[oneshot] In Every Storm There Is a Rainbow
Title: In Every Storm There Is a Rainbow
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx )
Pairing: Aimiya
Genre: Fluff
Summary: Inspiration takes over, and his pencil flies across the paper.
Notes: Inspired by Niji (Ninomiya Kazunari).
~
Nino remembers a time long ago, a time before Arashi.
Back when they were still juniors, and their biggest dream was a debut like all their seniors before, back when it was just him and Matsumoto and Ikuta and Aiba.
He remembers how Aiba used to tell him off for spending all of break glued to his Nintendo.
“It’s no good for you!” Aiba would wail, before snatching the Nintendo away and running out of the dressing room.
More often than not, this would happen when Nino was in the middle of a particularly important level, and he would chase after Aiba, demanding for the return of his Nintendo before it got switched off and all his progress was lost.
This was made harder by the fact that Aiba liked hide-and-seek, and Nino would often find himself crawling all over the jimusho in search of Aiba and his precious Nintendo.
By the tenth time this happened, Nino learned something incredibly important - Aiba didn’t seem to know the basic rule of hide-and-seek: Always choose a different hiding spot each time.
He would always hide in the deserted toilet on the third floor, in the third cubicle closest to the door.
So when Aiba stole his Nintendo for the eleventh time, Nino decided he’d head to the toilet first, to lie in wait for Aiba.
Sure enough, quick footsteps approached the toilet, and Aiba slipped inside, only to blink in surprise when he saw Nino standing there, arms crossed with an amused smile playing on his face.
“How did you find me?” Aiba whined, pouting like a five-year-old denied of cookies.
“You always hide in the same place, silly.”
Aiba huffed, and returned the Nintendo he had been clutching. His face looked incredibly morose and upset, and for a moment Nino felt a pang of sudden regret.
“I’m sorry,” he sighed at last, and Aiba smiled a little.
“You pay too much attention to that Nintendo and not enough attention to us,” Aiba said reproachfully, and Nino chuckled.
“Tell you what, if you stop stealing my Nintendo I’ll play it in the dressing room for an hour a day, no more than that. Deal?”
Aiba beamed.
“Deal!”
~
Nino remembers a time when life was less hectic.
Back when they were still juniors, when they could still walk home together without having to worry too much about rabid fangirls stalking them.
Back then, they would walk to the train station after practice each day, side by side. On rainy days they brought umbrellas, but he remembers that Aiba’s was so ridiculously huge that it kept bumping into his own, causing him to continuously veer off his straight path.
“You fail,” Aiba would giggle each time Nino stumbled as a result of Aiba’s mammoth green umbrella bumping into his own yellow one.
“Not my fault,” Nino would grumble each time in reply, with a pointed glare in the general direction of Aiba’s umbrella.
Aiba would laugh some more, and Nino, drawing from the memories of Aiba pouting each time Nino found him after he had stolen the Nintendo, would purse up his lips and pout like a spoilt child.
“So cute!” Aiba would say, distracted from his laughing to stop walking and pinch Nino’s cheeks, stretching them like he would a rubber band.
“Let go,” Nino would mutter, words distorted by stretched cheeks, and Aiba would laugh more and not let go for a while.
Looking back now, Nino realizes he misses those moments.
Those halcyon days.
~
When it’s announced that they’ll be releasing a new album, Time, Nino decides to write the lyrics for his solo song.
A week later, he stares at the same blank sheet of paper, suddenly regretting this decision. He has no inspiration whatsoever for the song, and it’s due soon.
Suddenly, his doorbell rings, and he opens it to see Aiba standing outside.
“I missed the last train,” Aiba tells him, “so I can’t get home. Can I crash at your flat for tonight?”
“Sure,” Nino shrugs, and opens the door wider to let Aiba in.
In barely half an hour Aiba has fallen asleep on Nino’s couch, and Nino smiles a fond smile as he fetches a blanket to place on Aiba. Somehow, he is reminded of his junior days, when Aiba would fall asleep on the dressing room couch during break, and nothing anybody did would wake him up.
He turns off the television that Aiba was watching before he fell asleep, and goes back to his miserably blank lyrics sheet.
Shooting another glance at Aiba’s sleeping form, sudden inspiration strikes him, and he begins to write, kanji messy from writing too quickly.
The clock strikes one in the morning when he finally puts down the pencil, cracking his neck from side to side as he admires his handiwork - one sheet full of messy, slightly smudged kanji.
This is his song, and Nino hums contentedly as he folds the paper neatly to bring to work.
He’ll ask Aiba to look through it when he wakes up.
~
“Somehow,” Aiba tells him after quickly scanning through the sheet, “the lyrics remind me of our junior days. Remember those times when I used to steal your Nintendo?”
That’s because it was inspired by our junior days, Nino wants to say, but wisely shuts up. If Aiba hasn’t seen the hidden message in the lyrics there’s no need for him to give Aiba any reason to read through the lyrics again.
~
Everybody loves the song, and when he performs it at the Time concert with his piano he’s willing to bet that the fangirls all think the song is directed to each one of them.
Thankfully when writing the lyrics he’d continually switched the personal pronouns so nobody would figure out exactly who the song was for.
It probably also helped that the one he’d written the song for was clueless most of the time.
“Great job,” everybody says backstage after he finishes, and Aiba or Ohno never fail to give him a hearty clap on the back.
Why can’t you see? he wants to say at times, why can’t you see that the message in the lyrics is meant for you?
He never says it.
~
He gets a spanking new DS for his birthday, and is beyond thrilled.
Once again, he begins playing it constantly, whenever they have a break from photoshoots or dance practice or the like.
“Nino~” Aiba whines one day, plopping down next to him on the couch after four straight hours of grueling dance practice, “you’re stuck to your Nintendo again!”
“It’s not just a Nintendo, it’s a DS,” he corrects absentmindedly, attention on the little character on the screen.
Suddenly, the DS in his hands is snatched away by a sulky Aiba, and before he can say anything Aiba has run out of the dressing room, leaving Nino with only the stylus still clutched in his hand.
“Hey!” he yelps, a few seconds too late.
Ohno and Sakurai blink in a mixture of surprise and shock, while Matsumoto laughs himself silly.
“Aiba-kun used to do that all the time, didn’t he?”
Nino sighs.
“I guess I’ll have to go chase him now, don’t I?”
He gets up from the couch and heads out the door.
~
This building is not like the jimusho, but Nino discovers that there is only one toilet on the third floor anyway. Slowly, Nino pushes the door open, and moves toward the third cubicle from the door, like always.
“Aiba?” he calls, knocking on the cubicle door while feeling rather stupid, “You in there?”
There is a short silence, and suddenly the cubicle door swings open. Aiba peeks out, looking decidedly miffed.
“You need to change your hiding place,” Nino says dryly with an air of longsuffering patience.
“I knew you’d come here,” Aiba says instead, “so I waited. I want to ask you something.”
Nino raises an eyebrow, silently prompting Aiba to continue.
“Every time we walked home in the rain, did you really have those secret fantasies?”
This is clearly not something Nino has been expecting, and for a few moments he just stands stock-still, doing a perfect imitation of a goldfish.
“W-what?”
“Of kissing me,” Aiba elaborates, flapping an arm.
Nino still cannot wrap his mind around Aiba’s sudden question.
“What in the world gave you that idea?”
“Your song,” Aiba says, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world.
And suddenly Nino gets what Aiba’s talking about, but it’s too embarrassing to argue his case.
“You know,” he hears Aiba say in the midst of his mental debate, “next time you want to kiss someone, you could be a little more direct.”
Startled, he gapes at Aiba, who laughs.
“You look almost as cute as when you pout,” Aiba says, grinning, before bending down to plant a quick kiss on Nino’s nose.
Nino’s face flames red, and he doesn’t even notice when Aiba pushes his DS back into his hand and leaves the bathroom.
~
Be a little more direct.
Aiba’s words ring in his head as he looks at yet another blank sheet of paper. Without properly registering what he’s writing, his pencil flies across the page. An hour later, he reads through what he has written, and realizes that it’s a little too obvious and embarrassing to use on the album.
He ends up writing another solo for Dream-A-live instead, the original sheet of lyrics stashed away somewhere else, for another day.
~
He ends up taking out that solo again two years later, when he is out of inspiration to write a new solo for their Fuukei album.
Going through it, he gives it a few edits here and there, and bestows it with a misleading title.
He asked for direct, Nino thinks, Well, here’s hoping this is direct enough.
Scribbled on the top of the lyrics sheet is a simple title.
1992*4##111.
~
Evidently Aiba does not think the same way.
“It’s so roundabout,” he complains after reading the lyrics, and Nino shrugs.
“I think it’s just fine,” he insists staunchly.
“And what’s with cutting off at the end? What exactly are you supposed to say there?”
Nino grins a mysterious grin.
“Why, you’ll have to wait until the recording to find out.”
~
Just like planned in his lyrics, Nino cuts off at the last line during the recording of his solo, but the backup singers continue on.
I love you…
Nino catches sight of Aiba listening from the other room, and winks as Aiba turns to him in surprise, a tiny smile blossoming on his lips. He watches as Aiba discreetly forms a heart with his fingers, and he returns the gesture.
Yes, Nino knows he misses those moments back in the days when they were juniors without a care in the world. But now, these moments that he’s living through…
He knows that he won’t trade them for anything.