Fic: Atemzug
Title: Atemzug
Pairing(s): Ohno/Nino
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nope
Word count: 3,161
Summary: Nino feels all alone in the world, only accompanied by a bonsai tree, but when someone asks him for directions, it might not be so bad after all.
Authors' notes: My individual entry for the ohno_daily contest. I feel so dead now. I just wanted to write about a bonsai tree.
*
You and I are inseparable, it’s how I feel inside
It’s like fate has started our lives over
Given us another chance
You have my heart if you want
Come on, beautiful, say yes now
I really hope you say yes
*
Nino had known - he’d been cheated upon, but he hadn’t cared, because he’d always come home to Nino. Always without a fail. He might’ve been carrying the scent of someone else, but he always returned to their bed and to Nino’s skin. He’d taken comfort in that fact. So when Nino gets back early from work, steps into their home and hears distinct sexual and obscene noises, he’s surprised that his heart aches so.
Noiselessly, he gathers his sparse belongings in a bag, and, cradling a ridiculous bonsai tree his mother had given him when he moved out from home, he scarcely looks back as he calls loudly;
“I’m off!”
But perhaps, just maybe, he hasn’t thought this entirely through, he thinks and sits down on the curb. He sniffs angrily, and he’s not crying, dammit. But two years is a long time to give to someone who obviously hadn’t cared in the end.
He sighs and shifts a bit. He curb is solid, unforgiving and uncomfortable under his bum, but it only reminds him that if he stays long enough, his ass will go numb. Then at least some part of him won’t feel anymore.
The streetlights light up as he sits there, and he looks up, realizing that it’s late. Then again, it always was too late, wasn’t it?
He doesn’t want to go home. He doesn’t want to go back to the nameless excuses that will meet his ears in an endless stream of echoing apologies. He doesn’t want it.
He sniffs again. Damn his stinging eyes.
“Excuse me,” someone says softly and Nino raises his head, squinting even though it’s dark. A small slip of paper is shoved at his face, a hand just at the level of his face. “Do you know where this address is?”
Nino silently motions for the man to hold on to the tree and then he takes the paper and reads the address.
“It’s really close,” he informs the man, and he points down a street. “That way, third street on the right and then left.”
The man beams. “Thank you! You’re a lifesaver,” he says gratefully and makes to switch the address for the bonsai tree, and they trade silently. Nino snorts. At least he’s useful to someone.
The man trots off and just as Nino has resigned himself to his thoughts, the man returns, looking more than a little sheepish. Even in the dim and not useful at all streetlight, Nino can see the healthy pink color dusted on his cheeks.
Nino barely refrains from rolling his eyes. “Let me guess,” he says, smiling because it’s stupid. “You already forgot the directions.”
“I’m really sorry,” the man says, both looking and sounding it, but Nino can only shake his head.
“I’ll show you,” Nino finally says, holding out his bag as he gets to his feet. “You get to carry my bag. Come on.”
The man doesn’t even ask or wonder. He just takes the offered bag and smiles lopsidedly.
Nino almost says that it could be dangerous to say that, but he keeps his tongue, because he really doesn’t want to make the guy believe he’s a psychopath.
The man doesn’t say anything as they walk and Nino isn’t in the mood to fill the silence. He is pretty sure they make quite the pair as they walk through the streets of Tokyo at night. Nino, hugging his bonsai tree. The man shuffling his feet and looking dead.
Nino is still thinking of earlier, of what he has left behind and what he doesn’t have any more. And fuck if his eyes are stinging again. He hugs the bonsai closer and reaches up to wipe at his eyes.
“Hey,” the man says and Nino refuses to turn and let him see his face. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” Nino says tersely and walks faster. “Come on, keep up.”
When they finally arrive at the destination, still in silence because Nino isn’t eager to fill it, the man smiles and thanks Nino once more.
But all that has accomplished is that Nino now is somewhere else, still alone, still with his bonsai tree as sole source of companionship, and even if the man’s gratitude is nice, it still doesn’t help Nino a whole ton.
He watches as the man disappears into the building.
Nino sighs.
Now he’s alone again. He still has nowhere to go. He’d successfully alienated the sparse friends he’d had in highs school, and he really didn’t want to go home to his mother and be to any trouble.
He is sniffling before he can stop himself. When a hand settles on his shoulder, he freezes, but the voice that accompanies the hand calms his racing heart.
“Seriously, are you alright?”
“I almost whacked you with my bonsai tree,” Nino informs the man as he turns and shrugs the hand off his shoulder. “And no. My boyfriend, no, my ex-boyfriend is jerk.”
“Sorry to hear that,” the man says, and then, “I’m Ohno.”
“Nino,” Nino returns and he admits defeat when he can’t wipe his eyes. His arms are filled with his bonsai and his bag. “I left because he’s a jerk.”
Ohno looks puzzled. “And you have nowhere to go?”
“No, not really. And why are you here again already, anyway?”
Ohno shrugs and kicks something invisible on the curb. “I just had to pick something up.” He gesticulates vaguely in direction of his jacket pocket.
Nino somehow awaits more of an explanation, but when none is offered, he takes a deep determined breath, but just as he turns to walk, Ohno stops him.
“I’m not trying to be a creep, but I have a couch you can crash on, at least until tomorrow.”
Nino is torn between his naturally suspicious and not to mention paranoid nature and his want to lie down and sleep for the rest of his life, and in the end, he knows he’ll accept.
“Everything might be better tomorrow,” Ohno continues and Nino snorts. On the tip of his tongue, he is tempted to say that the chances of that happening are pretty much non-existent, but on the other hand, it is, as sad as it actually is, the only option unless he’d try and find a room somewhere.
He has accepted the offer before he can even realize it.
“Why do I always end up with guys who turn out to be straight?”
This question, Nino asks when they sit on the train to what he assumes will take him to Ohno’s apartment. Ohno shrugs and says nothing, but Nino doesn’t mind it.
He keeps talking, even as they get off the train, and he talks even when Ohno stops on the way to order food.
“I mean,” Nino says, “one time it turned out that the guy even had a kid!”
Ohno takes Nino’s bag again and purses his lips.
“Fuck, can’t I just find a guy who doesn’t cheat, isn’t straight, isn’t looking for a quick fuck and who doesn’t have any surprise children?”
By the time Nino has finished ranting, they are standing on the third floor in an apartment complex, and when Ohno opens the door, Nino realizes he’d really needed to vent.
“Feel better?” Ohno asks quietly as he slips out of his shoes.
Nino nods, follows suit and tracks tails when Ohno lets him inside his home.
It’s not the largest apartment in the world - it’s not cluttered, but it’s not spacey either, but it’s comfortable and it feels very lived in. Ohno is setting the food down on the kitchen table, pulling beers from the fridge, and then he motions for Nino to sit down. To Nino’s taste buds, food has never tasted better than it does here in Ohno’s kitchen.
“My god,” Nino says between mouthfuls. “I sound like I’ve never eaten before.”
Ohno shrugs and then proceeds to inhale the rice on the plate. Nino stares in an odd mixture of awe and horror.
“Tell me about your ex,” Ohno says suddenly as he’s sipping his beer. “Tell me why you left just like that.”
It’s Nino’s turn to shrug. “He’s an idiot. A world class idiot. A two-timing, scheming, cheating son of a bitch.”
Ohno frowns. “That bad?”
Nino darkens at the mere thought of his last moments in his former home. “I caught him in our bed with someone else.”
“Ouch,” Ohno winces. “Fuck, I’m sorry about that.”
“Not your fault,” Nino returns, but he appreciates the sentiment anyway. “This is delicious, by the way.”
Ohno opens his mouth and starts saying something, but then a phone rings from somewhere in the apartment, and Ohno excuses himself (with a few muttered curses along the way.)
Nino stares at the space Ohno had occupied. This is so weird. The whole situation is so very surreal. And he still hasn’t gotten any further in his very intelligent musings about the surrealism of the entire situation - that somehow he has found the one polite and nice stranger in all of Tokyo by chance - when Ohno returns to the kitchen, phone still pressed to his ear.
“Yes,” he’s saying. “Yes. Yes. Yes. Sure. Yes.”
Nino privately thinks that it has to be the most one-sided conversation in the history of phone calls. Ohno sits down and makes a face that makes Nino giggle. Ohno grins briefly before hanging up.
“Sorry,” he apologizes, but Nino waves it off, and they resume eating in a tacit agreement.
“You were saying,” Ohno starts again, “about your two-timing, scheming ex?”
“Two-timing, scheming, cheating son of a bitch of an ex,” Nino corrects without missing a beat.
Ohno snorts. “Yes, him.”
“He didn’t like my bonsai tree.”
“That’s a really random thing to dislike,” Ohno frowns.
Nino chuckles. “That’s what I said!”
“Well,” Ohno says then. “If he’s such an asshole, you did good in leaving him.”
Nino flushes - he’s flattered. It doesn’t really matters that he tells himself Ohno’s opinion shouldn’t matter because they don’t know each other, but he still reacts. “You don’t even know me. You could have invited a psychopath into your home. I could be worse than my ex.”
Ohno levels him with a glance. “Hugging a bonsai tree?”
Nino pretends to glower. “I could be the Bonsai Killer. I could leave a twig at each murder.”
Ohno laughs. “For what it’s worth, I could be a raging psychopath, too, you know, luring innocent and unsuspecting tree huggers into my apartment of torture.”
It’s not like he has any choice. Nino laughs. “This is quite possibly the weirdest and most absurd conversation I’ve ever had.”
“There you go,” Ohno chuckles and finishes his meal. He stands and brings the plate to the sink, and he turns his head to look at Nino over his shoulder. “Now, I’ll go and get the couch ready for your tree hugging self.”
It’s a close call, but Nino manages not to reach out and hit Ohno as he passes on his way out of the kitchen.
“Why are you so nice to me, anyway?” he calls out as he hears Ohno shuffle around. “If you don’t stop, I’ll start hitting on you soon.”
He hears Ohno snort. “Are you saying I shouldn’t be nice to you? Because you’re welcome to sleep in the hallway. And besides, you won’t get much out of hitting on me.”
Nino frowns in disappointment he isn’t willing to examine further. “Ah, you’re straight then.”
“Fence sitter, actually,” Ohno returns, still moving around in the living room. “But not interested in anything right now.”
Nino leans back in his chair. How odd is this, seriously? Ohno is a perfect stranger. Someone who knows he’s tired and exhausted and, Nino shrugs, not really emotionally stable. It would be very easy to take advantage on him. Nino doesn’t think he’d object that much if Ohno made advances on him.
“Why not?”
“Not looking for love or a one night stand at the moment,” Ohno evades; Nino hears a halt in his movements.
“But why?”
“Pushy,” Ohno accuses, but Nino doesn’t think he means it. “I’m not really ready to be emotionally invested in anything right now.”
Nino nods to himself, mostly because there’s no one around to see him nod, and he hears Ohno come closer to the kitchen again. He needs to state it again - this is weird. Not weird in a bad way, but just that he has never thought he’d be in a situation like this. Ohno doesn’t expect anything from him, maybe that’s where the difference is.
He also figures that Ohno’s evasive answers are clues for him to stop asking. Ohno comes back into the kitchen and stands in the doorway. “I don’t know if you want a shower or something before you go to sleep, but you can just go ahead if you want.”
Nino hasn’t thought about it, but the possibility of washing off the feeling of being discarded sounds amazing. And even as he stands under the hot spray of water, he can’t stop thinking. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees all the things he had ignored while staying in a relationship he should have left a long time ago.
Two years. Nino had given him two years. Nino hadn’t cared about the cheating as long as he returned to Nino in the end, but today had just been the final straw.
He shuts the water off and towels himself. For now, he’ll enjoy that he has a safe place to spend the night, with someone who doesn’t expect him to pay him back with weird favors. Nino snorts. At least he doesn’t think Ohno will ask anything of him. And really, if Nino is honest, he wouldn’t mind that much, after all.
He returns to the living room where Ohno is sitting on the floor, looking half asleep. He debates for a short moment whether or not to poke Ohno, but he doesn’t get that far as Ohno opens his eyes the moment he steps closer.
“Good shower?”
“Of all the things you could ask,” Nino chuckles. “Yes, and thank you.”
He plops down on the couch and stretches in the covers and pillows Ohno has made ready for him. He’s exhausted, right into the core of his bones, like stubborn frost hanging on when spring arrives. Ohno yawns and Nino feels a little bit guilty.
“You are so nice to a stranger,” he says and silently adds to me.
“I’m not always nice,” Ohno murmurs, turning a bit and resting his arms on the seat of the couch. “People has wanted more from me than what I could give. I’ve broken hearts.”
Nino somehow both finds that hard and easy to believe.
“Now,” Ohno continues in that somber murmur, “I just try to honor the promises I’ve made.”
Nino interest is officially piqued, and even though he knows Ohno has no reason or obligation to tell him, he still asks. “Such as?”
A long exhalation leaves Ohnos lips. “Don’t break any hearts. Don’t give people false hopes. If I meet a special person, love them with all I have.”
He can’t logically explain it, but Nino almost shivers at the conviction and honesty in the words spilling from Ohno’s mouth. He’s positively breathless. “Who…who would you promise such things?”
Ohno’s smile is soft, fond, sad and wistful all at the same time. “A loved one.”
“Fuck,” Nino says with feeling. “Please tell me you’re not single.”
“I am single,” Ohno confirms. “My boyfriend died last year.”
Of all things, Nino hadn’t been expecting that. “I’m sorry.”
And he means it.
Ohno shakes his head. “That was a real downer, right. I think I should go to bed.”
“Wait,” Nino asks, “what happened?”
“Nothing anyone could have done anything about to prevent it,” Ohno says, and for all Nino can see and hear, Ohno sounds as if he has made peace with that. “I got three years with him and I’m grateful for that.”
Nino can’t help but wonder if he’ll ever meet anyone like this , someone who cared this much even after he’s dead. Ohno is one of a kind, and if more people in this world were like Ohno, it would be a better place to live.
He doesn’t realize he has said it out loud until Ohno is chuckling. “That would be a lazy world.”
What a terrible shame that Ohno isn’t looking for love.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Ohno admonishes in a mumble. “Rebounds are powerful stuff, you know.”
Nino leers. “Stop being so tempting, then.”
Ohno chuckles and gets to his feet.
“One more thing,” Nino calls when Ohno walks in direction of the door. “What was his name?”
Ohno’s smile loses the sad edge and he looks so happy in a brief moment that Nino’s heart aches inexplicably.
“Sho. Sleep well, Nino.”
Nino sleeps soundly though the night. His dreams are filled with gentle words staying with him even as he wakes to the smell of coffee teasing his nose.
“Did you sleep well?”
Nino scratches his stomach, yawns, nods. Suddenly as he watches Ohno sit perched on the countertop, freshly awoken, coffee between them, still sleep tousled, Nino has a vision of how things could be. It’s not rebound, it’s something much more powerful.
“If you want,” Ohno begins, “I could help you get the rest of your stuff from your ex’s place.”
Nino glances at the bonsai tree standing incuriously in the corner. “That’d be good.”
It’s time for changes.
The next week is a blur of Ohno helping Nino, setting him up with a new apartment, and when it’s time to move, Ohno calls up some of his friends to come help. When Ohno moves to grab the bonsai tree, Nino stops him.
“Leave it,” Nino orders and then grins. “He likes it here.”
Ohno doesn’t protest it, only holds the door open for Nino to pass through.
When the door closes behind them, Nino chances a look at Ohno and thinks of everything that has come to pass. Of everything Ohno is trying to do and everything he stands for. And maybe, Nino thinks, maybe Ohno is his special person, the one he should love with all he has.
It’s not the last time he’ll see Ohno, he knows that. There’s always the surprise party Ohno’s friends are throwing for Ohno next week and they have invited Nino.
It’ll be a lot of work, but Nino will try and convince Ohno to give love another chance.
*
When Ohno gets back to his apartment, he looks at the bonsai tree and he can’t help it.
He smiles.
*
Pairing(s): Ohno/Nino
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nope
Word count: 3,161
Summary: Nino feels all alone in the world, only accompanied by a bonsai tree, but when someone asks him for directions, it might not be so bad after all.
Authors' notes: My individual entry for the ohno_daily contest. I feel so dead now. I just wanted to write about a bonsai tree.
*
You and I are inseparable, it’s how I feel inside
It’s like fate has started our lives over
Given us another chance
You have my heart if you want
Come on, beautiful, say yes now
I really hope you say yes
*
Nino had known - he’d been cheated upon, but he hadn’t cared, because he’d always come home to Nino. Always without a fail. He might’ve been carrying the scent of someone else, but he always returned to their bed and to Nino’s skin. He’d taken comfort in that fact. So when Nino gets back early from work, steps into their home and hears distinct sexual and obscene noises, he’s surprised that his heart aches so.
Noiselessly, he gathers his sparse belongings in a bag, and, cradling a ridiculous bonsai tree his mother had given him when he moved out from home, he scarcely looks back as he calls loudly;
“I’m off!”
But perhaps, just maybe, he hasn’t thought this entirely through, he thinks and sits down on the curb. He sniffs angrily, and he’s not crying, dammit. But two years is a long time to give to someone who obviously hadn’t cared in the end.
He sighs and shifts a bit. He curb is solid, unforgiving and uncomfortable under his bum, but it only reminds him that if he stays long enough, his ass will go numb. Then at least some part of him won’t feel anymore.
The streetlights light up as he sits there, and he looks up, realizing that it’s late. Then again, it always was too late, wasn’t it?
He doesn’t want to go home. He doesn’t want to go back to the nameless excuses that will meet his ears in an endless stream of echoing apologies. He doesn’t want it.
He sniffs again. Damn his stinging eyes.
“Excuse me,” someone says softly and Nino raises his head, squinting even though it’s dark. A small slip of paper is shoved at his face, a hand just at the level of his face. “Do you know where this address is?”
Nino silently motions for the man to hold on to the tree and then he takes the paper and reads the address.
“It’s really close,” he informs the man, and he points down a street. “That way, third street on the right and then left.”
The man beams. “Thank you! You’re a lifesaver,” he says gratefully and makes to switch the address for the bonsai tree, and they trade silently. Nino snorts. At least he’s useful to someone.
The man trots off and just as Nino has resigned himself to his thoughts, the man returns, looking more than a little sheepish. Even in the dim and not useful at all streetlight, Nino can see the healthy pink color dusted on his cheeks.
Nino barely refrains from rolling his eyes. “Let me guess,” he says, smiling because it’s stupid. “You already forgot the directions.”
“I’m really sorry,” the man says, both looking and sounding it, but Nino can only shake his head.
“I’ll show you,” Nino finally says, holding out his bag as he gets to his feet. “You get to carry my bag. Come on.”
The man doesn’t even ask or wonder. He just takes the offered bag and smiles lopsidedly.
Nino almost says that it could be dangerous to say that, but he keeps his tongue, because he really doesn’t want to make the guy believe he’s a psychopath.
The man doesn’t say anything as they walk and Nino isn’t in the mood to fill the silence. He is pretty sure they make quite the pair as they walk through the streets of Tokyo at night. Nino, hugging his bonsai tree. The man shuffling his feet and looking dead.
Nino is still thinking of earlier, of what he has left behind and what he doesn’t have any more. And fuck if his eyes are stinging again. He hugs the bonsai closer and reaches up to wipe at his eyes.
“Hey,” the man says and Nino refuses to turn and let him see his face. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” Nino says tersely and walks faster. “Come on, keep up.”
When they finally arrive at the destination, still in silence because Nino isn’t eager to fill it, the man smiles and thanks Nino once more.
But all that has accomplished is that Nino now is somewhere else, still alone, still with his bonsai tree as sole source of companionship, and even if the man’s gratitude is nice, it still doesn’t help Nino a whole ton.
He watches as the man disappears into the building.
Nino sighs.
Now he’s alone again. He still has nowhere to go. He’d successfully alienated the sparse friends he’d had in highs school, and he really didn’t want to go home to his mother and be to any trouble.
He is sniffling before he can stop himself. When a hand settles on his shoulder, he freezes, but the voice that accompanies the hand calms his racing heart.
“Seriously, are you alright?”
“I almost whacked you with my bonsai tree,” Nino informs the man as he turns and shrugs the hand off his shoulder. “And no. My boyfriend, no, my ex-boyfriend is jerk.”
“Sorry to hear that,” the man says, and then, “I’m Ohno.”
“Nino,” Nino returns and he admits defeat when he can’t wipe his eyes. His arms are filled with his bonsai and his bag. “I left because he’s a jerk.”
Ohno looks puzzled. “And you have nowhere to go?”
“No, not really. And why are you here again already, anyway?”
Ohno shrugs and kicks something invisible on the curb. “I just had to pick something up.” He gesticulates vaguely in direction of his jacket pocket.
Nino somehow awaits more of an explanation, but when none is offered, he takes a deep determined breath, but just as he turns to walk, Ohno stops him.
“I’m not trying to be a creep, but I have a couch you can crash on, at least until tomorrow.”
Nino is torn between his naturally suspicious and not to mention paranoid nature and his want to lie down and sleep for the rest of his life, and in the end, he knows he’ll accept.
“Everything might be better tomorrow,” Ohno continues and Nino snorts. On the tip of his tongue, he is tempted to say that the chances of that happening are pretty much non-existent, but on the other hand, it is, as sad as it actually is, the only option unless he’d try and find a room somewhere.
He has accepted the offer before he can even realize it.
“Why do I always end up with guys who turn out to be straight?”
This question, Nino asks when they sit on the train to what he assumes will take him to Ohno’s apartment. Ohno shrugs and says nothing, but Nino doesn’t mind it.
He keeps talking, even as they get off the train, and he talks even when Ohno stops on the way to order food.
“I mean,” Nino says, “one time it turned out that the guy even had a kid!”
Ohno takes Nino’s bag again and purses his lips.
“Fuck, can’t I just find a guy who doesn’t cheat, isn’t straight, isn’t looking for a quick fuck and who doesn’t have any surprise children?”
By the time Nino has finished ranting, they are standing on the third floor in an apartment complex, and when Ohno opens the door, Nino realizes he’d really needed to vent.
“Feel better?” Ohno asks quietly as he slips out of his shoes.
Nino nods, follows suit and tracks tails when Ohno lets him inside his home.
It’s not the largest apartment in the world - it’s not cluttered, but it’s not spacey either, but it’s comfortable and it feels very lived in. Ohno is setting the food down on the kitchen table, pulling beers from the fridge, and then he motions for Nino to sit down. To Nino’s taste buds, food has never tasted better than it does here in Ohno’s kitchen.
“My god,” Nino says between mouthfuls. “I sound like I’ve never eaten before.”
Ohno shrugs and then proceeds to inhale the rice on the plate. Nino stares in an odd mixture of awe and horror.
“Tell me about your ex,” Ohno says suddenly as he’s sipping his beer. “Tell me why you left just like that.”
It’s Nino’s turn to shrug. “He’s an idiot. A world class idiot. A two-timing, scheming, cheating son of a bitch.”
Ohno frowns. “That bad?”
Nino darkens at the mere thought of his last moments in his former home. “I caught him in our bed with someone else.”
“Ouch,” Ohno winces. “Fuck, I’m sorry about that.”
“Not your fault,” Nino returns, but he appreciates the sentiment anyway. “This is delicious, by the way.”
Ohno opens his mouth and starts saying something, but then a phone rings from somewhere in the apartment, and Ohno excuses himself (with a few muttered curses along the way.)
Nino stares at the space Ohno had occupied. This is so weird. The whole situation is so very surreal. And he still hasn’t gotten any further in his very intelligent musings about the surrealism of the entire situation - that somehow he has found the one polite and nice stranger in all of Tokyo by chance - when Ohno returns to the kitchen, phone still pressed to his ear.
“Yes,” he’s saying. “Yes. Yes. Yes. Sure. Yes.”
Nino privately thinks that it has to be the most one-sided conversation in the history of phone calls. Ohno sits down and makes a face that makes Nino giggle. Ohno grins briefly before hanging up.
“Sorry,” he apologizes, but Nino waves it off, and they resume eating in a tacit agreement.
“You were saying,” Ohno starts again, “about your two-timing, scheming ex?”
“Two-timing, scheming, cheating son of a bitch of an ex,” Nino corrects without missing a beat.
Ohno snorts. “Yes, him.”
“He didn’t like my bonsai tree.”
“That’s a really random thing to dislike,” Ohno frowns.
Nino chuckles. “That’s what I said!”
“Well,” Ohno says then. “If he’s such an asshole, you did good in leaving him.”
Nino flushes - he’s flattered. It doesn’t really matters that he tells himself Ohno’s opinion shouldn’t matter because they don’t know each other, but he still reacts. “You don’t even know me. You could have invited a psychopath into your home. I could be worse than my ex.”
Ohno levels him with a glance. “Hugging a bonsai tree?”
Nino pretends to glower. “I could be the Bonsai Killer. I could leave a twig at each murder.”
Ohno laughs. “For what it’s worth, I could be a raging psychopath, too, you know, luring innocent and unsuspecting tree huggers into my apartment of torture.”
It’s not like he has any choice. Nino laughs. “This is quite possibly the weirdest and most absurd conversation I’ve ever had.”
“There you go,” Ohno chuckles and finishes his meal. He stands and brings the plate to the sink, and he turns his head to look at Nino over his shoulder. “Now, I’ll go and get the couch ready for your tree hugging self.”
It’s a close call, but Nino manages not to reach out and hit Ohno as he passes on his way out of the kitchen.
“Why are you so nice to me, anyway?” he calls out as he hears Ohno shuffle around. “If you don’t stop, I’ll start hitting on you soon.”
He hears Ohno snort. “Are you saying I shouldn’t be nice to you? Because you’re welcome to sleep in the hallway. And besides, you won’t get much out of hitting on me.”
Nino frowns in disappointment he isn’t willing to examine further. “Ah, you’re straight then.”
“Fence sitter, actually,” Ohno returns, still moving around in the living room. “But not interested in anything right now.”
Nino leans back in his chair. How odd is this, seriously? Ohno is a perfect stranger. Someone who knows he’s tired and exhausted and, Nino shrugs, not really emotionally stable. It would be very easy to take advantage on him. Nino doesn’t think he’d object that much if Ohno made advances on him.
“Why not?”
“Not looking for love or a one night stand at the moment,” Ohno evades; Nino hears a halt in his movements.
“But why?”
“Pushy,” Ohno accuses, but Nino doesn’t think he means it. “I’m not really ready to be emotionally invested in anything right now.”
Nino nods to himself, mostly because there’s no one around to see him nod, and he hears Ohno come closer to the kitchen again. He needs to state it again - this is weird. Not weird in a bad way, but just that he has never thought he’d be in a situation like this. Ohno doesn’t expect anything from him, maybe that’s where the difference is.
He also figures that Ohno’s evasive answers are clues for him to stop asking. Ohno comes back into the kitchen and stands in the doorway. “I don’t know if you want a shower or something before you go to sleep, but you can just go ahead if you want.”
Nino hasn’t thought about it, but the possibility of washing off the feeling of being discarded sounds amazing. And even as he stands under the hot spray of water, he can’t stop thinking. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees all the things he had ignored while staying in a relationship he should have left a long time ago.
Two years. Nino had given him two years. Nino hadn’t cared about the cheating as long as he returned to Nino in the end, but today had just been the final straw.
He shuts the water off and towels himself. For now, he’ll enjoy that he has a safe place to spend the night, with someone who doesn’t expect him to pay him back with weird favors. Nino snorts. At least he doesn’t think Ohno will ask anything of him. And really, if Nino is honest, he wouldn’t mind that much, after all.
He returns to the living room where Ohno is sitting on the floor, looking half asleep. He debates for a short moment whether or not to poke Ohno, but he doesn’t get that far as Ohno opens his eyes the moment he steps closer.
“Good shower?”
“Of all the things you could ask,” Nino chuckles. “Yes, and thank you.”
He plops down on the couch and stretches in the covers and pillows Ohno has made ready for him. He’s exhausted, right into the core of his bones, like stubborn frost hanging on when spring arrives. Ohno yawns and Nino feels a little bit guilty.
“You are so nice to a stranger,” he says and silently adds to me.
“I’m not always nice,” Ohno murmurs, turning a bit and resting his arms on the seat of the couch. “People has wanted more from me than what I could give. I’ve broken hearts.”
Nino somehow both finds that hard and easy to believe.
“Now,” Ohno continues in that somber murmur, “I just try to honor the promises I’ve made.”
Nino interest is officially piqued, and even though he knows Ohno has no reason or obligation to tell him, he still asks. “Such as?”
A long exhalation leaves Ohnos lips. “Don’t break any hearts. Don’t give people false hopes. If I meet a special person, love them with all I have.”
He can’t logically explain it, but Nino almost shivers at the conviction and honesty in the words spilling from Ohno’s mouth. He’s positively breathless. “Who…who would you promise such things?”
Ohno’s smile is soft, fond, sad and wistful all at the same time. “A loved one.”
“Fuck,” Nino says with feeling. “Please tell me you’re not single.”
“I am single,” Ohno confirms. “My boyfriend died last year.”
Of all things, Nino hadn’t been expecting that. “I’m sorry.”
And he means it.
Ohno shakes his head. “That was a real downer, right. I think I should go to bed.”
“Wait,” Nino asks, “what happened?”
“Nothing anyone could have done anything about to prevent it,” Ohno says, and for all Nino can see and hear, Ohno sounds as if he has made peace with that. “I got three years with him and I’m grateful for that.”
Nino can’t help but wonder if he’ll ever meet anyone like this , someone who cared this much even after he’s dead. Ohno is one of a kind, and if more people in this world were like Ohno, it would be a better place to live.
He doesn’t realize he has said it out loud until Ohno is chuckling. “That would be a lazy world.”
What a terrible shame that Ohno isn’t looking for love.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Ohno admonishes in a mumble. “Rebounds are powerful stuff, you know.”
Nino leers. “Stop being so tempting, then.”
Ohno chuckles and gets to his feet.
“One more thing,” Nino calls when Ohno walks in direction of the door. “What was his name?”
Ohno’s smile loses the sad edge and he looks so happy in a brief moment that Nino’s heart aches inexplicably.
“Sho. Sleep well, Nino.”
Nino sleeps soundly though the night. His dreams are filled with gentle words staying with him even as he wakes to the smell of coffee teasing his nose.
“Did you sleep well?”
Nino scratches his stomach, yawns, nods. Suddenly as he watches Ohno sit perched on the countertop, freshly awoken, coffee between them, still sleep tousled, Nino has a vision of how things could be. It’s not rebound, it’s something much more powerful.
“If you want,” Ohno begins, “I could help you get the rest of your stuff from your ex’s place.”
Nino glances at the bonsai tree standing incuriously in the corner. “That’d be good.”
It’s time for changes.
The next week is a blur of Ohno helping Nino, setting him up with a new apartment, and when it’s time to move, Ohno calls up some of his friends to come help. When Ohno moves to grab the bonsai tree, Nino stops him.
“Leave it,” Nino orders and then grins. “He likes it here.”
Ohno doesn’t protest it, only holds the door open for Nino to pass through.
When the door closes behind them, Nino chances a look at Ohno and thinks of everything that has come to pass. Of everything Ohno is trying to do and everything he stands for. And maybe, Nino thinks, maybe Ohno is his special person, the one he should love with all he has.
It’s not the last time he’ll see Ohno, he knows that. There’s always the surprise party Ohno’s friends are throwing for Ohno next week and they have invited Nino.
It’ll be a lot of work, but Nino will try and convince Ohno to give love another chance.
*
When Ohno gets back to his apartment, he looks at the bonsai tree and he can’t help it.
He smiles.
*