man would just leave him be. They'd been getting along better than before, but things had taken a interesting turn. A turn that Sho didn't want to put a name to, not yet. But that didn't stop Nino.
“You hide behind your propriety, Sho. You hide and convince yourself that there's only one truth. You have wealth and a wife and land and some troublesome chaps to support financially. But otherwise, all is safe and all is well. But there's that place in your mind you don't acknowledge. It's the place in your mind where you find me in your bushes and carry me in. The place where you loathe the sight of me but want to pay for my dead mother's debts. I can't be any clearer, Sho.”
“I'm not a...” Sho didn't want to give it a name. He didn't want to give a word to the exultation he felt when Ninomiya stood before him, challenged him, knew him better than he knew himself. “I am not what you think I am.”
“Then why are you sweating?” Nino asked, dragging his finger lazily down Sho's chin to his neck, resting finally at his collar. “Surely your heart is beating a rhythm that's irregular right now, the same as mine. Surely you've understood my intentions, but you denied them. Written them off as Ninomiya being a nuisance. But Sho, you've known. You knew from the second Jun introduced us that we had an interesting path to follow together, you and I.”
“Stop,” Sho protested, pressing himself back against the volumes on the shelves, trying not to feel the insistent press of Nino's growing interest against his thigh. Trying not to consider the truth. “I am not a...a Sodomite...not an...”
“Adulterer?” Nino whispered, voice smooth like warm brandy coating his tongue. “You hated my play for its content, and yet here you are. You're larger than me, Sho, and you could push me aside. Could have pushed me aside minutes ago. But here you are, here you remain.”
Sho felt Nino's fingers under his jacket, brushing along his side to lift the cotton and touch his bare skin. He needed to flee before he admitted more than what his mind would allow. That Ninomiya was what he wanted and needed. For every confusing or disrespectful thing he said, he made up for it with a look in his eyes that demanded Sho's attention. “Please, I cannot. We cannot...”
Nino's other hand grasped at the back of Sho's neck to bring their mouths together, and there was the most forbidden, sinful feeling now clawing its way through his brain, damning Nino and damning himself. He gasped, and Nino did as well. Letting his mask come off, letting the man he'd been on the way to London return briefly as he clutched Sho's shirt in his fist.
He felt Nino's fingers prying at his trousers, and Sho broke their mouths' contact, shoving the man away from him. Nino's face had changed - the cleverness and knowing eyes had given way to lust and want. He'd never seen Nino more vulnerable.
“I'm going to bed,” he managed to say before hurrying from the room without looking back. His chest ached, and he could still feel Nino's mouth on his. It was so different from Rebecca's, more challenging, more demanding, and he nearly stumbled up the stairs, heady from the encounter in the library.
Rebecca was already under the covers when he entered their bedroom, fumbling around with the door lock and with his clothes like a drunken man. Would she smell Nino on him? Would she smell the forbidden, primal urges Nino had awoken within him? He was like a man possessed, not bothering to take the pajamas Aiba had left on the chair for him and disrobing.
He pulled the blanket down, reaching for her and rousing her from sleep. What he couldn't have with Nino, he'd have to take or he'd burst. “Becky,” he murmured, feeling her soft skin under his hands and knowing that Nino's would be rougher, pointier, a different kind of warm.
She was startled, nearly crying out from the force of him suddenly situating himself between her thighs. “What are you doing? Wait,” she protested, trying to push him off. In six years of marriage, he'd never been so forceful. Not once. He cared for her, cared for and respected her. What had Ninomiya done to him?
“Please,” he said, trying to slow down but still pushing her night dress up her thighs. “I need to have you.”
She tried to find his face in the dark, one hand finding his cheek. “Sho, I...what's brought this on?”
He couldn't force her. He wasn't some beast, was he? “Becky, please.”
His eyes were adjusting to the dark, and he could make out the confusion in her face. Did she suspect? Did she know? “Okay.”
It was all he needed to hear, mind increasingly confused as he felt Becky beneath him, trembling as he buried himself within her. She was his wife, and he cared for her, her long strands of brown hair in his fingers as he rocked against her. But they'd always been friends more than lovers, marrying as their parents had bid them to.
His brain reminded him of these things while everything else quaked with the reality of his feelings towards Ninomiya, made themselves manifest in the way he clutched and gripped his wife's thigh. She gasped as he pushed harder and harder, demanding more than he'd ever taken from her, remembering the way Nino's nimble hands had wished to unbutton him, to take him in his hand.
“Oh god,” he groaned, struggling with every conflicting idea warring away inside his head. She cried out beneath him, seemingly in more pleasure than in pain, but what if it was just what he wanted to hear? He wanted to call for Nino, to feel Nino under him, begging.
He was Samuel Selwyn after all. The exotic partner from India wasn't Rebecca. Hell, the woman from India was Ninomiya himself, wasn't it?
He was Samuel Selwyn.
Rebecca clung to him, and he gave in, not calling out for her or for Ninomiya, just letting go of the control he craved. He was nearly in tears when he moved off of her, grabbing angrily for the blankets and turning away from her in shame. What had he done? What had he allowed himself to do?
He felt her hand on his shoulder. “Sho?” She was more insistent. “Sho, what happened?”
“Let me sleep.”
“Look at me, please.”
“If I hurt you, I apologize. I don't know what came over me.”
“Sho,” she pleaded, near hysterics. God, what had he done? He hadn't stayed in the library and hadn't seen things through with Ninomiya, and he'd let his sin consume him.
“I'm sorry,” he said, pulling the pillow over his head. “I'm so very sorry.”
-
Breakfast the next morning was a solemn affair. Rebecca sat across from him as she usually did, dressed in one of her usual summer dresses. He couldn't bear to meet her eyes, to see the searching and confusion in them. He'd become some type of monster.
Ninomiya had bags under his eyes when he came in, the chair scraping across the floor as he took a seat. “Tea and toast. And a hard-boiled egg, please,” was all he told Aiba, who looked equally uncomfortable and confused. The play reading the night before had been charming and fun - now the three seated at the dining table were silent.
Sho drank his coffee slowly. Rebecca departed first, forced cheerfulness evident in every word as she mentioned the letters she had to write. Ninomiya munched his toast. Sho was almost expecting him to inquire about domestic troubles, but it seemed the man wasn't feeling too mean-spirited that morning, although it was warranted. Where Sho had been able to depart for his wife's embrace, he'd left Ninomiya quite alone.
“The study is yours today,” he remarked once Aiba had refilled his cup.
“Is it?”
“I'm going for a ride,” he replied. Aiba had already ordered the horse to be made ready.
“Where?”
He didn't want to answer. If he told Nino where he was going, then the man would probably find some way to follow him, and he did not want to admit how that excited him. He'd shamed himself enough, hadn't he? They'd return to London in a few weeks. Nino could return to the Countess Grayson's, and they could forget this whole business.
“I asked you where, sir. The least you could do is answer instead of staring intently at your saucer,” Nino snapped. The playfulness was gone. Nino had obviously expected Sho to be a good sport the night before.
He finally met Nino's eyes, could see the hurt in them. “I'm sorry,” he said, the same pitiful tone of voice he'd used on Rebecca the night before. He was being torn in different directions, and neither of them seemed preferable. Give in to Ninomiya and ignore reason and propriety or lie to himself and play at marriage with Rebecca even though there was no way to return things to how they'd been.
“Where do you ride today?” Nino asked.
He stood, picking a loose string on the sleeve of his coat. Logic had brought him nothing but irritation thus far. “Follow and find out.”
Aiba said nothing when Sho emerged from the dining room, ordering a horse saddled up for Ninomiya as well.
-
They rode as far as The Sydling Water, resting and eating the sandwiches that the cook had packed for Sho's original journey.
It wasn't as sticky hot as it had been in recent weeks, and Sho was appreciative of the breeze wafting through the trees. The horses were tethered to another tree, and they settled under a tall oak. This afternoon would have to be decisive, Sho vowed.
Nino only nibbled on his sandwich. He didn't usually have much of an appetite, but this time Sho couldn't blame him. “I apologize,” Sho started, knowing it could get ugly very quickly if Nino's wicked turns of phrase made an appearance. “You surprised me, truly.”
“Surprised you right into your wife's...” Nino stopped himself before descending into true vulgarity. “Sorry. I like her, I shouldn't.”
Sho sighed. “But you are perfectly right. I fled. I do a lot of fleeing where you're involved, Ninomiya.”
“Bit of a shock to my own system, I'll have you know,” Nino remarked. “Don't get me wrong, you're not the first.”
“Charming.”
Nino leaned back against the tree beside him. “I'd say you were different, you were something precious, but it'd be wrong.”
“Liar,” Sho declared, thumping him in the shoulder with his fist. “Unless you make a habit of writing plays around whichever man you lust after.”
Nino gave him a knowing smile. “That's a secret.”
Sho rolled his eyes. That they could joke in this manner was rather despicable, especially after all that had transpired the night before. “This cannot happen, you know that.”
Nino ignored him, shuffling aside until he could see the blue riding coat that the man was borrowing from him out of the corner of his eye. It was the wrong size, and the sleeves came down almost to cover Nino's palms entirely. “The summer's almost passed, hasn't it?”
Sho couldn't bring himself to protest as Nino drew him down for a far gentler kiss than the one they'd shared the night before. “Nino,” he complained.
“Move away from me then,” Nino whispered, grasping hold of his chin. “Afraid you'd have to fuck the horse to expend all your energy this time.”
He shoved Ninomiya away, but only so he'd land flat on his back. Their mouths met again, and this time, if it was the last opportunity they'd have, then Sho would have some agency. Nino grunted his approval. “Wearing my clothes,” Sho muttered, feeling rather undignified laying in the grass atop another man, “Riding my horse. Using my study.”
“It was all freely given,” Nino said, lifting his hips to declare his intent. Worse than a dog in heat, Sho thought angrily as the blood once again left his brain for more primal pursuits. Sho didn't hold much stock in eternal hellfire, but if the way Ninomiya felt beneath his hands was truly the road to damnation, then Sho decided that he was damned.
It was clumsy, and the knees of his riding breeches were already green with stains from the grass, and Nino was struggling to divest himself of his own breeches. “Boots first,” Sho complained. “Get the boots off first.”
He got his jacket off, and Nino squeezed his arms, kneading his shoulders. He was hard within his breeches, trying to remember his first meeting with this frustrating, forbidden temptation of a man. Nino's fingers were all too expert as they undid Sho's own buttons, not even allowing Sho a moment to breathe.
“Is this what you want?” Nino asked him, drawing a moan from low in his throat as he took Sho's cock in his palm. “Is it?”
“Yes,” he shuddered, admitting it aloud.
In the grass beside the oak tree, Sho set everything he'd tried to be aside. He let go of his station and the expectations his father had left him. It was different with Nino than with Rebecca. They weren't friends. There was no marital obligation. Nino whispered words in Sho's ear that Rebecca probably had never even heard, and it only spurred him on as their breathing grew more labored.
“Fuck me,” Nino dared, coarse words reminding Sho just how far he'd allowed himself to slip. His sense of guilt differed greatly from the night before as Nino encouraged him, demanded more. His lips were at Sho's ear, suggesting, insinuating as they had from the day they met.
Finally, Nino reached between them to touch himself in tandem with Sho's own movements, leaning his head back until his gasps were pounding in Sho's head. “Let go,” Nino begged him. “Sho, let go.”
He came, Ninomiya's name on his lips like a promise.
-
Rebecca was waiting for them when they returned the horses to the stables. She linked her arm with his, and let Ninomiya trail them into the house.
“Have you mended your troubles? It seemed you had some dispute,” she inquired, and only then did reality return.
“Yes,” Sho admitted, thumb pressing absent-mindedly on the gold band on his left ring finger. “Yes, I'd say we've settled our differences of opinion. For now, at least.”
“Good,” Rebecca said cheerfully. If she knew, she didn't show it.
When he turned to look back, Ninomiya looked almost sad.
-
There was a startling announcement at the breakfast table in the morning. “I'm afraid the play is not progressing as I'd hoped,” Nino declared.
Rebecca set her fork down. “Oh dear, is there any way we could help?”
Ninomiya only shook his head, and Sho's stomach turned. “I'm afraid that Dorset is just not amenable to act two, if you'll forgive me. I'd like to make arrangements to return to London.”
“London?” Sho interrupted. “How soon?”
Nino's hands were ink stained, as though he'd been up the entire night writing and rewriting. “As soon as possible, if you don't mind.”
Sho had been running all this time, and it appeared that now Nino would do the same. But Sho could say nothing without admitting complicity in sin, and Rebecca only dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief at Nino's sudden decision.
He saw the coach off, trying to find some sort of explanation in Nino's eyes for what was happening. “I came to Dorset to write,” Nino told him before settling back in his seat. Aiba closed the door, and it set off, leaving Sho in the dust.
-
Four weeks later, they were in Mayfair again. There were bank statements to review and accounts to manage. Sho's essay had been submitted to one of the Oxford journals, and he was far too busy to worry much about Ninomiya's whereabouts.
Not that he didn't worry.
Jun claimed that Nino had “sequestered himself somewhere” until he had a serviceable piece of writing to sell him. Any further inquiry would just make Jun nosy. It had been the strangest summer of his life. Having been with Nino had changed him. Yes, there was still work to be done, and he was stubborn as ever, he knew that.
But he was more willing to let things go, to realize that most things in life did not go according to the expected plan or scheme of things.
He was smoking in the parlor when Rebecca returned from the doctor.
-
It was another party at Mr. Ohno's, and the man was due to give an exhibition in a few weeks. Everyone was buzzing with excitement for him, and Jun pulled Sho aside.
“I don't know what you did, Sakurai, but I ought to kiss you.”
“I beg your pardon?” he asked, nearly choking on his drink.
Matsumoto jostled his shoulder. “I'm teasing. But seriously, Ninomiya sent me a final draft today. You won't believe the shock of it.”
The shock? What on earth had Ninomiya written? What fate had befallen Samuel Selwyn and his unexpected partner in romance? “I was only privy to act one,” Sho noted, trying to calm his nerves.
“Shall I spoil it for you? It'll make opening night less exciting for you.”
He scowled. “Just tell me what is so amazing about his play, would you?”
Jun was grinning ear to ear, probably already calculating how he'd be staging it. “Well, you see, the main character has a foreign wife, and they return to India because they've been run out of London. They go on this wild adventure together, except the wife runs into some trouble. The husband, consumed with his gambling, doesn't notice that's she been ill for some time.”
“Ill?” Sho interrupted.
“Yes, the wife's deathly ill, and the doctor's bill is outrageous, so how does she prove her devotion to him?”
“Haven't a clue.”
“Of course you wouldn't. You've the imagination of wallpaper,” Jun joked, “but the wife kills herself. Now, I'm seeing the whole stage lit in blue and the entire house just weeping themselves silly...”
Sho's blood ran cold. The wife...killed herself?
“Jun,” he said, “where is Ninomiya staying?”
“Why? You don't like it? You want him to pay you retroactive room and board because of the outlandish summation I've just given you?”
“Tell me where he is.” Jun was drunk enough on his wine and on his inevitable success, scrawling down an address on one of Ohno's napkins. “Get Rebecca home, would you?”
-
The building was run-down and filthy, and Sho could already imagine the scent that would linger on his topcoat when he got back home. If Nino was indirectly the lover of Samuel Selwyn, then Sho was terrified of the real life implications. It had only been a few months since he'd lost his mother after all.
“Nino!” he cried, pounding on the door. The number matched what Jun had given him. He banged on it several more times, hearing people who were also packed into the building complaining about the noise. “Nino, open this door!”
What had he done? Had Nino not wanted him to give in after all? Had it all been a game gone horribly wrong once Nino had relinquished control?
“Answer,” he muttered, fearing that within Nino would be dead from a pistol wound or hanging from the ceiling or lying in an opium coma longing for death to come.
Relief came when Ninomiya, pale as always but healthy, opened the door with a glare. “You are a nuisance.”
Sho ignored him, shoving forward to embrace him. “I thought you were dead. I thought you'd run away from me to kill yourself.”
Nino allowed the contact, chortling quite enthusiastically. “Jun spoiled my ending! I will have to revise it entirely!”
He released Nino, wanting to shake him. “It was...it was all for dramatic effect? It wasn't some symbolic suicide?”
Nino just shook his head. “Oh, Sakurai. I like you. I really like you.” Nino went to his small stove to put the kettle on. “Tea?”
Sho sat down, infuriated.
“Don't be so glum,” Nino declared. “I am honored that you would come all the way to this filthy place to ensure that I was still drawing breath.”
The tea Nino offered him was horrid, but Sho took it and drank it anyhow.
“Is this your clean break?” he asked. “Is what we have, or had, as it were...is that all of it?”
Nino smirked. “Well, killing off Parvati was more to tug at the heartstrings. It's a romantic play, and not a cynical one like the others. You induced me to take things seriously, and I don't know whether to thank you or slap you for it.”
“You still want me,” Sho pointed out, “and I still...”
Nino held up a hand. “Enough of that. Summer has gone, and if Jun is to be believed, then you will be a father come spring.”
Sho took another sip of tea. It was indeed true. It had been a most eventful summer. “God willing.”
“From that night?” Nino wondered. Sho wasn't sure and offered no answer. He and Rebecca hadn't dared discuss it. “Ah well. It was good to see you, Sho. It has been blissfully quiet without you complaining about this and that.”
He felt as though all he'd come to discover about himself that summer was being torn from him, bit by bit, and with the way Nino was staring into his teacup, he was feeling the same. It could not be, and they both knew it. Dorset had been another universe entirely, it seemed. In London there were responsibilities, the ones he'd shrugged off all summer. Every play had a final act.
Sho got to his feet and headed for the door. “If I may, could I still pay Jun to pay you to write things I will inevitably despise?”
Nino nodded. “Money is always welcome at the Ninomiya country estate,” the man said, gesturing to the dusty room around him. He pulled Sho close, lips meeting all too briefly. “Goodbye, Sho.”
“Goodbye.”
-
Around them, the audience was in tears, standing and applauding as the curtain came down.
Sho remained in his seat, livid while Rebecca wept openly. “You have all the emotion of a rock,” his wife protested, squeezing his hand. “It was beautiful!”
“It was vulgar,” he complained.
She tugged him to his feet as the curtain rose and the actors came out for their curtain call. “Cannot believe he killed Parvati,” Rebecca was saying between sniffles. “And then after all that grief, Selwyn died from a broken heart!”
As the actors bowed, Sho could see offstage to the wings. He found Ninomiya standing there at Jun's side.
He might have been seeing things, but he could have sworn that Ninomiya winked.
Rating: Both parts together - Hard R
Characters/Pairings: Sakurai Sho/Ninomiya Kazunari; Sakurai Sho/Becky
Summary: “Would it be at all possible for Mr. Ninomiya to pass his summer with you?” Jun inquired.
Notes/Warnings: And now, the conclusion.
The only reminder that Ninomiya was still in town came in a letter two weeks later. Aiba came into his study with the mail, looking nervous. He usually brought the mail directly to Rebecca, and Sho only found out about parties and births and things if she told him.
“There's a letter here for Nino,” Aiba said quietly, shaking an envelope. “It's marked urgent.”
He looked up from his notes, setting down his glasses. “Then have one of the boys bring it to him at the King's Arms. Why consult me for something so easily rectified when I've work to do?”
“Aren't you even curious?” Aiba asked.
“To read the man's private mail? No.”
“That's not what I meant,” Aiba protested. “Sho, what did he ever do to you? I've never seen you like this before.”
He turned back to his desk, settling his glasses back upon his nose. “Have one of the boys bring it to the King's Arms. Dismissed.”
He'd write to Jun in the morning and tell him he'd finance a thousand vulgar plays if it got Kazunari Ninomiya out of Dorset.
-
But the letter to Jun wouldn't materialize. Aiba woke him in the wee hours of the morning, shaking him. The other side of the bed was still cold with Rebecca's absence, and he opened his eyes slowly.
“He's outside,” Aiba was telling him. “Sho, he's outside.”
“What do you mean outside?”
But Aiba had never been one to stand on ceremony, and he half-carried, half-dragged Sho out of the room and down the stairs. Half a dozen domestics were huddled in the hall in their night dresses with candles, whispering up a storm.
“Get back to your beds,” he scolded, doing Aiba's job for him. The air was chillier at night, even at the peak of summer, and Sho wished Aiba had let him grab a robe before pulling him outside.
Sho had little time to consider a punishment for his butler when they turned on the gravel path to the bushes just outside Sho's study. “Ninomiya,” he gasped, seeing the man curled up in the gravel. He and Aiba lifted the man, bringing him into the house.
He noticed as soon as they got him on the couch in the drawing room that Ninomiya smelled of cheap liquor and was in some kind of waking sleep. The envelope Aiba had showed him only that afternoon was clutched in his fist. It was a four mile walk at least from the King's Arms, and Ninomiya had walked all the way to his home in this state?
“What do we do? Does he need a doctor?” Aiba asked, pacing the floor.
“No,” Ninomiya muttered, groaning. His jacket was stained from falling into the gravel, and he was even more pale than usual. “Just drunk. I'm just drunk.”
Aiba looked to Sho helplessly. He sighed. “Go fetch some water,” Sho ordered, hopefully with the implication that he and Nino be allowed to chat briefly. In all these weeks, Ninomiya had been confident and arrogant. He was showing a completely different side.
“She's dead,” Nino said, voice quaking. He opened his fingers and the envelope fluttered to the ground. Sho bent down to pick it up. There was a tersely written note inside, informing Nino that his mother had passed away and would he be so kind as to come to London to clear up her remaining debts.
Sho didn't want to feel bad for him after the sneaky way Ninomiya had behaved all these weeks, but if the man's mother was truly dead, then he had to return to London for the arrangements. This meant that it was Sho's responsibility to pay his way there.
“Don't want your money,” Nino complained, seeming to read Sho's mind. “Not for this. I don't want your god damned money for this.”
“Then why walk four miles in the dead of night?” Sho asked, putting the letter back in the envelope and dropping it onto Ninomiya's chest. With Ninomiya's sorry expression and tear-stained face, he wasn't sure he wanted to know why. Because it might have meant that Sho was the only person in the world that Nino could turn to, and that shook him.
Nino looked at him, shaking his head and laughing as fresh tears rolled from the corners of his eyes. “You know why.”
Sho took a step back, nearly tripping over the rug. Mercifully, Aiba entered then with water and a cool rag. “I'll watch him, Sho.”
“Prepare the coach for first light,” he said quietly, knowing that Nino was probably a sharp listener even while intoxicated. “I'm accompanying Mr. Ninomiya to London.”
-
The ride back to London was eerily quiet. Nino curled up on his side of the coach, legs tucked beneath him as he had done on their first meeting. But where at that time he'd worked his hardest to rile Sho up, instead he said nothing at all. They dined in silence, went to their rooms at a roadside inn in silence. Sho would have preferred Nino say something, but his grief was so potent it was unnerving.
Jun met them upon arrival, looking almost shocked to see Sho accompanying Nino. The playwright departed alone for the seedier part of the city, undoubtedly making arrangements for burial and whatever debts his mother had incurred. Sho hadn't bothered to offer the name of his man at the bank - Ninomiya would have refused anyhow.
“Was he close to her?” he asked Jun over dinner that evening.
Jun sipped his wine and shook his head. “Quite the opposite, as far as I understand it. The father abandoned them, the mother had him working from the age of four so she could drink and gamble and waste away on opium.”
Sho poked at his plate, frowning. “Then why is he so upset? He always acts as though nothing could ever bother him.”
Jun stared at him for a few moments, making Sho decidedly uncomfortable. “She was nothing but a burden. She beat him, hated the sight of him. But every bit of money he earned from me went to her. He makes enough to live on his own. Didn't you think it strange that he has to live with others or with you? He chose to take care of her instead of himself. He loved her, even if she didn't feel the same.” Jun looked disappointed in him. “He's not who you think he is, Sakurai.”
Sho finished his food in silence, trying to reconcile the Ninomiya he thought he knew with the one who was mourning vice-ridden trash at the other end of the city. “We both hide,” Ninomiya had hinted that day. And he'd been telling the truth.
-
Nino returned to Jun's home in the West End three days later, looking exhausted but back in his usual spirits. The coach ride started off quietly, Nino still sitting opposite and staring out at the gray skies as they slowly left London behind them.
There was a lot Sho was reluctant to forgive Ninomiya for. His intrusions into his personal life were inexcusable, even if it was just the man's way of creating art. There'd be ground rules this time. Nino had challenged him, told Sho not to let him get away with so much. He'd go back to the drafty room. He'd leave Sho's study. He'd come to supper properly and treat Sho's wife as the lady of the house rather than as a school chum.
Of course, he'd wait until they returned to set out these ultimatums. Sho wasn't entirely heartless.
“I'm sorry,” he said, staring out the coach window as the tightly packed buildings gave way to green fields. “About your mother. I know you ask nothing of me, but if there is anything you require, I'll do what I can.”
Nino leaned forward, grasping for Sho's hand. He wanted to pull away, didn't want to see the gratitude or the mischief or the victory in Nino's eyes. Instead he kept his eyes focused outside, allowing Nino to hold onto his hand until they stopped for the night.
-
Rebecca rejoined him for supper on the night they returned. “He shouldn't have to stay in that room if it's too drafty,” she argued as Aiba poured the wine.
“He'll stay in there, or he can go to hell,” Sho replied, but with a smile threatening to reveal itself.
She just shook her head at him. Ninomiya arrived for supper fifteen minutes late, but he had come after all. He was bundled up in a few shirts and asked Aiba for a blanket for his lap.
“Thank you, Mrs. Sakurai,” Nino said politely as he spread some butter on his bread. “Thank you for welcoming me back to your home.” Nino's gaze shifted. “And thank you as well, Mr. Sakurai, for your continued generosity. You are a true friend.”
The candlelight did little to mask Sho's flush.
-
Within two weeks, Ninomiya had already broken the study rule.
Sho found him in there, asleep on the couch, when he entered after lunch one afternoon. He made no effort to mask his noise as he pulled his chair out and sat down, arranging his papers. He got to work, expecting Nino to wake and depart.
A few hours passed, and he was making considerable progress when he finally felt a tap on his shoulder. Ninomiya was awfully fond of invading personal space. Sho's inkwell nearly upended, but Nino righted it with a grin.
“It's not so horrible to share, now is it?” Nino said, waving a stack of papers with his tiny handwriting at him. “I've gotten a lot done, even though you talk to yourself while you write. Statistics, nothing but statistics. You're so dull.”
“I apologize if Samuel Selwyn is not the exciting protagonist you dreamed about,” he shot back, arranging things on his desk to return to in the morning.
Nino seemed a bit startled that Sho was well aware of Selwyn but masked it quickly. How much had Nino masked before that Sho simply hadn't noticed?
“Shall I read the first act after supper? Mrs. Sakurai has been pestering me for days.”
“Do as you wish,” Sho said, backing his chair up and getting to his feet. This time, Ninomiya did not block his exit.
-
Rebecca and Aiba were beside themselves laughing, while Sho stayed in the corner of the library reading his newspapers, grumbling at the contents of the first act.
Ninomiya had a flair for theatrics, which made it all the more strange that he did not participate in any stagings for his works. He had a voice and distinct mannerisms for each of his characters. Samuel Selwyn was, like Sho himself, an Oxford-educated son of a wealthy landowner and art patron. But as far as Sho was concerned, that was where the similarities ended.
Mr. Selwyn was a gambling addict, and Sho only went to the track when school friends had coerced him. Mr. Selwyn had married an exotic beauty during a wild trek to India, and she was everything Rebecca wasn't - dark, mysterious, coarse. Rebecca, of course, gobbled it up, obviously fancying herself some beauty from the Orient in silks and jewels. Aiba was just laughing his usual screechy laugh any time Selwyn lost money at the track.
“Sho does curse like that when he's angry and thinks no one can hear him,” Aiba was crying, slapping his leg in his usual common manner, forgetting his place. Sho turned the page.
At the conclusion of the first act, Mr. Selwyn had embarked on a fantastic journey back to India with his wife, as the whole of London refused to accept the match and had greatly ostracized them both.
Rebecca was at the edge of her seat. “Will they be all right? Will they make it to India?”
“Ah, I've only just started pondering,” Nino replied, bowing deeply. “I'll work my hardest to write something worthy of your interest, Mrs. Sakurai.”
Aiba cleared away their empty glasses. “You're much more interesting when you're a gambler, Sho. Much more interesting.”
He snorted, reading an editorial for the fifth or sixth time. Because truth be told, the story of Samuel Selwyn was meant to be symbolic of him. But Sho couldn't understand what Nino was trying to get at. Sho didn't have gambling as a vice, didn't have an exotic wife, and he certainly had never been to India.
Rebecca departed for the night, leaving him and Ninomiya alone in the library. He stayed in the corner with his papers while Nino muttered to himself on the couch, scratching down whatever new ideas for the second act that he was having.
A few hours passed, and his eyes were screaming for rest. “You've got Chaucer, haven't you?” Ninomiya asked from the couch. “Bring it here?”
Sho sighed. He folded up his newspapers and set his glasses aside, standing up to scan the shelves. Probably thieving a quote for Selwyn, who was far more fond of literature than Sho was himself. Chaucer. Chaucer. Chaucer. He squinted at the book spines. He knew it was here, where on Earth had it gone?
He could feel a prickling at the back of his neck, could almost feel Ninomiya standing behind him as though they were nearly melded together. “Ah,” he heard, seeing the hand come stretching past his shoulder. “It seems I've had it all this time.”
Ninomiya set the book down on the shelf, and Sho knew he was trapped. Far more trapped than he'd ever been before, and despite the tired state of his eyes, his body was suddenly alight with Nino's closeness, his staunch refusal to respect boundaries. He turned, and Ninomiya rested a hand on either side of him, pressing him back against the shelves.
“You offered no opinions on the first act.”
“Give a man space to breathe if you wish for a fair opinion,” Sho protested, feeling the man's warmth as he kept Sho sequestered between the books and himself.
Nino cocked his head. “Why? Does this make you uncomfortable?”
“You know it does.”
Nino's eyes were sharper than ever, and Sho's stomach seemed to twist and squeeze as his tongue seized up, unable to utter any other protest. “From the first time you saw me, you detested me,” Nino reminded him. “And yet here I remain under your roof. Here I remain, friends with Aiba and friends with Becky.”
“You...if you've intentions about my wife,” he stammered, “then this is over. She is my wife.”
Nino chuckled darkly, pressing one of his cold fingers to Sho's lips. “You think all this time I've been rattling you to steal your wife away? You think that's why I stood by and watched her take you in her mouth that day?”
“I don't have times for your tricks, Ninomiya...” He shut his eyes, wishing the man would just leave him be. They'd been getting along better than before, but things had taken a interesting turn. A turn that Sho didn't want to put a name to, not yet. But that didn't stop Nino.
“You hide behind your propriety, Sho. You hide and convince yourself that there's only one truth. You have wealth and a wife and land and some troublesome chaps to support financially. But otherwise, all is safe and all is well. But there's that place in your mind you don't acknowledge. It's the place in your mind where you find me in your bushes and carry me in. The place where you loathe the sight of me but want to pay for my dead mother's debts. I can't be any clearer, Sho.”
“I'm not a...” Sho didn't want to give it a name. He didn't want to give a word to the exultation he felt when Ninomiya stood before him, challenged him, knew him better than he knew himself. “I am not what you think I am.”
“Then why are you sweating?” Nino asked, dragging his finger lazily down Sho's chin to his neck, resting finally at his collar. “Surely your heart is beating a rhythm that's irregular right now, the same as mine. Surely you've understood my intentions, but you denied them. Written them off as Ninomiya being a nuisance. But Sho, you've known. You knew from the second Jun introduced us that we had an interesting path to follow together, you and I.”
“Stop,” Sho protested, pressing himself back against the volumes on the shelves, trying not to feel the insistent press of Nino's growing interest against his thigh. Trying not to consider the truth. “I am not a...a Sodomite...not an...”
“Adulterer?” Nino whispered, voice smooth like warm brandy coating his tongue. “You hated my play for its content, and yet here you are. You're larger than me, Sho, and you could push me aside. Could have pushed me aside minutes ago. But here you are, here you remain.”
Sho felt Nino's fingers under his jacket, brushing along his side to lift the cotton and touch his bare skin. He needed to flee before he admitted more than what his mind would allow. That Ninomiya was what he wanted and needed. For every confusing or disrespectful thing he said, he made up for it with a look in his eyes that demanded Sho's attention. “Please, I cannot. We cannot...”
Nino's other hand grasped at the back of Sho's neck to bring their mouths together, and there was the most forbidden, sinful feeling now clawing its way through his brain, damning Nino and damning himself. He gasped, and Nino did as well. Letting his mask come off, letting the man he'd been on the way to London return briefly as he clutched Sho's shirt in his fist.
He felt Nino's fingers prying at his trousers, and Sho broke their mouths' contact, shoving the man away from him. Nino's face had changed - the cleverness and knowing eyes had given way to lust and want. He'd never seen Nino more vulnerable.
“I'm going to bed,” he managed to say before hurrying from the room without looking back. His chest ached, and he could still feel Nino's mouth on his. It was so different from Rebecca's, more challenging, more demanding, and he nearly stumbled up the stairs, heady from the encounter in the library.
Rebecca was already under the covers when he entered their bedroom, fumbling around with the door lock and with his clothes like a drunken man. Would she smell Nino on him? Would she smell the forbidden, primal urges Nino had awoken within him? He was like a man possessed, not bothering to take the pajamas Aiba had left on the chair for him and disrobing.
He pulled the blanket down, reaching for her and rousing her from sleep. What he couldn't have with Nino, he'd have to take or he'd burst. “Becky,” he murmured, feeling her soft skin under his hands and knowing that Nino's would be rougher, pointier, a different kind of warm.
She was startled, nearly crying out from the force of him suddenly situating himself between her thighs. “What are you doing? Wait,” she protested, trying to push him off. In six years of marriage, he'd never been so forceful. Not once. He cared for her, cared for and respected her. What had Ninomiya done to him?
“Please,” he said, trying to slow down but still pushing her night dress up her thighs. “I need to have you.”
She tried to find his face in the dark, one hand finding his cheek. “Sho, I...what's brought this on?”
He couldn't force her. He wasn't some beast, was he? “Becky, please.”
His eyes were adjusting to the dark, and he could make out the confusion in her face. Did she suspect? Did she know? “Okay.”
It was all he needed to hear, mind increasingly confused as he felt Becky beneath him, trembling as he buried himself within her. She was his wife, and he cared for her, her long strands of brown hair in his fingers as he rocked against her. But they'd always been friends more than lovers, marrying as their parents had bid them to.
His brain reminded him of these things while everything else quaked with the reality of his feelings towards Ninomiya, made themselves manifest in the way he clutched and gripped his wife's thigh. She gasped as he pushed harder and harder, demanding more than he'd ever taken from her, remembering the way Nino's nimble hands had wished to unbutton him, to take him in his hand.
“Oh god,” he groaned, struggling with every conflicting idea warring away inside his head. She cried out beneath him, seemingly in more pleasure than in pain, but what if it was just what he wanted to hear? He wanted to call for Nino, to feel Nino under him, begging.
He was Samuel Selwyn after all. The exotic partner from India wasn't Rebecca. Hell, the woman from India was Ninomiya himself, wasn't it?
He was Samuel Selwyn.
Rebecca clung to him, and he gave in, not calling out for her or for Ninomiya, just letting go of the control he craved. He was nearly in tears when he moved off of her, grabbing angrily for the blankets and turning away from her in shame. What had he done? What had he allowed himself to do?
He felt her hand on his shoulder. “Sho?” She was more insistent. “Sho, what happened?”
“Let me sleep.”
“Look at me, please.”
“If I hurt you, I apologize. I don't know what came over me.”
“Sho,” she pleaded, near hysterics. God, what had he done? He hadn't stayed in the library and hadn't seen things through with Ninomiya, and he'd let his sin consume him.
“I'm sorry,” he said, pulling the pillow over his head. “I'm so very sorry.”
-
Breakfast the next morning was a solemn affair. Rebecca sat across from him as she usually did, dressed in one of her usual summer dresses. He couldn't bear to meet her eyes, to see the searching and confusion in them. He'd become some type of monster.
Ninomiya had bags under his eyes when he came in, the chair scraping across the floor as he took a seat. “Tea and toast. And a hard-boiled egg, please,” was all he told Aiba, who looked equally uncomfortable and confused. The play reading the night before had been charming and fun - now the three seated at the dining table were silent.
Sho drank his coffee slowly. Rebecca departed first, forced cheerfulness evident in every word as she mentioned the letters she had to write. Ninomiya munched his toast. Sho was almost expecting him to inquire about domestic troubles, but it seemed the man wasn't feeling too mean-spirited that morning, although it was warranted. Where Sho had been able to depart for his wife's embrace, he'd left Ninomiya quite alone.
“The study is yours today,” he remarked once Aiba had refilled his cup.
“Is it?”
“I'm going for a ride,” he replied. Aiba had already ordered the horse to be made ready.
“Where?”
He didn't want to answer. If he told Nino where he was going, then the man would probably find some way to follow him, and he did not want to admit how that excited him. He'd shamed himself enough, hadn't he? They'd return to London in a few weeks. Nino could return to the Countess Grayson's, and they could forget this whole business.
“I asked you where, sir. The least you could do is answer instead of staring intently at your saucer,” Nino snapped. The playfulness was gone. Nino had obviously expected Sho to be a good sport the night before.
He finally met Nino's eyes, could see the hurt in them. “I'm sorry,” he said, the same pitiful tone of voice he'd used on Rebecca the night before. He was being torn in different directions, and neither of them seemed preferable. Give in to Ninomiya and ignore reason and propriety or lie to himself and play at marriage with Rebecca even though there was no way to return things to how they'd been.
“Where do you ride today?” Nino asked.
He stood, picking a loose string on the sleeve of his coat. Logic had brought him nothing but irritation thus far. “Follow and find out.”
Aiba said nothing when Sho emerged from the dining room, ordering a horse saddled up for Ninomiya as well.
-
They rode as far as The Sydling Water, resting and eating the sandwiches that the cook had packed for Sho's original journey.
It wasn't as sticky hot as it had been in recent weeks, and Sho was appreciative of the breeze wafting through the trees. The horses were tethered to another tree, and they settled under a tall oak. This afternoon would have to be decisive, Sho vowed.
Nino only nibbled on his sandwich. He didn't usually have much of an appetite, but this time Sho couldn't blame him. “I apologize,” Sho started, knowing it could get ugly very quickly if Nino's wicked turns of phrase made an appearance. “You surprised me, truly.”
“Surprised you right into your wife's...” Nino stopped himself before descending into true vulgarity. “Sorry. I like her, I shouldn't.”
Sho sighed. “But you are perfectly right. I fled. I do a lot of fleeing where you're involved, Ninomiya.”
“Bit of a shock to my own system, I'll have you know,” Nino remarked. “Don't get me wrong, you're not the first.”
“Charming.”
Nino leaned back against the tree beside him. “I'd say you were different, you were something precious, but it'd be wrong.”
“Liar,” Sho declared, thumping him in the shoulder with his fist. “Unless you make a habit of writing plays around whichever man you lust after.”
Nino gave him a knowing smile. “That's a secret.”
Sho rolled his eyes. That they could joke in this manner was rather despicable, especially after all that had transpired the night before. “This cannot happen, you know that.”
Nino ignored him, shuffling aside until he could see the blue riding coat that the man was borrowing from him out of the corner of his eye. It was the wrong size, and the sleeves came down almost to cover Nino's palms entirely. “The summer's almost passed, hasn't it?”
Sho couldn't bring himself to protest as Nino drew him down for a far gentler kiss than the one they'd shared the night before. “Nino,” he complained.
“Move away from me then,” Nino whispered, grasping hold of his chin. “Afraid you'd have to fuck the horse to expend all your energy this time.”
He shoved Ninomiya away, but only so he'd land flat on his back. Their mouths met again, and this time, if it was the last opportunity they'd have, then Sho would have some agency. Nino grunted his approval. “Wearing my clothes,” Sho muttered, feeling rather undignified laying in the grass atop another man, “Riding my horse. Using my study.”
“It was all freely given,” Nino said, lifting his hips to declare his intent. Worse than a dog in heat, Sho thought angrily as the blood once again left his brain for more primal pursuits. Sho didn't hold much stock in eternal hellfire, but if the way Ninomiya felt beneath his hands was truly the road to damnation, then Sho decided that he was damned.
It was clumsy, and the knees of his riding breeches were already green with stains from the grass, and Nino was struggling to divest himself of his own breeches. “Boots first,” Sho complained. “Get the boots off first.”
He got his jacket off, and Nino squeezed his arms, kneading his shoulders. He was hard within his breeches, trying to remember his first meeting with this frustrating, forbidden temptation of a man. Nino's fingers were all too expert as they undid Sho's own buttons, not even allowing Sho a moment to breathe.
“Is this what you want?” Nino asked him, drawing a moan from low in his throat as he took Sho's cock in his palm. “Is it?”
“Yes,” he shuddered, admitting it aloud.
In the grass beside the oak tree, Sho set everything he'd tried to be aside. He let go of his station and the expectations his father had left him. It was different with Nino than with Rebecca. They weren't friends. There was no marital obligation. Nino whispered words in Sho's ear that Rebecca probably had never even heard, and it only spurred him on as their breathing grew more labored.
“Fuck me,” Nino dared, coarse words reminding Sho just how far he'd allowed himself to slip. His sense of guilt differed greatly from the night before as Nino encouraged him, demanded more. His lips were at Sho's ear, suggesting, insinuating as they had from the day they met.
Finally, Nino reached between them to touch himself in tandem with Sho's own movements, leaning his head back until his gasps were pounding in Sho's head. “Let go,” Nino begged him. “Sho, let go.”
He came, Ninomiya's name on his lips like a promise.
-
Rebecca was waiting for them when they returned the horses to the stables. She linked her arm with his, and let Ninomiya trail them into the house.
“Have you mended your troubles? It seemed you had some dispute,” she inquired, and only then did reality return.
“Yes,” Sho admitted, thumb pressing absent-mindedly on the gold band on his left ring finger. “Yes, I'd say we've settled our differences of opinion. For now, at least.”
“Good,” Rebecca said cheerfully. If she knew, she didn't show it.
When he turned to look back, Ninomiya looked almost sad.
-
There was a startling announcement at the breakfast table in the morning. “I'm afraid the play is not progressing as I'd hoped,” Nino declared.
Rebecca set her fork down. “Oh dear, is there any way we could help?”
Ninomiya only shook his head, and Sho's stomach turned. “I'm afraid that Dorset is just not amenable to act two, if you'll forgive me. I'd like to make arrangements to return to London.”
“London?” Sho interrupted. “How soon?”
Nino's hands were ink stained, as though he'd been up the entire night writing and rewriting. “As soon as possible, if you don't mind.”
Sho had been running all this time, and it appeared that now Nino would do the same. But Sho could say nothing without admitting complicity in sin, and Rebecca only dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief at Nino's sudden decision.
He saw the coach off, trying to find some sort of explanation in Nino's eyes for what was happening. “I came to Dorset to write,” Nino told him before settling back in his seat. Aiba closed the door, and it set off, leaving Sho in the dust.
-
Four weeks later, they were in Mayfair again. There were bank statements to review and accounts to manage. Sho's essay had been submitted to one of the Oxford journals, and he was far too busy to worry much about Ninomiya's whereabouts.
Not that he didn't worry.
Jun claimed that Nino had “sequestered himself somewhere” until he had a serviceable piece of writing to sell him. Any further inquiry would just make Jun nosy. It had been the strangest summer of his life. Having been with Nino had changed him. Yes, there was still work to be done, and he was stubborn as ever, he knew that.
But he was more willing to let things go, to realize that most things in life did not go according to the expected plan or scheme of things.
He was smoking in the parlor when Rebecca returned from the doctor.
-
It was another party at Mr. Ohno's, and the man was due to give an exhibition in a few weeks. Everyone was buzzing with excitement for him, and Jun pulled Sho aside.
“I don't know what you did, Sakurai, but I ought to kiss you.”
“I beg your pardon?” he asked, nearly choking on his drink.
Matsumoto jostled his shoulder. “I'm teasing. But seriously, Ninomiya sent me a final draft today. You won't believe the shock of it.”
The shock? What on earth had Ninomiya written? What fate had befallen Samuel Selwyn and his unexpected partner in romance? “I was only privy to act one,” Sho noted, trying to calm his nerves.
“Shall I spoil it for you? It'll make opening night less exciting for you.”
He scowled. “Just tell me what is so amazing about his play, would you?”
Jun was grinning ear to ear, probably already calculating how he'd be staging it. “Well, you see, the main character has a foreign wife, and they return to India because they've been run out of London. They go on this wild adventure together, except the wife runs into some trouble. The husband, consumed with his gambling, doesn't notice that's she been ill for some time.”
“Ill?” Sho interrupted.
“Yes, the wife's deathly ill, and the doctor's bill is outrageous, so how does she prove her devotion to him?”
“Haven't a clue.”
“Of course you wouldn't. You've the imagination of wallpaper,” Jun joked, “but the wife kills herself. Now, I'm seeing the whole stage lit in blue and the entire house just weeping themselves silly...”
Sho's blood ran cold. The wife...killed herself?
“Jun,” he said, “where is Ninomiya staying?”
“Why? You don't like it? You want him to pay you retroactive room and board because of the outlandish summation I've just given you?”
“Tell me where he is.” Jun was drunk enough on his wine and on his inevitable success, scrawling down an address on one of Ohno's napkins. “Get Rebecca home, would you?”
-
The building was run-down and filthy, and Sho could already imagine the scent that would linger on his topcoat when he got back home. If Nino was indirectly the lover of Samuel Selwyn, then Sho was terrified of the real life implications. It had only been a few months since he'd lost his mother after all.
“Nino!” he cried, pounding on the door. The number matched what Jun had given him. He banged on it several more times, hearing people who were also packed into the building complaining about the noise. “Nino, open this door!”
What had he done? Had Nino not wanted him to give in after all? Had it all been a game gone horribly wrong once Nino had relinquished control?
“Answer,” he muttered, fearing that within Nino would be dead from a pistol wound or hanging from the ceiling or lying in an opium coma longing for death to come.
Relief came when Ninomiya, pale as always but healthy, opened the door with a glare. “You are a nuisance.”
Sho ignored him, shoving forward to embrace him. “I thought you were dead. I thought you'd run away from me to kill yourself.”
Nino allowed the contact, chortling quite enthusiastically. “Jun spoiled my ending! I will have to revise it entirely!”
He released Nino, wanting to shake him. “It was...it was all for dramatic effect? It wasn't some symbolic suicide?”
Nino just shook his head. “Oh, Sakurai. I like you. I really like you.” Nino went to his small stove to put the kettle on. “Tea?”
Sho sat down, infuriated.
“Don't be so glum,” Nino declared. “I am honored that you would come all the way to this filthy place to ensure that I was still drawing breath.”
The tea Nino offered him was horrid, but Sho took it and drank it anyhow.
“Is this your clean break?” he asked. “Is what we have, or had, as it were...is that all of it?”
Nino smirked. “Well, killing off Parvati was more to tug at the heartstrings. It's a romantic play, and not a cynical one like the others. You induced me to take things seriously, and I don't know whether to thank you or slap you for it.”
“You still want me,” Sho pointed out, “and I still...”
Nino held up a hand. “Enough of that. Summer has gone, and if Jun is to be believed, then you will be a father come spring.”
Sho took another sip of tea. It was indeed true. It had been a most eventful summer. “God willing.”
“From that night?” Nino wondered. Sho wasn't sure and offered no answer. He and Rebecca hadn't dared discuss it. “Ah well. It was good to see you, Sho. It has been blissfully quiet without you complaining about this and that.”
He felt as though all he'd come to discover about himself that summer was being torn from him, bit by bit, and with the way Nino was staring into his teacup, he was feeling the same. It could not be, and they both knew it. Dorset had been another universe entirely, it seemed. In London there were responsibilities, the ones he'd shrugged off all summer. Every play had a final act.
Sho got to his feet and headed for the door. “If I may, could I still pay Jun to pay you to write things I will inevitably despise?”
Nino nodded. “Money is always welcome at the Ninomiya country estate,” the man said, gesturing to the dusty room around him. He pulled Sho close, lips meeting all too briefly. “Goodbye, Sho.”
“Goodbye.”
-
Around them, the audience was in tears, standing and applauding as the curtain came down.
Sho remained in his seat, livid while Rebecca wept openly. “You have all the emotion of a rock,” his wife protested, squeezing his hand. “It was beautiful!”
“It was vulgar,” he complained.
She tugged him to his feet as the curtain rose and the actors came out for their curtain call. “Cannot believe he killed Parvati,” Rebecca was saying between sniffles. “And then after all that grief, Selwyn died from a broken heart!”
As the actors bowed, Sho could see offstage to the wings. He found Ninomiya standing there at Jun's side.
He might have been seeing things, but he could have sworn that Ninomiya winked.