still you don't regret a single day, 2/2
Title: still you don't regret a single day
Pairing(s): Aiba/Nino
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~16,600
Summary: AU. Aiba gets thrown out of his apartment and learns that keeping people happy isn't the same as living the life you want to.
Notes: Part two of two.
"Wait," Jun says. "Hold on. Did you just tell me that you slept all through this morning?"
Aiba pretends to count the hours on his fingers, but he knows perfectly well that he managed to fall back asleep after seven and didn't wake up until noon, still in Nino's bed. "Ah, yep," Aiba says, wriggling the five fingers on his hand in front of Jun's face. "Five hours, actually. Until Nino had to go to the afternoon shift at work."
"Aiba-chan," Jun mumbles, and buries his face in his large mug of hot chocolate, "Nino gave you a time limit, you know." His tone is exasperated, and Aiba knows that Operation New Beginnings (he christened it himself, and even though no one else wants to use it Aiba's sticking to his brilliant idea) isn't exactly moving at lightning speed. But he is working on it, and that he can promise.
"Yeah, well, he wasn't exactly reminding me about that," Aiba huffs. He thinks back to this morning at around ten when Aiba felt Nino's faint getting-up movements, and the small, annoyed noises Nino made when he turned to find Aiba asleep in his bed. Dumb, he'd said breathily, and pulled the thin sheet up to cover Aiba before he slipped out of bed. "He didn't even wake me up!"
"You should have set an alarm," Jun points out, and raises an eyebrow when Aiba just frowns. "At this rate, you'll never move out."
It's just a joke, Aiba knows, but what with Nino not kicking him out of bed this morning, never moving out of his current situation isn't exactly the worst thing that could happen to him. He has to, of course, because there's no way that Aiba could let anything else happen between them--Nino has a life, after all, and most likely a girl, and who is Aiba to mess that up? It's worth dreaming about, that's all. It's worth hoping for while he traces the shadow-lines on Nino's neck in the early morning sunshine.
"Aiba," Jun says loudly. "You there?"
Aiba almost chokes on his coffee. "Uh-huh," he says, as Jun eyes him suspiciously. "I was just thinking about--about, you know, the list."
Hurriedly he produces the thin folder of clippings and notes, all slathered in green marker, that detail apartments that Aiba likes and could afford. He starts going on about location and size and prices, pointing to different layouts and living rates, and eventually he gets Jun so interested in their day ahead that he forgets all about scolding Aiba for taking up too much of Nino's space. He doesn't want to talk about it anymore lest something slip out. Aiba's notorious among them for slip-ups, try as he might to keep secrets in.
He wants today to be a good day, so he and Jun are going to look at flats around the city. Aiba is going to act like he's excited to live on his own again--and if he finds an apartment close enough to Jun and Nino's complex, then he will be. Otherwise, he knows things will turn out all right, just like he predicted in the first place: he'll have an address again, and he'll learn not to throw his money around, and he'll try not to disconnect himself from his best friends in the entire world.
He just has to put a few minor details behind him, like the fact that he'll still be missing Nino's boyish fumbling for more blankets to cover his body and the tiny whimpering sounds he makes when he's trying to find a new comfortable spot on the bed.
"You should be excited," Jun says, poking Aiba's hand on the table. "You'll be in a brand new place soon."
"Yeah," Aiba agrees, for Jun's sake. He has only ever wanted to keep the people he cares about happy. "It'll be great."
--
It's late when Aiba finally gets back to Nino's apartment. Jun had been tougher with the real estate agents than Aiba was; it wasn't even his house they were looking for and yet it was as if Jun had a list of questions planned in his head to bombard the poor agents with. Aiba has to admit it was a little scary to see Jun so adamant about costs of living.
"But then again, this is Jun-kun we're talking about," Nino says as Aiba tells him all of this. They're sitting on the couch and Nino has the remote perched on his knee, but neither of them is actually watching the comedy show on the screen right now. Aiba's too busy trying to balance a bowl of soup on his lap while making elaborate hand gestures at the same time. "I mean, I know you haven't seen him in awhile, but he's still as anal as ever."
"I know," Aiba says, giggling, and just then the audience on the television starts laughing which makes it even funnier. He's not sure what it is--the fact that he and Jun actually went through the entire apartment list and found more than a few bargains in good locations, or that the leftover soup he's eating is homemade with Jun's recipe and that it tastes good, or possibly just that he's sitting on Nino's couch talking to Nino and everything is sort of wonderful right now.
"So what does this mean?" Nino says, and when Aiba looks up there's a smirk close to his face. "You're leaving me before the three weeks are up? Are you--," and here he pauses dramatically, "--breaking up with me?"
"No," Aiba says, aghast, before he realizes that that's not the correct feeling he should be showing right now. But Nino's laughing so hard his head is leaning back against the couch, and Aiba feels like he's just been tricked. "I mean--Nino! I'm going to use up all the time I have here, okay?"
The last of Nino's laughter comes out in a snort, and the two of them grin at each other before Nino smacks Aiba in the shoulder. "Okay," he agrees, and lets his fingers linger on Aiba's shoulder. "Just remember, you have two weeks left before I write you a personal eviction notice."
"I'll just burn that one," Aiba says.
"Like your scrambled eggs?"
It starts with Aiba wiping his used spoon on Nino's arm, but that inevitably escalates into a full-scale scuffle that eventually ends in all the throw pillows being moved to the opposite side of the room and Aiba's soup bowl upset on the floor, leaving Nino to immediately complain about stain remover and how expensive it is to use. But they make a team effort out of it, which means that Nino scrubs his own carpet vigorously with the smallest amount of remover possible and Aiba sits on the couch, holding the rest of the bottle and making comments about how Nino's missed the same spot three times. ("You're blind," Aiba whines, and pokes at the 'missed spot' with his toe. "Look! Right there!" "I will stick your head in the rest of that pot of soup," Nino threatens, still scrubbing.)
They spend the rest of the night lying on both ends of the couch and taking turns on who gets to pick the channel. It's not long before Aiba's eyelids start to droop: he's tired from a long day of craning his neck into empty, stark-white rooms and blue-tiled bathrooms that all look the same, and even though he can feel Nino's feet nudging his legs, telling him to get up and sleep on the futon, he doesn't plan on moving. His body is too heavy and comfortable in the nook of the couch he's settled into.
When he feels Nino move off the couch, though, he wakes up.
"Hey," Nino mumbles, and rubs his face with the palm of his hand. "'M moving to bed."
"Okay," Aiba whispers, and watches Nino go.
One hour later he's snuggling into Nino's wrinkled sheets and sticking their bodies together, cold back to warm front and his nose to the nape of Nino's neck. They fit like a perfect puzzle, so close that Aiba's breaths coast the shell of Nino's ear.
Nino shivers and presses back against Aiba. He must know what's going on, but neither of them moves until morning.
--
The second week of Aiba's in-residence to Nino's home brings a constant schedule of house-hunting. When he's not out with Jun or Ohno (he wonders sometimes if the two ever work, what with the amount of time they've been spending together) looking at houses, he's sitting on the couch in Nino's apartment with sheets and sheets of information and a four-function calculator. On top of that he's not sure what to do with all of these agents calling him and asking for follow-ups and begging for him to take surveys about the places he went to see--he's tried telling a few of them that he's not so sure if their homes are right for him, but that just made their voices louder and their pleas more irritating. So Aiba has just resorted to having Nino answer the phone to say, "Oh sorry, wrong number."
But even Nino is drowning under waves and waves of work. The big-shot company that Sho had been hoping to affiliate with had recently issued a long list of ultimatums, and for some reason Nino was put in charge of creating the presentation that the executives would use to hopefully compromise their alliance. All Aiba sees of Nino nowadays is his face swallowed in bright computer light in the wee, wee hours of the morning or his wide yawns at the breakfast counter, tie barely hanging round his neck.
They've become like a double-income family, Aiba realizes: Nino is the perpetually busy husband and Aiba is the whirlwind of a wife, trying to do six million things at once. Every morning there's breakfast on the table and while Nino is at work, throwing years of his life into a single presentation, Aiba is back at the apartment dusting and reading housing ads and going out to shop for groceries. And, of course, he spends a good chunk of the day traveling around the city, looking at flats for rent.
Aiba comes home just hours before Nino with pamphlets stuffed into his bag and arms full of plastic grocery bags. He's tired and hungry and sometimes he tries to wait for Nino, but for the past few days he's come home at two or three in the morning and Aiba can't make himself stay awake past one-thirty.
But he always hears Nino come in, and in the morning they always wake up together.
This is what worries Aiba. Not that they're sleeping together, because he doesn't find that weird at all--it's that Aiba's climbing into bed and sliding his hands up Nino's back has become so natural that both of them expect it to happen every night. The first time was meant to be the only time, but Aiba's self-control stopped working altogether and he let it happen again (and again, and again). The fact that Nino isn't forcing him out of bed while calling him names and accusing him of being a sexual offender doesn't help, either. Aiba comes back because Nino wants him to, even if they don't ever talk about it.
Sometimes Aiba feels like he should bring it up, but there's no way for him to say, "So Nino, let's talk about why we sleep together!" with a big, cheerful smile. He knows that Nino doesn't want Aiba to mention it, so Aiba pretends that he sleeps on the spare futon all night. He doesn't talk about how Nino should stop hitting the snooze button on his alarm clock so many times, or about how he wants to kiss Nino good-bye when he's moving at snail-speed around the room, getting ready for work.
Their short conversations center a lot on Aiba's housing progress and Nino's goal to kill Sho one day in his sleep. Everything is the same, save the amount of time they both spend away from home, and yet there's a big heavy anchor sitting in the pit of Aiba's stomach that he keeps trying to ignore.
He knows that it's not going to just disappear, though. Every time Aiba finds a house with a good price, every time he looks at the girl in the picture, and every single time he even imagines his lips brushing Nino's shoulders in the dark, the weight just grows and grows. Aiba imagines it blooming into fuzzy colors and multiplying rapidly by the second, just like a disease that he brought onto himself, and one that he doesn't exactly want to find the cure for.
--
Through everything, Aiba remembers that there's an actual reason behind his living in Nino's house: to find his own apartment to live in.
After his first day out with Jun, Aiba had enlisted Ohno's help for a number of reasons, the main one being that Ohno would not scare the real estate agents away with intense questions about architecture and pest control. And he was right--Ohno tagged along for moral support and honest, simple opinions like, "Well, the layout on this one is kind of awkward" and "This one's near me. Consider it!" And even though Jun always takes Aiba out to eat for lunch at really nice restaurants, Ohno and Aiba have an equally satisfying lunch by buying cheap bento boxes at the convenience store and eating them sitting on the steps by the bay.
After an entire week and a half straight of looking at flats, some more than once, Aiba has compiled a list of houses he could buy on the spot. He's given them all a one- or two-sentence review in choppy Aiba shorthand ("Good view, downtown, near station so yay" or "Utilities cheap but bathroom not so cool/location wow; but can my neighbor see me?") and has starred them all with glittery stickers.
He's also taken to carrying around a significant amount of cash, just in case.
"You never know," he tells Jun. "I might find someplace that I just fall in love with."
"But even if you do fall in love," Jun says seriously, "you still have to think about it before you dive right in it."
It made Aiba laugh at the time, because Jun had said it so solemnly. But even with the prime locations, Western-style bathrooms and excellent rates that all of the apartments have, Aiba knows that finding a house isn't exactly his top priority right now. The only thing he can think of when each new door opens in front of him is I'm not living here with Nino.
That never used to bother him before--and before was only twelve or so days ago. Before, Aiba was content with his jobs and his life and even with his not-so-amazing apartment. Calling his friends was enough to keep him going, and even though he didn't see any of them as much as he used to, he didn't think that anything was wrong.
Until now. Being thrust back into Nino's life is strange and overwhelming and yet Aiba wishes he could set up camp in Nino's home, in Nino's room, in Nino's bed. He didn't realize just how much he missed seeing Jun every day and hearing Ohno's laughter and talking to Sho when he wasn't in work mode, and he completely forgot that a good dose of Nino could keep him exhilarated for hours on end.
But Aiba knows that exhilaration can only last so long. He needs his own place again to restore the balance they all had before, when Aiba and Nino were separated by train tracks and zip codes and different beds.
After all, nobody is supposed to like getting evicted.
--
At the end of two weeks, Aiba writes down a tiny fourteen in his day planner (a gift from Sho). He has seven days left as Nino's almost-roommate, and he plans to celebrate today by not going out.
It's been hours since Nino left for work but Aiba is still lying in bed, stretched out over Nino's space and soaking up the slivers of sunshine that the blinds are letting through. Judging by Nino's frustrated sighs after he pressed his hand to the window this morning, it's freezing cold outside despite the sun, but Aiba is perfectly cozy with his legs buried underneath blankets and his face in Nino's pillow.
Every morning should feel like this, Aiba thinks as he rolls around on the cool sheets, stretching out his arms and legs to all four corners of the bed. Every morning should be spent just wiggling your fingers in the air and yawning slowly because you have all the time in the world. When Aiba throws his arm over his face he breathes in Nino-smell from where their skin had been stuck together and it makes him want to stay under the covers forever.
But even if he's not going out there are things to do, like picking a house to live in. Or cooking, because Aiba's beginning to find out that cooking is really fun, despite the constant messes that seem to spring up out of nowhere. Or he could do some laundry--or get the door.
No one has ever rung the doorbell without Aiba inviting them over first, and he's so excited about who this visitor could be that he shoots out of bed and runs to the door without even stopping to make sure that he's wearing enough clothes. But he is (and if his thin t-shirt and shorts offend whoever's at the door, Aiba may lose all his faith in humanity), and he has his hand on the doorknob before his eyes are even looking through the peephole.
He looks anyway, though, and immediately wishes he'd been a little slower.
The door opens to a girl about Aiba's age. She's wearing a simple coat over a plain pink dress, with regular brown boots and a hairstyle that is nondescript at its finest. Aiba feels a little bad and wishes that he could find some way to compliment her in his head, but he knows exactly who she is and if he were a different kind of person, he'd have slammed the door in her face, or wouldn't even have bothered to open the door at all.
But the girl in the photograph is smiling now, and Aiba can't help but smile back.
"Hi," she says, and her voice is neither too loud nor too soft. She has the perfect tone, Aiba thinks, for newscasting--it's just a pity she's not prettier. "Is, um, Ninomiya-kun here?"
"Uh," Aiba says, and looks behind him. He knows perfectly well that the apartment is empty, and he's not sure why he's buying time, but he feels like he should keep this girl here for a little while longer. "No, he's not, actually. I think he's working overtime."
The girl's eyes widen for a moment before she nods, and Aiba watches her styled hair bounce. "Oh! Well, okay then. Do you, um, do you know when he'll be back?"
No, Aiba says in his head.
"Probably not until late," he replies instead, even a little apologetically. "It's been that way for the past few days, anyway."
And there it is: Aiba's confession, even if she doesn't even realize it. But she does get that something's going on with her Ninomiya-kun and the boy she's talking to, and Aiba feels almost like he's won something even though he doesn't even know what. In fact, he shouldn't even have anything to win--if this girl wants Nino, and Nino likes her enough to put her picture in a frame, then isn't this the life Nino should be leading? Isn't the normal life that Aiba wants Nino to have staring him in the face right now, fiddling with her coat buttons and rocking back and forth on her cheap, department-store bought boots?
The answer, no matter how he feels, is yes.
Aiba can't bring himself to even say a proper good-bye. He just clears his throat, nods, and begins to shut the door in the girl's face. But before the door closes all the way she holds out a hand, stopping him.
"Wait," she says. "Can you--I mean--can I leave a message?"
I'm not an answering machine, Aiba thinks bitterly, but then reminds himself that Nino likes her, no matter how boring she looks and sounds. And there's nothing that Aiba can do about that but pat his best friend on the back and tell him that he's done a good job.
"What is it?" Aiba asks, poking his head through the opening of the door.
She takes a deep breath, and Aiba hopes that doesn't mean she's going to start crying. He's not sure if he could take that--Aiba hates it when people cry, no matter who it is. He thinks that tears are the saddest things in the world, and not even this girl should feel so overburdened that she'd feel the need to cry in front of a complete stranger.
"Tell him I said good-bye," she says, and smiles.
Aiba just stares. Good-bye?
The girl bows politely and then leaves without even looking back once. Dumbfounded, Aiba watches her figure all the way down the hall and doesn't shut the door until the clicking of her boots has faded into the sounds of the city.
--
Aiba has Ohno on the phone within seconds of closing the door.
"Oh-chan, Oh-chan," Aiba whispers, even though nobody else can hear him. "We have a problem."
On the other end of the line Aiba hears a lot of shuffling and chewing--Ohno's probably having lunch. Or he's having lunch and working from home at the same time, which happens often and also with mixed results, as Ohno has mistaken sauce for paint more than once. It's a matter of color, is all he says in his defense, though the others tease him mercilessly about it.
"A problem?" Ohno repeats, and swallows. "That's not good."
"No, it's not," Aiba says, and sits down on the floor in the middle of the living room. "Listen, listen--tell me, do you know if Nino's been with a girl lately?"
Been with, Aiba thinks, and smacks himself in the forehead, that is not the right term to use.
But Ohno gets it, and Aiba can almost hear him thinking. "Hm," he hums, and starts mumbling to himself. "Lately? I don't think so."
"Okay, this year then," Aiba says. He's aware that he sounds almost desperate, but he has to know how to handle this situation and how to let Nino know that, just maybe, he's been dumped. "Sometime, anytime--she looked kind of pretty, but not really, just normal. Does that remind you of anybody?"
"Oh!" Ohno says, and Aiba bites his lip. He says a girl's name that Aiba doesn't really hear, because her name doesn't mean anything to him. "She had brown hair, right? But she looked really, I don't know, plain."
Aiba exhales loudly. "Yeah," he says, "that's her," and goes on to explain what just happened.
When he's finished there are seconds of nothing but long breaths over the line, and Aiba has the phone cord twisted into intricate knots around his fist. All he can think of is what's going to happen in a few hours when Nino walks through that door absolutely exhausted and Aiba will have to tell him that what's-her-name stopped by today to leave a message. And if that girl meant anything to Nino, anything at all, Aiba will have to pass on her farewell note, and whatever happens from there is all up in the air--but Aiba can guess. Aiba can guess, but he's scared to.
Finally, after what seems like a year, Ohno says, "You're just going to have to tell him, Aiba-chan."
"But--," Aiba begins, even though he really has nothing to say.
"It's for his own good," Ohno continues. "He'll be happier to know."
Aiba is silent.
"I promise it'll be fine," Ohno says, and Aiba can almost feel Ohno's sincerity reaching through telephone wires and digital wavelengths. "We just want to see Nino happy, right?"
If only you knew, Aiba thinks, even though he suspects that Ohno does know just how much Aiba wants Nino's happiness.
"Of course," Aiba agrees. "We just want a Nino-smile."
"I'm sure you get a lot of those, Aiba-chan," Ohno says, and there's laughter in his voice. "So many you could box them up and sell them."
"Except that I wouldn't give them away for the world," Aiba replies simply.
--
In high school, Nino was on the baseball team.
Aiba wasn't. He liked running and science better, and he chose to devote all of his time to the track and field and physics clubs of the school, even going so far as to become president of the latter. Sometimes when the baseball team was practicing and Aiba was doing an experiment on the third floor of the building he'd look out to the diamond to see Nino on the pitcher's mound, winding up while being yelled at. It seemed like Nino was always getting yelled at by the coach, and even though Nino said he was fine with it because it would just make him better, Aiba could tell otherwise in the way that Nino held himself when they went home together--he slouched more, like a sad puppy. It made Aiba want to beat up the baseball coach.
But Nino did want to be a better pitcher, and he wanted to do it quickly, so he made Aiba help him out. Every day after regular practice, Nino and Aiba would have their own pitching sessions, and Nino would be so upset with his performance that he'd throw the ball into Aiba's glove so hard it felt like a circle had been burned into his palm. But Aiba let him do it, because Nino always felt better afterward and it did help his game. They did this for a year straight and by the end of their sophomore year, Nino was the star of the team.
That didn't stop the private practices, though. But after he reached his goal Nino only wanted to play catch with Aiba when there was something on his mind that he needed to get rid of. Pitching, he told Aiba, calmed him down. It made him focus on a single spot in the center of his field of vision, in the center of the universe. The rest of the world was a blank canvas filled with wind and faint sound; nothing else mattered except for two hands, a glove, and a ball.
"You forget everything," Aiba remembers Nino saying. "It solves all of your problems for awhile."
"Too bad I don't have that," Aiba replied, as Nino tossed the ball to him. "I think too much!"
And Nino had laughed. "Sucks to be you," he'd said, as the ball soared back in his direction. He caught it gracefully, directly in the palm of his hand.
When Nino walks through the door, Aiba holds up a baseball glove and ball, both found in the recesses of one of the cardboard boxes he'd brought with him from the old house.
"Hey," he says, grinning. He's nervous as hell, but he doesn't let it show. "Let's play catch."
--
"You're lucky," Nino is saying as he follows Aiba down to the field, "that I turned in my presentation today."
"Oh!" Aiba is so ridiculously full of energy that it's hard for him to concentrate it all into one mindset; all of his limbs are shaking with anxiety and fear and he feels like he's either going to explode or throw up. He's generally an excitable person, but this is just too much. "Great! How did it go?"
Nino grunts. "As good as expected," he says, and slips his glove on. It took him less than five minutes to find it, but eventually he rescued it from being eaten alive by moths underneath the bed. "This feels weird. It's been a long time, I probably suck at this."
"Practice makes perfect," Aiba quips. "I just--I wanted to celebrate, kind of." He doesn't know what he's going on about, but his mind is saying just talk, don't think. "I might've found an apartment."
This is a total lie, and Nino has been away enough not to know. Aiba feels like a horrible, horrible person.
"Impressive," Nino says, whistling low, "and before your time's up, too!" He stops for a second as they're standing on the stairs leading down to the grass and says, "You just want to get away from me, don't you?"
He looks so serious that for a second Aiba considers giving up and just blurting everything out in one long monologue without stopping to breathe. But he knows all too well that Nino is just playing around, and so Aiba laughs nervously and squeezes the baseball in his fist as hard as he can. This has to be, he thinks, worse than getting evicted. That can lead to good things, like bed-sharing and seeing your friends again and realizing that you've missed too much. It's nothing like having to tell your best friend that he's just been dumped.
"Of course," Aiba says, and jumps off the last three stairs. "I mean, the spare futon isn't the most comfortable thing on earth, Nino."
Nino steps off the last stair and then stops. Aiba turns around, expectant.
"Yeah, except," Nino says casually, "you haven't exactly been using the spare futon, have you."
Oh, shit.
The weight in Aiba's stomach triples in one strong instant and he clears his throat. It's all he can do right now--what do you say to that, after all? How do you save yourself? He knows he can't. There's no lifeguard here to throw him a rope to safety and even his people skills can't rescue him from this mess. Nino knows him too well, knows the shape of his face and the curves of his shoulder blades and the certain hitches of his voice so perfectly that there is no way Aiba can run away right now and still be fine.
"No," Aiba says carefully. "I haven't been."
Nino nods.
"Okay," he says, and squints into the sky above him, which is a sunset-collage of blushing pinks and gentle orange colors. It's a startling contrast to what Aiba imagines the inside of his head must look like. "Let's play."
This is far from over, but Aiba obeys. His hand moves mechanically, stiffly; somehow he manages to get the ball moving in a smooth arc over to Nino's side of the field. Aiba watches Nino's gloved hand move just as gracefully as it did years ago to cushion the fall of the baseball, and the thudding sound the ball makes in his palm is almost delicate.
"Nino," Aiba tries to say. His breaths are like gunshots in the dark, and he doesn't know what to say or how to say it, but he knows he needs to talk. "Nino, I need to--move out."
Nino frowns. "Well, yeah," he says, and pitches the ball back to Aiba. "You've got a week left."
Aiba tries to swallow, but his throat is unbearably dry, and when he fumbles to catch the toss it hits the ground before he can get to it. "No, Nino, I mean. I need to move out now."
"What?" Nino asks. He's just standing there, and from Aiba's point of view he looks smaller than he usually is. "Why?"
Aiba stalls for a second before he shrugs. "Because," he says lamely. "You should know."
But the thing is, Nino probably doesn't, and Aiba is just being unfair. "Aiba, look, I don't--," he begins, and bites his lip for a second before going on, "--I don't care that you sleep in my bed." He takes a deep breath and his eyebrows twist--there's more he wants to say, but he's holding himself back. In his heart Aiba finishes the thought: stay, stay with me, I want you here.
"That's not it," Aiba says, even though a lot of it is. He looks down at the ball sitting by his feet and nudges it a little, watching it roll in Nino's direction; a slow crawl to where his entire body wants to go. "We're doing too much."
Nino's inhale is sharp. "What are you talking about?" he says, voice rising, and Aiba instinctively takes a step back. He knows Nino is coming toward him, taking long strides, but he refuses to look up. "Who exactly is it too much for?"
"You," Aiba breathes, and Nino is so close to him now, so close that he can almost hear the sound of their wild heartbeats in the dead silence that thrives between them. "Look, Nino, this girl stopped by today, and she asked for you but you were at work," Aiba says, and he's babbling now but he just doesn't want to have to endure the emptiness, "so--so she told me to tell you good-bye for her."
"And?" Nino says, and one of his hands reaches out to grasp Aiba's elbow. Aiba flinches; he can't help it, and Nino grips harder in response. "So what?"
"I saw that picture, Nino," Aiba says, still breathless. He feels like a balloon slowly running out of air, drifting through deadwood in a forest, just waiting to be popped. "The one on your coffee table--you're in it, and she is, too. Both of you look so excited," Aiba goes on, and now he doesn't care what comes out of his mouth. "You need to be with her, with some girl that you can get married to and have cute kids with, and--and we can't do that." He pauses to suck in a mouthful of dry, crisp air that stings his lungs, but it doesn't hurt as much as Nino's fingers on his arm do. "You should take her back."
Take her back so I can go, Aiba pleads, just do it so I can leave you with her.
For a moment Nino's hand loosens on Aiba's elbow and it almost feels gentle, like he's being held in place and Nino is afraid that Aiba will just float away if he doesn't do anything. Aiba watches Nino look down to the baseball in between their feet, and he jumps, startled, when Nino suddenly looks up again.
"You can't make me," is all Nino says, quieter than Aiba has ever heard him speak before. "You don't know what I want."
He bends down to pick up the ball and then walks away, crunching the browning grass underneath his feet. When Aiba looks up the sky is darkening; the sunset has passed into dusk.
--
The cutest real estate agent in the city sells Aiba his dream home on the Monday of his third week.
It's a charming little thing just blocks down the road from where Nino and Jun live, and even though he has to walk to the station it's not too far and besides, the weather will get warmer soon enough. He has one bedroom all to himself and a living room that he can't wait to fill with all of the things he's collected over the years. The place isn't big, but it's his and the bare walls and empty rooms are calling his name, telling him to hurry up and move already.
In his head Aiba sees his new house filled with paintings by Ohno of strange animals in spacesuits and buff men with cigarettes dangling off the edges of their fingers. He envisions flower vases that his mother will make him put up by the balcony and shelves and shelves of cookbooks that he will sneak from his father's library. He'll stick a table somewhere in the center of his dining-and-living area, and he'll have to make sure to get enough chairs to hold all of his friends. Sho will have a seat facing the door, Ohno will sit next to Aiba, Jun will need lots of space because he likes to stretch out and Nino--well, Nino will...
Aiba's mind stops there.
In reality, he hasn't bought a house. He's sitting on the last stair that leads into the field, still holding his baseball glove between his knees, which are pulled up all the way to his chin. It hasn't been long since Nino left, but the real cold has settled in and Aiba lost feeling in the tips of his fingers long ago.
But he can't make himself get up. All his life he has only ever wanted to make his friends and family excited about life, about their relationships and living situations and jobs, and he's sacrificed so much but he's never been through anything like this. He's never seen Nino so outwardly frustrated about a single thing, and for him to ignore Aiba's mention of the girl--well, either she meant nothing to him or Aiba's leaving means something much more.
And that scares him, to think that Nino might want what he does; it scares him to think that it took them only two weeks to reach this conclusion. Fourteen days ago Aiba only knew that he needed to find a new place to live and get back on his feet again, and that his friends were going to help him through it. Fourteen days later and he couldn't care less about finding an apartment and starting over. He just wants everything to go back to normal, and even if it means doing all of those things there's still Nino to take care of.
Aiba's movements are all forceful, but he's finally up and moving, however stiffly. His bones feel frozen solid and when he finally enters the apartment building the heat hits him in a dizzy rush; each step he takes up to the third floor is another that thaws him out, but inside Aiba is calculating the number of seconds he has left until he walks through Nino's front door.
When he does, the apartment is eerily dark, and the spare futon--which hasn't been laid out in ages--is staring Aiba in the face.
"So," Aiba says to nobody in particular, and throws his baseball glove into the open cardboard box on the floor. "This is it, huh."
He lowers himself gingerly onto the futon, kicks off his shoes and pulls the dusty-smelling sheet all the way up to his face. His body is a little warmer, but there's a chilliness inside of him that no amount of blankets or sleep will ever fix. For now he just shuts his eyes as tightly as he can and tries to relax his strung-out self by imagining that none of this ever, ever happened.
--
Aiba's sleep is restless, punctuated by random rushes of adrenaline that soar throughout his body for no reason at all. He suspects that his dreams have something to do with it, but by the time he's blinking awake, panting and wiping the sweat off his palms, he can't remember anything but a disturbed feeling in his gut and a near-paralyzing fear taking hold of his body and not letting go.
He runs his hands through his hair and curls up in a ball, breathing out heavily. There's no way he's ever going to get any rest if the night is just going to continue on like this, and he knows that it is--sleep isn't an escape for him, it's just a tease of nothingness until his thoughts manage to creep up on him again from behind.
"Stop," Aiba whispers into his cupped hands, breathing in and out slowly to the tempo of the clock hanging on the wall. "Please, just for right now."
His whole body relaxes on command, and he settles back into the futon, hoping that he won't wake up again until morning.
And then he hears the footsteps.
They fall softly on the carpet by Aiba's head and before he can say anything, before the signals in his nerves start to work, he feels the electric touch of Nino's hand on his shoulder and his breaths already hot and quick on the back of his neck. There's no time for Aiba's mind to respond before their arms are working to find each other, moving sheets and pillows out of the way, throwing everything unnecessary to the side.
"You're here," Aiba says dumbly. Nino knows he's not blind, but he figures it's worth mentioning that Aiba isn't the one getting up and moving into Nino's bed, taking care not to make too much noise and disturb the usually already-sleeping Nino. "Why?"
Nino makes a sound that's a cross between a whimper and a grunt and he doesn't say anything until they're stuck together as usual, legs tangled together and hands reaching for each other, though not quite touching. His face is pressed against Aiba's back, and Aiba can feel him breathing a little too quickly.
"Because you think you know what I need," he says, voice muffled, and the slight vibrations send a shiver down Aiba's spine. "But you don't."
"Why not?" It's like an argument between two stubborn five-year-olds, but Aiba doesn't expect anything else, even at their ages. He curls his hand into Nino's and tickles the inside of his palm with his fingertips, trying to coax an answer out of Nino when in reality they should both be putting a few things out in the open. "I just want you to be happy, that's all."
Nino sighs and pulls his hand away from Aiba's.
"It's not with her," he says. "You don't know anything, Aiba."
Aiba is silent for a long while. He doesn't know how to tell Nino that he cares too much to go and yet that's exactly why he needs to leave, and no matter how much he insists Nino isn't suddenly going to give into the idea of getting a girlfriend and then moving onto marriage and a barrage of children. Nino just isn't that kind of guy, and Aiba knows that, as much as he hopes every day that Nino will find somebody special to hold hands in bed with.
Aiba just wasn't prepared for it to be him, even if he feels the exact same way.
"I'm going to move in down the street," Aiba says resolutely. "You can see me anytime."
"Aiba," Nino says, lifting his head up. "I would probably kill myself if I had to see you all the time."
Aiba snorts; he can't help it. As far as emotional conversations go, this is probably the worst one he's ever had, but Nino's lips are ghosting the edge of his shoulder and even if his words aren't saying much, his actions are. It's always been that way between them.
"Listen," Nino starts, and presses his lips to Aiba's neck in a chaste kiss before going on, "I don't want her. She can't take your place."
"Oh," Aiba says. He can feel his heartbeat begin to quicken, and he tries to stay as quiet as possible, but he's too full of awkward emotions and feelings he can't find names to. "Nino, what are you saying?"
"I've missed you," Nino says, exhaling shakily, and he doesn't need to say anything else.
They lie like that for awhile, simply breathing. Aiba's hand moves back to Nino's, holding him in place. There are too many things for them to say and Aiba knows that neither of them is going to talk, but it's four in the morning and the darkness around them is too familiar and, now that they're in this position, almost comforting. They're falling asleep again to the melody of their heartbeats, an erratic rhythm that reminds Aiba of storm clouds running races through the sky.
"Don't tell me this will never happen again," Nino barely whispers.
When Aiba twists round to kiss Nino there's no pretense, just a surprised little sound that comes from one of them, or both of them--it doesn't really matter. All Aiba cares about are Nino's hands curling into his own and the promises of all the tomorrows to come.
--
On day twenty-one, Aiba skips out on making breakfast and rents an apartment instead.
It's not as perfect as the one in his dream, but it's better than his old apartment in many ways. He won't have to kick the stove and the walls are thick and well-insulated, and even though it's a bit cramped he doesn't mind that much. He has his own bedroom and while it's bigger than his living room, the space is still wide enough for a sofa and some other big items. Aiba knows he'll manage--he knows how to now, at any rate, and if he ever runs out of eggs he can just swing by Jun's apartment to ask for some (or, alternatively, swipe a few from Nino's refrigerator).
It's just like Aiba wanted: he's down the road from that apartment complex, so close that he's not even sure if 'walking distance' is an appropriate description. There's a grocery store not too far away and by train Aiba's commute to the kindergarten is shorter by five minutes, which always counts in the end. Overall, it's a good buy, and even if the real estate agent isn't that nice of a person she takes Aiba's signature and money with a giant smile and a grateful bow.
"If you have any questions," she says, head still lowered, "please don't hesitate to call me!"
"Thanks," Aiba says, and means it. He watches her go and when he's sure she's out of the building, he shuts the door, locks it, and sits in the middle of his completely empty living room.
He can already see where everything's going to go--the television and speakers to his immediate left, the sofa directly behind him, and maybe a nice rug to balance it all out. The plants from his mom will go by the window for sunlight, and he has a single bookcase that can be set up somewhere near the couch, just for convenience. Somewhere along the way he'll need curtains and throw pillows and things like that, but they can wait for now. Everything is one step at a time, and he's determined to have enough money to keep himself in this place.
Farther down the room he can already see the kitchen table and the five chairs he'll have to arrange around it in some certain order. But he'll leave that up to everyone. They'll be over later to help him move stuff around and unpack, just like they were there to condense his life into cardboard squares covered with masking tape. And even though he has less junk thanks to Jun's watchful eyes and Sho's informed instructions ("You don't need this, or this, or this--Aiba, what the hell is this?"), he still needs them here.
In his hands Aiba holds a book titled A Guide to Your New Home. Sho bought it for him--of course--and Aiba's been flipping through it for the past couple of days, skimming through all the boring parts and reading only the interesting-looking bits. Unfortunately there aren't many, but he's still hoping something will pop out at him to make this whole moving-in process a lot easier on his mind. It's been stressful, that's for sure, and there's one thing that still seems a little off.
So he calls Nino.
"How do you christen a new house?" Aiba asks. "I mean, how do you make it yours?"
"I don't know," Nino says nonchalantly. "Pay for it?"
"No," Aiba says, and opens his guidebook to the only sound piece of advice it has. "You sleep in it."
It takes a minute or so for the recognition to set in and then a lot of coaxing on Aiba's part, but Nino finally, finally agrees to come over that night.
Aiba doesn't tell him that the only thing to sleep on in the new house is an ancient futon that his mother lent him. It smells of attic and moths and even though he's covered it with new sheets it doesn't help the smell much or make it any more comfortable. He's not sure how he's going to be able to sleep on it until he finds himself a proper bed.
But when Nino shows up, still in a suit and already yawning, Aiba's sure they'll be able to make the most of it.
Pairing(s): Aiba/Nino
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~16,600
Summary: AU. Aiba gets thrown out of his apartment and learns that keeping people happy isn't the same as living the life you want to.
Notes: Part two of two.
"Wait," Jun says. "Hold on. Did you just tell me that you slept all through this morning?"
Aiba pretends to count the hours on his fingers, but he knows perfectly well that he managed to fall back asleep after seven and didn't wake up until noon, still in Nino's bed. "Ah, yep," Aiba says, wriggling the five fingers on his hand in front of Jun's face. "Five hours, actually. Until Nino had to go to the afternoon shift at work."
"Aiba-chan," Jun mumbles, and buries his face in his large mug of hot chocolate, "Nino gave you a time limit, you know." His tone is exasperated, and Aiba knows that Operation New Beginnings (he christened it himself, and even though no one else wants to use it Aiba's sticking to his brilliant idea) isn't exactly moving at lightning speed. But he is working on it, and that he can promise.
"Yeah, well, he wasn't exactly reminding me about that," Aiba huffs. He thinks back to this morning at around ten when Aiba felt Nino's faint getting-up movements, and the small, annoyed noises Nino made when he turned to find Aiba asleep in his bed. Dumb, he'd said breathily, and pulled the thin sheet up to cover Aiba before he slipped out of bed. "He didn't even wake me up!"
"You should have set an alarm," Jun points out, and raises an eyebrow when Aiba just frowns. "At this rate, you'll never move out."
It's just a joke, Aiba knows, but what with Nino not kicking him out of bed this morning, never moving out of his current situation isn't exactly the worst thing that could happen to him. He has to, of course, because there's no way that Aiba could let anything else happen between them--Nino has a life, after all, and most likely a girl, and who is Aiba to mess that up? It's worth dreaming about, that's all. It's worth hoping for while he traces the shadow-lines on Nino's neck in the early morning sunshine.
"Aiba," Jun says loudly. "You there?"
Aiba almost chokes on his coffee. "Uh-huh," he says, as Jun eyes him suspiciously. "I was just thinking about--about, you know, the list."
Hurriedly he produces the thin folder of clippings and notes, all slathered in green marker, that detail apartments that Aiba likes and could afford. He starts going on about location and size and prices, pointing to different layouts and living rates, and eventually he gets Jun so interested in their day ahead that he forgets all about scolding Aiba for taking up too much of Nino's space. He doesn't want to talk about it anymore lest something slip out. Aiba's notorious among them for slip-ups, try as he might to keep secrets in.
He wants today to be a good day, so he and Jun are going to look at flats around the city. Aiba is going to act like he's excited to live on his own again--and if he finds an apartment close enough to Jun and Nino's complex, then he will be. Otherwise, he knows things will turn out all right, just like he predicted in the first place: he'll have an address again, and he'll learn not to throw his money around, and he'll try not to disconnect himself from his best friends in the entire world.
He just has to put a few minor details behind him, like the fact that he'll still be missing Nino's boyish fumbling for more blankets to cover his body and the tiny whimpering sounds he makes when he's trying to find a new comfortable spot on the bed.
"You should be excited," Jun says, poking Aiba's hand on the table. "You'll be in a brand new place soon."
"Yeah," Aiba agrees, for Jun's sake. He has only ever wanted to keep the people he cares about happy. "It'll be great."
--
It's late when Aiba finally gets back to Nino's apartment. Jun had been tougher with the real estate agents than Aiba was; it wasn't even his house they were looking for and yet it was as if Jun had a list of questions planned in his head to bombard the poor agents with. Aiba has to admit it was a little scary to see Jun so adamant about costs of living.
"But then again, this is Jun-kun we're talking about," Nino says as Aiba tells him all of this. They're sitting on the couch and Nino has the remote perched on his knee, but neither of them is actually watching the comedy show on the screen right now. Aiba's too busy trying to balance a bowl of soup on his lap while making elaborate hand gestures at the same time. "I mean, I know you haven't seen him in awhile, but he's still as anal as ever."
"I know," Aiba says, giggling, and just then the audience on the television starts laughing which makes it even funnier. He's not sure what it is--the fact that he and Jun actually went through the entire apartment list and found more than a few bargains in good locations, or that the leftover soup he's eating is homemade with Jun's recipe and that it tastes good, or possibly just that he's sitting on Nino's couch talking to Nino and everything is sort of wonderful right now.
"So what does this mean?" Nino says, and when Aiba looks up there's a smirk close to his face. "You're leaving me before the three weeks are up? Are you--," and here he pauses dramatically, "--breaking up with me?"
"No," Aiba says, aghast, before he realizes that that's not the correct feeling he should be showing right now. But Nino's laughing so hard his head is leaning back against the couch, and Aiba feels like he's just been tricked. "I mean--Nino! I'm going to use up all the time I have here, okay?"
The last of Nino's laughter comes out in a snort, and the two of them grin at each other before Nino smacks Aiba in the shoulder. "Okay," he agrees, and lets his fingers linger on Aiba's shoulder. "Just remember, you have two weeks left before I write you a personal eviction notice."
"I'll just burn that one," Aiba says.
"Like your scrambled eggs?"
It starts with Aiba wiping his used spoon on Nino's arm, but that inevitably escalates into a full-scale scuffle that eventually ends in all the throw pillows being moved to the opposite side of the room and Aiba's soup bowl upset on the floor, leaving Nino to immediately complain about stain remover and how expensive it is to use. But they make a team effort out of it, which means that Nino scrubs his own carpet vigorously with the smallest amount of remover possible and Aiba sits on the couch, holding the rest of the bottle and making comments about how Nino's missed the same spot three times. ("You're blind," Aiba whines, and pokes at the 'missed spot' with his toe. "Look! Right there!" "I will stick your head in the rest of that pot of soup," Nino threatens, still scrubbing.)
They spend the rest of the night lying on both ends of the couch and taking turns on who gets to pick the channel. It's not long before Aiba's eyelids start to droop: he's tired from a long day of craning his neck into empty, stark-white rooms and blue-tiled bathrooms that all look the same, and even though he can feel Nino's feet nudging his legs, telling him to get up and sleep on the futon, he doesn't plan on moving. His body is too heavy and comfortable in the nook of the couch he's settled into.
When he feels Nino move off the couch, though, he wakes up.
"Hey," Nino mumbles, and rubs his face with the palm of his hand. "'M moving to bed."
"Okay," Aiba whispers, and watches Nino go.
One hour later he's snuggling into Nino's wrinkled sheets and sticking their bodies together, cold back to warm front and his nose to the nape of Nino's neck. They fit like a perfect puzzle, so close that Aiba's breaths coast the shell of Nino's ear.
Nino shivers and presses back against Aiba. He must know what's going on, but neither of them moves until morning.
--
The second week of Aiba's in-residence to Nino's home brings a constant schedule of house-hunting. When he's not out with Jun or Ohno (he wonders sometimes if the two ever work, what with the amount of time they've been spending together) looking at houses, he's sitting on the couch in Nino's apartment with sheets and sheets of information and a four-function calculator. On top of that he's not sure what to do with all of these agents calling him and asking for follow-ups and begging for him to take surveys about the places he went to see--he's tried telling a few of them that he's not so sure if their homes are right for him, but that just made their voices louder and their pleas more irritating. So Aiba has just resorted to having Nino answer the phone to say, "Oh sorry, wrong number."
But even Nino is drowning under waves and waves of work. The big-shot company that Sho had been hoping to affiliate with had recently issued a long list of ultimatums, and for some reason Nino was put in charge of creating the presentation that the executives would use to hopefully compromise their alliance. All Aiba sees of Nino nowadays is his face swallowed in bright computer light in the wee, wee hours of the morning or his wide yawns at the breakfast counter, tie barely hanging round his neck.
They've become like a double-income family, Aiba realizes: Nino is the perpetually busy husband and Aiba is the whirlwind of a wife, trying to do six million things at once. Every morning there's breakfast on the table and while Nino is at work, throwing years of his life into a single presentation, Aiba is back at the apartment dusting and reading housing ads and going out to shop for groceries. And, of course, he spends a good chunk of the day traveling around the city, looking at flats for rent.
Aiba comes home just hours before Nino with pamphlets stuffed into his bag and arms full of plastic grocery bags. He's tired and hungry and sometimes he tries to wait for Nino, but for the past few days he's come home at two or three in the morning and Aiba can't make himself stay awake past one-thirty.
But he always hears Nino come in, and in the morning they always wake up together.
This is what worries Aiba. Not that they're sleeping together, because he doesn't find that weird at all--it's that Aiba's climbing into bed and sliding his hands up Nino's back has become so natural that both of them expect it to happen every night. The first time was meant to be the only time, but Aiba's self-control stopped working altogether and he let it happen again (and again, and again). The fact that Nino isn't forcing him out of bed while calling him names and accusing him of being a sexual offender doesn't help, either. Aiba comes back because Nino wants him to, even if they don't ever talk about it.
Sometimes Aiba feels like he should bring it up, but there's no way for him to say, "So Nino, let's talk about why we sleep together!" with a big, cheerful smile. He knows that Nino doesn't want Aiba to mention it, so Aiba pretends that he sleeps on the spare futon all night. He doesn't talk about how Nino should stop hitting the snooze button on his alarm clock so many times, or about how he wants to kiss Nino good-bye when he's moving at snail-speed around the room, getting ready for work.
Their short conversations center a lot on Aiba's housing progress and Nino's goal to kill Sho one day in his sleep. Everything is the same, save the amount of time they both spend away from home, and yet there's a big heavy anchor sitting in the pit of Aiba's stomach that he keeps trying to ignore.
He knows that it's not going to just disappear, though. Every time Aiba finds a house with a good price, every time he looks at the girl in the picture, and every single time he even imagines his lips brushing Nino's shoulders in the dark, the weight just grows and grows. Aiba imagines it blooming into fuzzy colors and multiplying rapidly by the second, just like a disease that he brought onto himself, and one that he doesn't exactly want to find the cure for.
--
Through everything, Aiba remembers that there's an actual reason behind his living in Nino's house: to find his own apartment to live in.
After his first day out with Jun, Aiba had enlisted Ohno's help for a number of reasons, the main one being that Ohno would not scare the real estate agents away with intense questions about architecture and pest control. And he was right--Ohno tagged along for moral support and honest, simple opinions like, "Well, the layout on this one is kind of awkward" and "This one's near me. Consider it!" And even though Jun always takes Aiba out to eat for lunch at really nice restaurants, Ohno and Aiba have an equally satisfying lunch by buying cheap bento boxes at the convenience store and eating them sitting on the steps by the bay.
After an entire week and a half straight of looking at flats, some more than once, Aiba has compiled a list of houses he could buy on the spot. He's given them all a one- or two-sentence review in choppy Aiba shorthand ("Good view, downtown, near station so yay" or "Utilities cheap but bathroom not so cool/location wow; but can my neighbor see me?") and has starred them all with glittery stickers.
He's also taken to carrying around a significant amount of cash, just in case.
"You never know," he tells Jun. "I might find someplace that I just fall in love with."
"But even if you do fall in love," Jun says seriously, "you still have to think about it before you dive right in it."
It made Aiba laugh at the time, because Jun had said it so solemnly. But even with the prime locations, Western-style bathrooms and excellent rates that all of the apartments have, Aiba knows that finding a house isn't exactly his top priority right now. The only thing he can think of when each new door opens in front of him is I'm not living here with Nino.
That never used to bother him before--and before was only twelve or so days ago. Before, Aiba was content with his jobs and his life and even with his not-so-amazing apartment. Calling his friends was enough to keep him going, and even though he didn't see any of them as much as he used to, he didn't think that anything was wrong.
Until now. Being thrust back into Nino's life is strange and overwhelming and yet Aiba wishes he could set up camp in Nino's home, in Nino's room, in Nino's bed. He didn't realize just how much he missed seeing Jun every day and hearing Ohno's laughter and talking to Sho when he wasn't in work mode, and he completely forgot that a good dose of Nino could keep him exhilarated for hours on end.
But Aiba knows that exhilaration can only last so long. He needs his own place again to restore the balance they all had before, when Aiba and Nino were separated by train tracks and zip codes and different beds.
After all, nobody is supposed to like getting evicted.
--
At the end of two weeks, Aiba writes down a tiny fourteen in his day planner (a gift from Sho). He has seven days left as Nino's almost-roommate, and he plans to celebrate today by not going out.
It's been hours since Nino left for work but Aiba is still lying in bed, stretched out over Nino's space and soaking up the slivers of sunshine that the blinds are letting through. Judging by Nino's frustrated sighs after he pressed his hand to the window this morning, it's freezing cold outside despite the sun, but Aiba is perfectly cozy with his legs buried underneath blankets and his face in Nino's pillow.
Every morning should feel like this, Aiba thinks as he rolls around on the cool sheets, stretching out his arms and legs to all four corners of the bed. Every morning should be spent just wiggling your fingers in the air and yawning slowly because you have all the time in the world. When Aiba throws his arm over his face he breathes in Nino-smell from where their skin had been stuck together and it makes him want to stay under the covers forever.
But even if he's not going out there are things to do, like picking a house to live in. Or cooking, because Aiba's beginning to find out that cooking is really fun, despite the constant messes that seem to spring up out of nowhere. Or he could do some laundry--or get the door.
No one has ever rung the doorbell without Aiba inviting them over first, and he's so excited about who this visitor could be that he shoots out of bed and runs to the door without even stopping to make sure that he's wearing enough clothes. But he is (and if his thin t-shirt and shorts offend whoever's at the door, Aiba may lose all his faith in humanity), and he has his hand on the doorknob before his eyes are even looking through the peephole.
He looks anyway, though, and immediately wishes he'd been a little slower.
The door opens to a girl about Aiba's age. She's wearing a simple coat over a plain pink dress, with regular brown boots and a hairstyle that is nondescript at its finest. Aiba feels a little bad and wishes that he could find some way to compliment her in his head, but he knows exactly who she is and if he were a different kind of person, he'd have slammed the door in her face, or wouldn't even have bothered to open the door at all.
But the girl in the photograph is smiling now, and Aiba can't help but smile back.
"Hi," she says, and her voice is neither too loud nor too soft. She has the perfect tone, Aiba thinks, for newscasting--it's just a pity she's not prettier. "Is, um, Ninomiya-kun here?"
"Uh," Aiba says, and looks behind him. He knows perfectly well that the apartment is empty, and he's not sure why he's buying time, but he feels like he should keep this girl here for a little while longer. "No, he's not, actually. I think he's working overtime."
The girl's eyes widen for a moment before she nods, and Aiba watches her styled hair bounce. "Oh! Well, okay then. Do you, um, do you know when he'll be back?"
No, Aiba says in his head.
"Probably not until late," he replies instead, even a little apologetically. "It's been that way for the past few days, anyway."
And there it is: Aiba's confession, even if she doesn't even realize it. But she does get that something's going on with her Ninomiya-kun and the boy she's talking to, and Aiba feels almost like he's won something even though he doesn't even know what. In fact, he shouldn't even have anything to win--if this girl wants Nino, and Nino likes her enough to put her picture in a frame, then isn't this the life Nino should be leading? Isn't the normal life that Aiba wants Nino to have staring him in the face right now, fiddling with her coat buttons and rocking back and forth on her cheap, department-store bought boots?
The answer, no matter how he feels, is yes.
Aiba can't bring himself to even say a proper good-bye. He just clears his throat, nods, and begins to shut the door in the girl's face. But before the door closes all the way she holds out a hand, stopping him.
"Wait," she says. "Can you--I mean--can I leave a message?"
I'm not an answering machine, Aiba thinks bitterly, but then reminds himself that Nino likes her, no matter how boring she looks and sounds. And there's nothing that Aiba can do about that but pat his best friend on the back and tell him that he's done a good job.
"What is it?" Aiba asks, poking his head through the opening of the door.
She takes a deep breath, and Aiba hopes that doesn't mean she's going to start crying. He's not sure if he could take that--Aiba hates it when people cry, no matter who it is. He thinks that tears are the saddest things in the world, and not even this girl should feel so overburdened that she'd feel the need to cry in front of a complete stranger.
"Tell him I said good-bye," she says, and smiles.
Aiba just stares. Good-bye?
The girl bows politely and then leaves without even looking back once. Dumbfounded, Aiba watches her figure all the way down the hall and doesn't shut the door until the clicking of her boots has faded into the sounds of the city.
--
Aiba has Ohno on the phone within seconds of closing the door.
"Oh-chan, Oh-chan," Aiba whispers, even though nobody else can hear him. "We have a problem."
On the other end of the line Aiba hears a lot of shuffling and chewing--Ohno's probably having lunch. Or he's having lunch and working from home at the same time, which happens often and also with mixed results, as Ohno has mistaken sauce for paint more than once. It's a matter of color, is all he says in his defense, though the others tease him mercilessly about it.
"A problem?" Ohno repeats, and swallows. "That's not good."
"No, it's not," Aiba says, and sits down on the floor in the middle of the living room. "Listen, listen--tell me, do you know if Nino's been with a girl lately?"
Been with, Aiba thinks, and smacks himself in the forehead, that is not the right term to use.
But Ohno gets it, and Aiba can almost hear him thinking. "Hm," he hums, and starts mumbling to himself. "Lately? I don't think so."
"Okay, this year then," Aiba says. He's aware that he sounds almost desperate, but he has to know how to handle this situation and how to let Nino know that, just maybe, he's been dumped. "Sometime, anytime--she looked kind of pretty, but not really, just normal. Does that remind you of anybody?"
"Oh!" Ohno says, and Aiba bites his lip. He says a girl's name that Aiba doesn't really hear, because her name doesn't mean anything to him. "She had brown hair, right? But she looked really, I don't know, plain."
Aiba exhales loudly. "Yeah," he says, "that's her," and goes on to explain what just happened.
When he's finished there are seconds of nothing but long breaths over the line, and Aiba has the phone cord twisted into intricate knots around his fist. All he can think of is what's going to happen in a few hours when Nino walks through that door absolutely exhausted and Aiba will have to tell him that what's-her-name stopped by today to leave a message. And if that girl meant anything to Nino, anything at all, Aiba will have to pass on her farewell note, and whatever happens from there is all up in the air--but Aiba can guess. Aiba can guess, but he's scared to.
Finally, after what seems like a year, Ohno says, "You're just going to have to tell him, Aiba-chan."
"But--," Aiba begins, even though he really has nothing to say.
"It's for his own good," Ohno continues. "He'll be happier to know."
Aiba is silent.
"I promise it'll be fine," Ohno says, and Aiba can almost feel Ohno's sincerity reaching through telephone wires and digital wavelengths. "We just want to see Nino happy, right?"
If only you knew, Aiba thinks, even though he suspects that Ohno does know just how much Aiba wants Nino's happiness.
"Of course," Aiba agrees. "We just want a Nino-smile."
"I'm sure you get a lot of those, Aiba-chan," Ohno says, and there's laughter in his voice. "So many you could box them up and sell them."
"Except that I wouldn't give them away for the world," Aiba replies simply.
--
In high school, Nino was on the baseball team.
Aiba wasn't. He liked running and science better, and he chose to devote all of his time to the track and field and physics clubs of the school, even going so far as to become president of the latter. Sometimes when the baseball team was practicing and Aiba was doing an experiment on the third floor of the building he'd look out to the diamond to see Nino on the pitcher's mound, winding up while being yelled at. It seemed like Nino was always getting yelled at by the coach, and even though Nino said he was fine with it because it would just make him better, Aiba could tell otherwise in the way that Nino held himself when they went home together--he slouched more, like a sad puppy. It made Aiba want to beat up the baseball coach.
But Nino did want to be a better pitcher, and he wanted to do it quickly, so he made Aiba help him out. Every day after regular practice, Nino and Aiba would have their own pitching sessions, and Nino would be so upset with his performance that he'd throw the ball into Aiba's glove so hard it felt like a circle had been burned into his palm. But Aiba let him do it, because Nino always felt better afterward and it did help his game. They did this for a year straight and by the end of their sophomore year, Nino was the star of the team.
That didn't stop the private practices, though. But after he reached his goal Nino only wanted to play catch with Aiba when there was something on his mind that he needed to get rid of. Pitching, he told Aiba, calmed him down. It made him focus on a single spot in the center of his field of vision, in the center of the universe. The rest of the world was a blank canvas filled with wind and faint sound; nothing else mattered except for two hands, a glove, and a ball.
"You forget everything," Aiba remembers Nino saying. "It solves all of your problems for awhile."
"Too bad I don't have that," Aiba replied, as Nino tossed the ball to him. "I think too much!"
And Nino had laughed. "Sucks to be you," he'd said, as the ball soared back in his direction. He caught it gracefully, directly in the palm of his hand.
When Nino walks through the door, Aiba holds up a baseball glove and ball, both found in the recesses of one of the cardboard boxes he'd brought with him from the old house.
"Hey," he says, grinning. He's nervous as hell, but he doesn't let it show. "Let's play catch."
--
"You're lucky," Nino is saying as he follows Aiba down to the field, "that I turned in my presentation today."
"Oh!" Aiba is so ridiculously full of energy that it's hard for him to concentrate it all into one mindset; all of his limbs are shaking with anxiety and fear and he feels like he's either going to explode or throw up. He's generally an excitable person, but this is just too much. "Great! How did it go?"
Nino grunts. "As good as expected," he says, and slips his glove on. It took him less than five minutes to find it, but eventually he rescued it from being eaten alive by moths underneath the bed. "This feels weird. It's been a long time, I probably suck at this."
"Practice makes perfect," Aiba quips. "I just--I wanted to celebrate, kind of." He doesn't know what he's going on about, but his mind is saying just talk, don't think. "I might've found an apartment."
This is a total lie, and Nino has been away enough not to know. Aiba feels like a horrible, horrible person.
"Impressive," Nino says, whistling low, "and before your time's up, too!" He stops for a second as they're standing on the stairs leading down to the grass and says, "You just want to get away from me, don't you?"
He looks so serious that for a second Aiba considers giving up and just blurting everything out in one long monologue without stopping to breathe. But he knows all too well that Nino is just playing around, and so Aiba laughs nervously and squeezes the baseball in his fist as hard as he can. This has to be, he thinks, worse than getting evicted. That can lead to good things, like bed-sharing and seeing your friends again and realizing that you've missed too much. It's nothing like having to tell your best friend that he's just been dumped.
"Of course," Aiba says, and jumps off the last three stairs. "I mean, the spare futon isn't the most comfortable thing on earth, Nino."
Nino steps off the last stair and then stops. Aiba turns around, expectant.
"Yeah, except," Nino says casually, "you haven't exactly been using the spare futon, have you."
Oh, shit.
The weight in Aiba's stomach triples in one strong instant and he clears his throat. It's all he can do right now--what do you say to that, after all? How do you save yourself? He knows he can't. There's no lifeguard here to throw him a rope to safety and even his people skills can't rescue him from this mess. Nino knows him too well, knows the shape of his face and the curves of his shoulder blades and the certain hitches of his voice so perfectly that there is no way Aiba can run away right now and still be fine.
"No," Aiba says carefully. "I haven't been."
Nino nods.
"Okay," he says, and squints into the sky above him, which is a sunset-collage of blushing pinks and gentle orange colors. It's a startling contrast to what Aiba imagines the inside of his head must look like. "Let's play."
This is far from over, but Aiba obeys. His hand moves mechanically, stiffly; somehow he manages to get the ball moving in a smooth arc over to Nino's side of the field. Aiba watches Nino's gloved hand move just as gracefully as it did years ago to cushion the fall of the baseball, and the thudding sound the ball makes in his palm is almost delicate.
"Nino," Aiba tries to say. His breaths are like gunshots in the dark, and he doesn't know what to say or how to say it, but he knows he needs to talk. "Nino, I need to--move out."
Nino frowns. "Well, yeah," he says, and pitches the ball back to Aiba. "You've got a week left."
Aiba tries to swallow, but his throat is unbearably dry, and when he fumbles to catch the toss it hits the ground before he can get to it. "No, Nino, I mean. I need to move out now."
"What?" Nino asks. He's just standing there, and from Aiba's point of view he looks smaller than he usually is. "Why?"
Aiba stalls for a second before he shrugs. "Because," he says lamely. "You should know."
But the thing is, Nino probably doesn't, and Aiba is just being unfair. "Aiba, look, I don't--," he begins, and bites his lip for a second before going on, "--I don't care that you sleep in my bed." He takes a deep breath and his eyebrows twist--there's more he wants to say, but he's holding himself back. In his heart Aiba finishes the thought: stay, stay with me, I want you here.
"That's not it," Aiba says, even though a lot of it is. He looks down at the ball sitting by his feet and nudges it a little, watching it roll in Nino's direction; a slow crawl to where his entire body wants to go. "We're doing too much."
Nino's inhale is sharp. "What are you talking about?" he says, voice rising, and Aiba instinctively takes a step back. He knows Nino is coming toward him, taking long strides, but he refuses to look up. "Who exactly is it too much for?"
"You," Aiba breathes, and Nino is so close to him now, so close that he can almost hear the sound of their wild heartbeats in the dead silence that thrives between them. "Look, Nino, this girl stopped by today, and she asked for you but you were at work," Aiba says, and he's babbling now but he just doesn't want to have to endure the emptiness, "so--so she told me to tell you good-bye for her."
"And?" Nino says, and one of his hands reaches out to grasp Aiba's elbow. Aiba flinches; he can't help it, and Nino grips harder in response. "So what?"
"I saw that picture, Nino," Aiba says, still breathless. He feels like a balloon slowly running out of air, drifting through deadwood in a forest, just waiting to be popped. "The one on your coffee table--you're in it, and she is, too. Both of you look so excited," Aiba goes on, and now he doesn't care what comes out of his mouth. "You need to be with her, with some girl that you can get married to and have cute kids with, and--and we can't do that." He pauses to suck in a mouthful of dry, crisp air that stings his lungs, but it doesn't hurt as much as Nino's fingers on his arm do. "You should take her back."
Take her back so I can go, Aiba pleads, just do it so I can leave you with her.
For a moment Nino's hand loosens on Aiba's elbow and it almost feels gentle, like he's being held in place and Nino is afraid that Aiba will just float away if he doesn't do anything. Aiba watches Nino look down to the baseball in between their feet, and he jumps, startled, when Nino suddenly looks up again.
"You can't make me," is all Nino says, quieter than Aiba has ever heard him speak before. "You don't know what I want."
He bends down to pick up the ball and then walks away, crunching the browning grass underneath his feet. When Aiba looks up the sky is darkening; the sunset has passed into dusk.
--
The cutest real estate agent in the city sells Aiba his dream home on the Monday of his third week.
It's a charming little thing just blocks down the road from where Nino and Jun live, and even though he has to walk to the station it's not too far and besides, the weather will get warmer soon enough. He has one bedroom all to himself and a living room that he can't wait to fill with all of the things he's collected over the years. The place isn't big, but it's his and the bare walls and empty rooms are calling his name, telling him to hurry up and move already.
In his head Aiba sees his new house filled with paintings by Ohno of strange animals in spacesuits and buff men with cigarettes dangling off the edges of their fingers. He envisions flower vases that his mother will make him put up by the balcony and shelves and shelves of cookbooks that he will sneak from his father's library. He'll stick a table somewhere in the center of his dining-and-living area, and he'll have to make sure to get enough chairs to hold all of his friends. Sho will have a seat facing the door, Ohno will sit next to Aiba, Jun will need lots of space because he likes to stretch out and Nino--well, Nino will...
Aiba's mind stops there.
In reality, he hasn't bought a house. He's sitting on the last stair that leads into the field, still holding his baseball glove between his knees, which are pulled up all the way to his chin. It hasn't been long since Nino left, but the real cold has settled in and Aiba lost feeling in the tips of his fingers long ago.
But he can't make himself get up. All his life he has only ever wanted to make his friends and family excited about life, about their relationships and living situations and jobs, and he's sacrificed so much but he's never been through anything like this. He's never seen Nino so outwardly frustrated about a single thing, and for him to ignore Aiba's mention of the girl--well, either she meant nothing to him or Aiba's leaving means something much more.
And that scares him, to think that Nino might want what he does; it scares him to think that it took them only two weeks to reach this conclusion. Fourteen days ago Aiba only knew that he needed to find a new place to live and get back on his feet again, and that his friends were going to help him through it. Fourteen days later and he couldn't care less about finding an apartment and starting over. He just wants everything to go back to normal, and even if it means doing all of those things there's still Nino to take care of.
Aiba's movements are all forceful, but he's finally up and moving, however stiffly. His bones feel frozen solid and when he finally enters the apartment building the heat hits him in a dizzy rush; each step he takes up to the third floor is another that thaws him out, but inside Aiba is calculating the number of seconds he has left until he walks through Nino's front door.
When he does, the apartment is eerily dark, and the spare futon--which hasn't been laid out in ages--is staring Aiba in the face.
"So," Aiba says to nobody in particular, and throws his baseball glove into the open cardboard box on the floor. "This is it, huh."
He lowers himself gingerly onto the futon, kicks off his shoes and pulls the dusty-smelling sheet all the way up to his face. His body is a little warmer, but there's a chilliness inside of him that no amount of blankets or sleep will ever fix. For now he just shuts his eyes as tightly as he can and tries to relax his strung-out self by imagining that none of this ever, ever happened.
--
Aiba's sleep is restless, punctuated by random rushes of adrenaline that soar throughout his body for no reason at all. He suspects that his dreams have something to do with it, but by the time he's blinking awake, panting and wiping the sweat off his palms, he can't remember anything but a disturbed feeling in his gut and a near-paralyzing fear taking hold of his body and not letting go.
He runs his hands through his hair and curls up in a ball, breathing out heavily. There's no way he's ever going to get any rest if the night is just going to continue on like this, and he knows that it is--sleep isn't an escape for him, it's just a tease of nothingness until his thoughts manage to creep up on him again from behind.
"Stop," Aiba whispers into his cupped hands, breathing in and out slowly to the tempo of the clock hanging on the wall. "Please, just for right now."
His whole body relaxes on command, and he settles back into the futon, hoping that he won't wake up again until morning.
And then he hears the footsteps.
They fall softly on the carpet by Aiba's head and before he can say anything, before the signals in his nerves start to work, he feels the electric touch of Nino's hand on his shoulder and his breaths already hot and quick on the back of his neck. There's no time for Aiba's mind to respond before their arms are working to find each other, moving sheets and pillows out of the way, throwing everything unnecessary to the side.
"You're here," Aiba says dumbly. Nino knows he's not blind, but he figures it's worth mentioning that Aiba isn't the one getting up and moving into Nino's bed, taking care not to make too much noise and disturb the usually already-sleeping Nino. "Why?"
Nino makes a sound that's a cross between a whimper and a grunt and he doesn't say anything until they're stuck together as usual, legs tangled together and hands reaching for each other, though not quite touching. His face is pressed against Aiba's back, and Aiba can feel him breathing a little too quickly.
"Because you think you know what I need," he says, voice muffled, and the slight vibrations send a shiver down Aiba's spine. "But you don't."
"Why not?" It's like an argument between two stubborn five-year-olds, but Aiba doesn't expect anything else, even at their ages. He curls his hand into Nino's and tickles the inside of his palm with his fingertips, trying to coax an answer out of Nino when in reality they should both be putting a few things out in the open. "I just want you to be happy, that's all."
Nino sighs and pulls his hand away from Aiba's.
"It's not with her," he says. "You don't know anything, Aiba."
Aiba is silent for a long while. He doesn't know how to tell Nino that he cares too much to go and yet that's exactly why he needs to leave, and no matter how much he insists Nino isn't suddenly going to give into the idea of getting a girlfriend and then moving onto marriage and a barrage of children. Nino just isn't that kind of guy, and Aiba knows that, as much as he hopes every day that Nino will find somebody special to hold hands in bed with.
Aiba just wasn't prepared for it to be him, even if he feels the exact same way.
"I'm going to move in down the street," Aiba says resolutely. "You can see me anytime."
"Aiba," Nino says, lifting his head up. "I would probably kill myself if I had to see you all the time."
Aiba snorts; he can't help it. As far as emotional conversations go, this is probably the worst one he's ever had, but Nino's lips are ghosting the edge of his shoulder and even if his words aren't saying much, his actions are. It's always been that way between them.
"Listen," Nino starts, and presses his lips to Aiba's neck in a chaste kiss before going on, "I don't want her. She can't take your place."
"Oh," Aiba says. He can feel his heartbeat begin to quicken, and he tries to stay as quiet as possible, but he's too full of awkward emotions and feelings he can't find names to. "Nino, what are you saying?"
"I've missed you," Nino says, exhaling shakily, and he doesn't need to say anything else.
They lie like that for awhile, simply breathing. Aiba's hand moves back to Nino's, holding him in place. There are too many things for them to say and Aiba knows that neither of them is going to talk, but it's four in the morning and the darkness around them is too familiar and, now that they're in this position, almost comforting. They're falling asleep again to the melody of their heartbeats, an erratic rhythm that reminds Aiba of storm clouds running races through the sky.
"Don't tell me this will never happen again," Nino barely whispers.
When Aiba twists round to kiss Nino there's no pretense, just a surprised little sound that comes from one of them, or both of them--it doesn't really matter. All Aiba cares about are Nino's hands curling into his own and the promises of all the tomorrows to come.
--
On day twenty-one, Aiba skips out on making breakfast and rents an apartment instead.
It's not as perfect as the one in his dream, but it's better than his old apartment in many ways. He won't have to kick the stove and the walls are thick and well-insulated, and even though it's a bit cramped he doesn't mind that much. He has his own bedroom and while it's bigger than his living room, the space is still wide enough for a sofa and some other big items. Aiba knows he'll manage--he knows how to now, at any rate, and if he ever runs out of eggs he can just swing by Jun's apartment to ask for some (or, alternatively, swipe a few from Nino's refrigerator).
It's just like Aiba wanted: he's down the road from that apartment complex, so close that he's not even sure if 'walking distance' is an appropriate description. There's a grocery store not too far away and by train Aiba's commute to the kindergarten is shorter by five minutes, which always counts in the end. Overall, it's a good buy, and even if the real estate agent isn't that nice of a person she takes Aiba's signature and money with a giant smile and a grateful bow.
"If you have any questions," she says, head still lowered, "please don't hesitate to call me!"
"Thanks," Aiba says, and means it. He watches her go and when he's sure she's out of the building, he shuts the door, locks it, and sits in the middle of his completely empty living room.
He can already see where everything's going to go--the television and speakers to his immediate left, the sofa directly behind him, and maybe a nice rug to balance it all out. The plants from his mom will go by the window for sunlight, and he has a single bookcase that can be set up somewhere near the couch, just for convenience. Somewhere along the way he'll need curtains and throw pillows and things like that, but they can wait for now. Everything is one step at a time, and he's determined to have enough money to keep himself in this place.
Farther down the room he can already see the kitchen table and the five chairs he'll have to arrange around it in some certain order. But he'll leave that up to everyone. They'll be over later to help him move stuff around and unpack, just like they were there to condense his life into cardboard squares covered with masking tape. And even though he has less junk thanks to Jun's watchful eyes and Sho's informed instructions ("You don't need this, or this, or this--Aiba, what the hell is this?"), he still needs them here.
In his hands Aiba holds a book titled A Guide to Your New Home. Sho bought it for him--of course--and Aiba's been flipping through it for the past couple of days, skimming through all the boring parts and reading only the interesting-looking bits. Unfortunately there aren't many, but he's still hoping something will pop out at him to make this whole moving-in process a lot easier on his mind. It's been stressful, that's for sure, and there's one thing that still seems a little off.
So he calls Nino.
"How do you christen a new house?" Aiba asks. "I mean, how do you make it yours?"
"I don't know," Nino says nonchalantly. "Pay for it?"
"No," Aiba says, and opens his guidebook to the only sound piece of advice it has. "You sleep in it."
It takes a minute or so for the recognition to set in and then a lot of coaxing on Aiba's part, but Nino finally, finally agrees to come over that night.
Aiba doesn't tell him that the only thing to sleep on in the new house is an ancient futon that his mother lent him. It smells of attic and moths and even though he's covered it with new sheets it doesn't help the smell much or make it any more comfortable. He's not sure how he's going to be able to sleep on it until he finds himself a proper bed.
But when Nino shows up, still in a suit and already yawning, Aiba's sure they'll be able to make the most of it.