for every door that closes (another one opens)
Title: for every door that closes (another one opens)
Pairing/Groups: Ohno Satoshi/Yamashita Tomohisa; Naruse Ryo/Kurosaki [Arashi/NEWS; Maou/Kurosagi]
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers for the ending of Maou and...boykissing?
Notes: Written for rolling_scone for the jerainbowbridge exchange.
He’s a little dubious about living in an apartment where the landlord looks younger than he does, but it’s close to the law firm and the rent is cheap considering it’s in the middle of the city, even for someone who is fresh out of law school and not making very much. He’s pretty sure he’s the only tenant because he never sees or hears anyone, and he’s pretty certain the landlord has something on his record because he sees a police car parked outside once or twice (either that or the landlord is a secret detective). But what’s important right now is saving enough to start his own office and as long as he gets out of living here unscathed he doesn’t have a problem who the landlord is.
One night he comes home dead tired from working overtime and he’s just about to pass out on his futon when a drop of water lands on his forehead. With squinted eyes he looks up.
“What the…”
*
He’s only seen Ohno Satoshi a handful of times in real person and spoken to him even less. So it’s surprising, and a little bit annoying in his condition right now, that Arashi’s leader steps into the empty dance studio that he is using to be angry in.
The older boy looks unsure as soon as he spots him in the corner - he knows Yamashita as Takki’s favorite junior, as someone in the same jimusho as him, but nothing more and he can feel his presence as less than welcomed in this moment. But there’s something - a flash in Yamashita’s (they call him Yamapi, don’t they) eyes or a twitch in his expression that makes him stay.
“They said I have to be the leader of a new group.”
He doesn’t know Toma as well as Nino or Aiba or Jun does, but he does know he and Yamashita are best friends. He does know that it broke Aiba’s and Nino’s and Jun’s hearts that they had to leave him behind. He does know that Toma won’t be a part of the new group.
The words hang in the air, lasting and heavy. It doesn’t need to be mentioned that the younger boy doesn’t want to be in the new group. What they want hardly ever matters when they’re that young. Ohno thinks about how he won that title by janken.
“It’s because they know you can.”
*
He’s just about to head out to Katsuragi’s shop when there’s a knock on the door. He hopes it’s not a salesman - they’ve taken an odd tendency to show up at the most inopportune times at night-and opens the door to find his tenant looking back at him.
“Um.” The tenant - what was his name? Naruse? - looks like he could fall asleep standing up. “The pipes are leaking.”
There’s a pause where Kurosaki blinks. He knew he should have done the repairs before opening that apartment out for rent. “You can stay here for the night. I’m going to go out anyway.”
Naruse looks unsure for a beat, then bows in thanks and Kurosaki doesn’t even have to show him to the futon because the other man is already curled up and passed out on it.
*
A few months later, he guests the show NEWS is hosting with Nino. Yamashita looks tired, thinner, a little bit wistful. But he smiles for the cameras.
There’s a question - Can you give us an advice? - and there isn’t one really, there isn’t anything to say. He can’t say there will be a day when everything falls into place because it’s impossible to believe that unless they see that for themselves.
After filming, Yamashita catches his eye in the hallway to the dressing rooms and smiles. It’s probably not his brightest or strongest (Ohno doesn’t know for sure because he doesn’t know Yamashita that well) but it’s a beginning. As they walk past each other, they shake hands and exchange standard greetings.
The warmth stays in his hands for a long while afterwards.
*
Kurosaki tells him that it’ll take some time to repair his apartment. Naruse doesn’t really mind; he only ever uses his apartment to sleep in and Kurosaki has cleared out space for an extra futon. Not that the other man is ever actually in there. Naruse doesn’t question it, and is satisfied with having a roof over his head.
Sometimes he dreams of his brother’s funeral. The scent of incense is too strong, the sense of injustice even stronger. The sight of his mother kneeling on floor, shedding silent tears makes his hands clench, and he forces himself to swallow back the bitterness at the back of his throat.
Sometimes he dreams of waiting in front of the emergency room in the cold hospital in the middle of the night. There is no familiar figure, no warm presence next to him. Sometimes people walk by, and he focuses on the clicking of their shoes, drawing closer and then further away again in repetition. Hushed voices, clipped tones, the scratching of a pen across paper. The overwhelming smell of antiseptic.
He wakes up to someone shaking him. His hair is sticking to his face from the sweat and for a moment he can’t remember where he is - his minds takes him to the construction site, huddled up under cover with Ryo (the real one, his mind tells him even in the dizziness) - before everything rights itself again, and he’s blinking away the last traces of his dreams, shivering.
Kurosaki is crouched above him, eyes unreadable. Naruse takes the glass of water he offers.
*
He doesn’t expect her to burst into tears. He hasn’t ever made a girl cry (though one made him cry in kindergarten; she had pushed a handful of mud down his shirt and his teacher had changed him into a spare uniform, only it had been the pink one meant for girls and his classmates hadn’t let up on the teasing for two weeks) and he’s not sure what to do. The pen and paper she had held out for an autograph is limp in his hands.
So he’s not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse when Yamashita shows up. If the girl finds out she met two idols in one day at the same time, Ohno worries she might faint and then he’ll have to call for an ambulance-
But Yamashita is giving the girl tissues and handing her his autograph and sending her off in her way. Ohno counts this as a blessing.
“I’ll buy you ramen,” he offers, gesturing down the street to the ramen shop where he had been headed to before the whole incident. The younger idol follows him.
“Do you usually go out like that?” Yamapi asks after they’ve made their orders. Ohno doesn’t even have a cap to hide under and it’s sort of impressive and stupid at the same time. He himself can’t step out until he has a pair of sunglasses and a hat on.
“If you stick your jaw out like this,” Ohno demonstrates, “then you’re usually all set.”
Throughout the meal, they practice sticking their jaws out.
*
It’s a night like any other; Kurosaki is out again, and Naruse is hunched over the kotatsu (it’s the only thing that produces heat in the apartment) poring through some documents that he was too tired to get through in the office. The radio is on for soft background noise and it’s not until it tells him that it’s two in the morning that he moves to put the papers away.
He’s about to turn the lights out when there’s the sound of the key turning in the lock and Kurosaki stumbles in, clutching a shoulder. It doesn’t take long for him to realize that there’s a gash on the shoulder. Fortunately it’s not very deep and Kurosaki has a first aid kit. There aren’t any words exchanged but Naruse cleans the cut and bandages it as best as he can and Kurosagi doesn’t complain. There aren’t any questions, and no answers are offered but it’s simpler that way.
They fall asleep in the silence.
*
He doesn’t usually take people fishing with him but after spending 24 hours on the boat with Kato (Yamashita had vowed that he wouldn’t regret it) he thinks that having company isn’t too bad. But he is completely unprepared to see Yamashita standing by his boat. The sun isn’t up yet and the figure is indistinguishable from a distance in the orange glow of the lights on the dock, but when he is closer, the figure turns around and it’s unmistakable who it is, as bundled against the early morning (…late night?) chill as he is.
“Shige told me how to find your boat,” Yamashita says instead of “good morning” or “I’m sorry for appearing unexpectedly” or even “is it okay if I go along with you?”
“You’ll get wet with normal pants.” Ohno says, handing over a pair of waterproof ones before starting preparations. “Shige left these the last time he was here.”
The sky is starting its shift into the deepest of blues when they set out. There are lights from other fishing boats also setting out and it’s this sign of fellow human presence in the stillness that is familiar and warming. Yamapi watches the dock grow further away until the only the very faintest glow is visible, and then soon even that is swallowed up by the horizon.
*
Nights nowadays are filled with too many flashes from the past, nightmares where he runs and runs down dark, long echoing hallways without exits. He blames it on the work; recently he’s been working overtime every night on a complicated case and the days are filled with running in and out of meetings with the team and with the clients.
He doesn’t particularly enjoy smoking but it does calm his nerves like nothing else so he gives in occasionally. So when Kurosaki offers him the joint that he’d been inhaling from, he accepts it like this is a normal occurrence.
Naruse, with hair falling over his eyes and elbows on the railing and long fingers holding his - Kurosaki’s - joint with the moonlight stretching shadows across his face, is very pretty. It’s not like he’s going to say that, but he’s not going to stop himself from thinking it.
The way he leans over and shares the nicotine directly from Naruse’s mouth is a way of expressing it though.
And so is the way he lets Naruse grind against him ten minutes later.
*
“Matsumoto-kun said you were interested in making a leader group.”
Ohno blinks over his beer; they’ve been sitting at the booth for a while now and he might have drunk more than he’d intended to. “Bwuh?” He slurs unintelligibly and stares at Yamashita’s face across the table.
“You could start one,” Yamashita continues, shelling a peanut from the glass dish in front of him.
Ohno remembers the conversation at Hey! Hey! Hey! from years ago. He didn’t think Matsujun would remember. It had been mostly for the audience and for laughs in the studio.
“Who’d join something like that?” He laughs, one side of the face resting against his arm on the table now. His eyes are unclear with alcohol and the onset of sleep.
“I would.”
*
Years later on a morning like any other, Kurosaki reads the newspaper. The front page is filled with stories revolving around the same news. Bold headlines run across the page. He folds the newspaper closed again.
The clouds are heavy and gray. Fat raindrops splatter against the windows.
Back to work.
*
When Ohno wakes up, he’s lying in an unfamiliar bed. He only remembers going out to drink with Yamashita last night; he can’t remember anything else that happened afterwards.
The scent of freshly brewed coffee drifts in through the open door and he follows it. Yamashita is leaning against the counter, sitting with a mug while reading something on his phone. He looks up when Ohno enters the kitchen.
“Morning. If you want to wash up, I’ve left stuff you can use.” Yamashita says gesturing at someplace behind him that Ohno supposes is the bathroom. “And if you feel like eating I can make breakfast too.”
It’s completely different from crashing at Nino’s, where he uses Nino’s toothbrush and usually has to make breakfast for the both of them (Nino calls it payment for lodging). There’s a brand-new toothbrush set out for him along with clean towels and a change of clothes. When he walks out of the bathroom with the towel still hanging from his head, Yamashita is on the phone, talking to his manager.
When he hangs up and walks into the kitchen, Ohno is making chahan, and something about the sight is so out of place and fitting al at once that Yamapi leans against the counter and watches without disturbing the older man until he turns off the stove.
Ohno turns towards him the same time he leans forward, away from the counter. It fits perfectly, the timing of their movement and in the next breath Yamashita is kissing him. Ohno takes it in stride and holds onto a shoulder for stability, not breaking the kiss.
When they part, Yamapi’s heart is beating at his throat. Ohno smiles, and the corners of his eyes crinkle adorably and in the end there isn’t a need for explanations, a need to say anything because the quirk of Ohno’s lips tell him he knows.
And that’s enough for now.
Pairing/Groups: Ohno Satoshi/Yamashita Tomohisa; Naruse Ryo/Kurosaki [Arashi/NEWS; Maou/Kurosagi]
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers for the ending of Maou and...boykissing?
Notes: Written for rolling_scone for the jerainbowbridge exchange.
He’s a little dubious about living in an apartment where the landlord looks younger than he does, but it’s close to the law firm and the rent is cheap considering it’s in the middle of the city, even for someone who is fresh out of law school and not making very much. He’s pretty sure he’s the only tenant because he never sees or hears anyone, and he’s pretty certain the landlord has something on his record because he sees a police car parked outside once or twice (either that or the landlord is a secret detective). But what’s important right now is saving enough to start his own office and as long as he gets out of living here unscathed he doesn’t have a problem who the landlord is.
One night he comes home dead tired from working overtime and he’s just about to pass out on his futon when a drop of water lands on his forehead. With squinted eyes he looks up.
“What the…”
*
He’s only seen Ohno Satoshi a handful of times in real person and spoken to him even less. So it’s surprising, and a little bit annoying in his condition right now, that Arashi’s leader steps into the empty dance studio that he is using to be angry in.
The older boy looks unsure as soon as he spots him in the corner - he knows Yamashita as Takki’s favorite junior, as someone in the same jimusho as him, but nothing more and he can feel his presence as less than welcomed in this moment. But there’s something - a flash in Yamashita’s (they call him Yamapi, don’t they) eyes or a twitch in his expression that makes him stay.
“They said I have to be the leader of a new group.”
He doesn’t know Toma as well as Nino or Aiba or Jun does, but he does know he and Yamashita are best friends. He does know that it broke Aiba’s and Nino’s and Jun’s hearts that they had to leave him behind. He does know that Toma won’t be a part of the new group.
The words hang in the air, lasting and heavy. It doesn’t need to be mentioned that the younger boy doesn’t want to be in the new group. What they want hardly ever matters when they’re that young. Ohno thinks about how he won that title by janken.
“It’s because they know you can.”
*
He’s just about to head out to Katsuragi’s shop when there’s a knock on the door. He hopes it’s not a salesman - they’ve taken an odd tendency to show up at the most inopportune times at night-and opens the door to find his tenant looking back at him.
“Um.” The tenant - what was his name? Naruse? - looks like he could fall asleep standing up. “The pipes are leaking.”
There’s a pause where Kurosaki blinks. He knew he should have done the repairs before opening that apartment out for rent. “You can stay here for the night. I’m going to go out anyway.”
Naruse looks unsure for a beat, then bows in thanks and Kurosaki doesn’t even have to show him to the futon because the other man is already curled up and passed out on it.
*
A few months later, he guests the show NEWS is hosting with Nino. Yamashita looks tired, thinner, a little bit wistful. But he smiles for the cameras.
There’s a question - Can you give us an advice? - and there isn’t one really, there isn’t anything to say. He can’t say there will be a day when everything falls into place because it’s impossible to believe that unless they see that for themselves.
After filming, Yamashita catches his eye in the hallway to the dressing rooms and smiles. It’s probably not his brightest or strongest (Ohno doesn’t know for sure because he doesn’t know Yamashita that well) but it’s a beginning. As they walk past each other, they shake hands and exchange standard greetings.
The warmth stays in his hands for a long while afterwards.
*
Kurosaki tells him that it’ll take some time to repair his apartment. Naruse doesn’t really mind; he only ever uses his apartment to sleep in and Kurosaki has cleared out space for an extra futon. Not that the other man is ever actually in there. Naruse doesn’t question it, and is satisfied with having a roof over his head.
Sometimes he dreams of his brother’s funeral. The scent of incense is too strong, the sense of injustice even stronger. The sight of his mother kneeling on floor, shedding silent tears makes his hands clench, and he forces himself to swallow back the bitterness at the back of his throat.
Sometimes he dreams of waiting in front of the emergency room in the cold hospital in the middle of the night. There is no familiar figure, no warm presence next to him. Sometimes people walk by, and he focuses on the clicking of their shoes, drawing closer and then further away again in repetition. Hushed voices, clipped tones, the scratching of a pen across paper. The overwhelming smell of antiseptic.
He wakes up to someone shaking him. His hair is sticking to his face from the sweat and for a moment he can’t remember where he is - his minds takes him to the construction site, huddled up under cover with Ryo (the real one, his mind tells him even in the dizziness) - before everything rights itself again, and he’s blinking away the last traces of his dreams, shivering.
Kurosaki is crouched above him, eyes unreadable. Naruse takes the glass of water he offers.
*
He doesn’t expect her to burst into tears. He hasn’t ever made a girl cry (though one made him cry in kindergarten; she had pushed a handful of mud down his shirt and his teacher had changed him into a spare uniform, only it had been the pink one meant for girls and his classmates hadn’t let up on the teasing for two weeks) and he’s not sure what to do. The pen and paper she had held out for an autograph is limp in his hands.
So he’s not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse when Yamashita shows up. If the girl finds out she met two idols in one day at the same time, Ohno worries she might faint and then he’ll have to call for an ambulance-
But Yamashita is giving the girl tissues and handing her his autograph and sending her off in her way. Ohno counts this as a blessing.
“I’ll buy you ramen,” he offers, gesturing down the street to the ramen shop where he had been headed to before the whole incident. The younger idol follows him.
“Do you usually go out like that?” Yamapi asks after they’ve made their orders. Ohno doesn’t even have a cap to hide under and it’s sort of impressive and stupid at the same time. He himself can’t step out until he has a pair of sunglasses and a hat on.
“If you stick your jaw out like this,” Ohno demonstrates, “then you’re usually all set.”
Throughout the meal, they practice sticking their jaws out.
*
It’s a night like any other; Kurosaki is out again, and Naruse is hunched over the kotatsu (it’s the only thing that produces heat in the apartment) poring through some documents that he was too tired to get through in the office. The radio is on for soft background noise and it’s not until it tells him that it’s two in the morning that he moves to put the papers away.
He’s about to turn the lights out when there’s the sound of the key turning in the lock and Kurosaki stumbles in, clutching a shoulder. It doesn’t take long for him to realize that there’s a gash on the shoulder. Fortunately it’s not very deep and Kurosaki has a first aid kit. There aren’t any words exchanged but Naruse cleans the cut and bandages it as best as he can and Kurosagi doesn’t complain. There aren’t any questions, and no answers are offered but it’s simpler that way.
They fall asleep in the silence.
*
He doesn’t usually take people fishing with him but after spending 24 hours on the boat with Kato (Yamashita had vowed that he wouldn’t regret it) he thinks that having company isn’t too bad. But he is completely unprepared to see Yamashita standing by his boat. The sun isn’t up yet and the figure is indistinguishable from a distance in the orange glow of the lights on the dock, but when he is closer, the figure turns around and it’s unmistakable who it is, as bundled against the early morning (…late night?) chill as he is.
“Shige told me how to find your boat,” Yamashita says instead of “good morning” or “I’m sorry for appearing unexpectedly” or even “is it okay if I go along with you?”
“You’ll get wet with normal pants.” Ohno says, handing over a pair of waterproof ones before starting preparations. “Shige left these the last time he was here.”
The sky is starting its shift into the deepest of blues when they set out. There are lights from other fishing boats also setting out and it’s this sign of fellow human presence in the stillness that is familiar and warming. Yamapi watches the dock grow further away until the only the very faintest glow is visible, and then soon even that is swallowed up by the horizon.
*
Nights nowadays are filled with too many flashes from the past, nightmares where he runs and runs down dark, long echoing hallways without exits. He blames it on the work; recently he’s been working overtime every night on a complicated case and the days are filled with running in and out of meetings with the team and with the clients.
He doesn’t particularly enjoy smoking but it does calm his nerves like nothing else so he gives in occasionally. So when Kurosaki offers him the joint that he’d been inhaling from, he accepts it like this is a normal occurrence.
Naruse, with hair falling over his eyes and elbows on the railing and long fingers holding his - Kurosaki’s - joint with the moonlight stretching shadows across his face, is very pretty. It’s not like he’s going to say that, but he’s not going to stop himself from thinking it.
The way he leans over and shares the nicotine directly from Naruse’s mouth is a way of expressing it though.
And so is the way he lets Naruse grind against him ten minutes later.
*
“Matsumoto-kun said you were interested in making a leader group.”
Ohno blinks over his beer; they’ve been sitting at the booth for a while now and he might have drunk more than he’d intended to. “Bwuh?” He slurs unintelligibly and stares at Yamashita’s face across the table.
“You could start one,” Yamashita continues, shelling a peanut from the glass dish in front of him.
Ohno remembers the conversation at Hey! Hey! Hey! from years ago. He didn’t think Matsujun would remember. It had been mostly for the audience and for laughs in the studio.
“Who’d join something like that?” He laughs, one side of the face resting against his arm on the table now. His eyes are unclear with alcohol and the onset of sleep.
“I would.”
*
Years later on a morning like any other, Kurosaki reads the newspaper. The front page is filled with stories revolving around the same news. Bold headlines run across the page. He folds the newspaper closed again.
The clouds are heavy and gray. Fat raindrops splatter against the windows.
Back to work.
*
When Ohno wakes up, he’s lying in an unfamiliar bed. He only remembers going out to drink with Yamashita last night; he can’t remember anything else that happened afterwards.
The scent of freshly brewed coffee drifts in through the open door and he follows it. Yamashita is leaning against the counter, sitting with a mug while reading something on his phone. He looks up when Ohno enters the kitchen.
“Morning. If you want to wash up, I’ve left stuff you can use.” Yamashita says gesturing at someplace behind him that Ohno supposes is the bathroom. “And if you feel like eating I can make breakfast too.”
It’s completely different from crashing at Nino’s, where he uses Nino’s toothbrush and usually has to make breakfast for the both of them (Nino calls it payment for lodging). There’s a brand-new toothbrush set out for him along with clean towels and a change of clothes. When he walks out of the bathroom with the towel still hanging from his head, Yamashita is on the phone, talking to his manager.
When he hangs up and walks into the kitchen, Ohno is making chahan, and something about the sight is so out of place and fitting al at once that Yamapi leans against the counter and watches without disturbing the older man until he turns off the stove.
Ohno turns towards him the same time he leans forward, away from the counter. It fits perfectly, the timing of their movement and in the next breath Yamashita is kissing him. Ohno takes it in stride and holds onto a shoulder for stability, not breaking the kiss.
When they part, Yamapi’s heart is beating at his throat. Ohno smiles, and the corners of his eyes crinkle adorably and in the end there isn’t a need for explanations, a need to say anything because the quirk of Ohno’s lips tell him he knows.
And that’s enough for now.