Fic: Fuego

[rikke_leonhart]

Title: Fuego
Pairing(s): Ohno/Nino, Ohno/Arashi
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I seriously wouldn't be writing this if I owned them.
Word count: 4,293
Summary: As two, as five, as a united force, they all love he who takes their pain away.
Authors' notes: HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, MICHELLE. I'm so sorry that is so massively bizarre and angsty and I completely manhandled your prompt D:

Scherzo

*
You can do everything you want, but never betray those who live in your soul.

Nino doesn’t react outwardly when Ohno and Aiba arrive on set together, grinning, easy with each other, familiar in ways that people only get when they’ve seen more of each other than anyone else has.

The regularity doesn’t make it easier, but Nino has much to hide, and he hides behind cleverly crafted walls and remarks and empty words that mean something.

He doesn’t know if Aiba means it – if it means anything at all – and even worse, he doesn’t know if Ohno means it, because that would ruin everything. But he doesn’t do anything, because it’s not what he should be doing, it’s not what he ought to do, he’s not even sure it’s what he wants to do.

Nino can only count the days, count the secretive smiles and hear the ringing laughter like continuous merciless echoes in his mind and heart when he closes his eyes, and he screams himself hoarse in the darkness of his own anger and desperation and helplessness.

So he stills his hand – awaits in breathlessness.

*

Adagio

*
What it is they want with life, they only know themselves. The beautiful young people, may they live long.

Jun kisses Ohno on a humid evening in between locations. The car ride is silent, because Ohno is tired, sleepy, eyes heavy with fatigue and Jun feels so gentle towards him that he can’t help but reach over, scoot over, pressing his nose to the soft patch of skin by the neck, that Ohno reveals when he rests against the door.

Ohno shifts, makes a noise at the back of his throat and he glances down at Jun glancing up.

Jun holds, suspended, pressing closer with inching slowness, and he tilts his face up, lets his breath dance and reach Ohno’s skin.

Ohno doesn’t move, only slightly, and Jun forgets everything he should be remembering.

He kisses Ohno, moving into Ohno’s space, winding and tangling limbs, sharing breathing space and liberty in the small confine of the backseat in a darkened car. His seatbelt limits him, and he doesn’t even dare think what he would have done if it hadn’t been digging into his ribcage through his shirts.

But Ohno is less sleepy when he looks back, licking his lips, and when the car stops, he waits until they’re back again.

He’s ready for what he started.

*

Precipitando

*
Oh, it ends before you know it, suddenly they’ve run off like playful butterflies on the first summer’s day.

The first time, it’s entirely a matter of comfort. He’s sad, he’s worried and he feels that he’s letting everyone down. He hasn’t been properly with them for weeks, he feels weak and useless and he’s sure that he’ll be kicked out or replaced whenever.

Ohno visits him, because Aiba calls him instead of Nino.

Ohno sits quietly beside him and their elbows knock, they slurp the soup and chew their ramen, and when the restaurant is empty and his parents have left to go upstairs, Aiba shakes and quivers and leans on Ohno and tells his fears.

Ohno understands and soothes his nerves with a backrub and gentle fingers on his nape.

Aiba cries into Ohno’s arms, soaks his shirt with his tears, but Ohno holds on, strong and steady, tightens his arms when Aiba clings. Aiba doesn’t think too much and that is probably why he doesn’t even realize it when he brushes lips against Ohno’s chin.

Aiba just needs someone to make him believe, to take away the fear that has settled so deeply in his bones, and Ohno doesn’t protest when Aiba lets his touches linger under Ohno’s shirt, and Ohno turns his head – they’re kissing, and Ohno yields to his advances, is pliant when Aiba presses.

By hand, Aiba leads, breathlessly up the stairs, he pushes and Ohno acquiesces. Aiba has no idea what he’s doing and he gratefully sinks to the sheets and rolls when Ohno asks with touches.

It’s desperation and Aiba just wants to push everything away, just for a single second on the brink of a moment. Ohno allows him to forget, wrenches Aiba’s awareness from him with sure hands.

The first time is born out of desperation. The later encounters are because Ohno allows it and Aiba loves him.

*

Sostenuto

*
He shouldn’t, but for once, he finds that he doesn’t care.

He doesn’t have to pretend, he doesn’t have to be perfect and he doesn’t have anyone to live up to. He doesn’t have to be careful, he doesn’t have to fear this going to the wrong people. He would laugh in the face of expectations, but he’s busy, his mouth occupied as he pants and kisses every inch of Ohno he can reach.

It’s heady, it’s raw and it’s everything he needs to let go of whatever he’s expected to do. The only thing Ohno expects of him is to not be strong. It’s not everything he wants and he knows that it won’t last forever, but Ohno is here and he’s willing to let Sho let go of everything bottled and pent up, and Sho throws it all out there.

The throes of passion born from feelings that shouldn’t be, gentles somehow over the years, and Sho loves him.

Ohno gives and takes, just enough, never too much, just the right amount that makes sense in the garbled and intertwining world of thoughts and words and images and dance steps that wind and rewind.

With hands that create and put together, Ohno pulls him apart and lets him unwind and Sho loses conscious thought of what he knows about right and wrong.

He burns.

*

A piacere

*
I think there’s magic in the air, is it because you’re here? I think I’ll throw sanity away, is it because you’re here?

On unsteady ground – on a ship that rocks as waves move under them, Nino holds on to Ohno’s hand (and Ohno’s other hand is securely warm on his waist like the anchor that the boat isn’t using) – and Nino feels light and invincible.

The meeting of hands seals what Nino lovingly refers to as Judgment Day, and for a long time after that, he’s secure in the knowledge that he has something with Ohno that no one else has, because he’s the only one that walks next to Ohno, Ohno’s hand firmly in his own, when the cameras are spinning.

(When they all join hands after a concert finished, Nino notices that Jun doesn’t let go of Ohno’s hand, but he chooses not to think about it, and if he does, it’s only when he’s alone and has no one to betray himself to.)

In childish glee, Nino had forgotten that hands aren’t private and he vows to grow up.

Nino touches, anywhere Ohno lets him or doesn’t object to. He’s happy about it, too, because it’s something that is so distinctly theirs that Nino is sure that it’s something they do. Into the space that used to be personal, Nino invades it until it becomes his space, and he crowds and clings, and surely, Ohno must know.

But others touch Ohno – touches him the places where Nino has invisibly marked him and Nino hates it. What is enough to make the world see, what is enough to make Ohno see?

But when Nino kisses Ohno and thinks, finally, this is theirs, he hates it and he hates how he breaks when he sees Sho and Ohno; Sho kissing what should’ve been Nino’s, Nino hates how he breaks.

*

Vivace

*
Hearts of honey, you can buy those, but I won’t sell mine for money. Hearts of honey, I will sell you those, but I won’t sell mine for money.

Inside, Ohno knows it’s over, but it’s just out of reach and he cries silent and invisible tears into skin he’ll never touch again, but he doesn’t blame anyone but himself and his weak heart of hearts.

He loves and it hurts and he crashes as long nails almost break his skin. All the words he could’ve said and wanted to say, he’ll swallow them, tuck them way under his tongue, hide them behind his teeth, and he won’t need them again. He’ll make sure of it.

When the door closes behind her, he promises himself that never again will he place himself in this, and he throws himself into canvases and sweat and aching muscles.

He’s heartbroken, but when Aiba kisses him, or Jun touches his wrist, or Sho stands beside him, breathing into him, he finds it difficult to remember, but he hopes he hasn’t placed them in the position he never wants to be in again. He hopes that they know what they’re doing, because he has no idea. He feels like he’s reaching for something in complete darkness – not able to see if he needs to lift his feet not to fall.

Someone always dances just outside of his vision behind his closed lids, and when he opens his eyes, the teasing enticing figure is gone, and he thinks that maybe he has been dreaming all along.

He gives everything he has, wants to give more than he has to these people that make his life, but he’s struck with how small he is in life’s equation.

When everything becomes too much, when he feels like the world isn’t making sense and that he has no more strength to offer, he runs and catches Nino’s hand as he speeds by, and he prays that Nino will hold on; will hold him true, will clench his hand when his heart leaps away.

*

Calando

*
The world stops, the sun is frozen. Your picture is safe, I carry it within me, over thousand oceans, back to you. Back to us, we must not lose our faith. Trust me.

When Ohno’s face grazes the covers of tabloids, Nino reaches but is nowhere near fast enough to catch Ohno as he falls in a vertical dive, hitting the ground and Nino is left with only two options;

Save him or let him fall apart.

But can he save someone who doesn’t want to be saved?

Ohno doesn’t listen, doesn’t reach for them like Nino expects him to, he doesn’t reach for Nino like Nino wants him to. Ohno is scarce, he’s not there even if he’s right next to them. Nino feebly reaches for a shoulder, an arm, a hand but Ohno is already somewhere else, somewhere where Nino can’t follow.

Maybe he shouldn’t have left in the first place, is what Nino thinks, because the absence created more than just distance in physical form, and what happened to the gap his heart is trying to breach?

Nino’s throat is dry, his tongue feels thick and heavy and useless and he watches with morbid fascination as Sho catches Ohno, shoves him against a wall, breathes life into his collarbones, pushes until Ohno snaps and claws back, but before Nino intervenes, he sees Ohno’s white knuckled fingers as he clings.

It’s all he can do not to run, but walks instead, keeps his pace, because one day it will be enough, and somehow, he will be it.

He reaches for Ohno, Ohno who is still paper thin, see through around the edges, smiling with grimaces, dim eyes and well-hidden secrets, but air forces its way down into his lungs when Ohno reaches back and holds.

Hands join and Nino prays it will be enough.

*

Stringendo

*
Waking in the night, waking from a dream, miss you to talk to, you to hold. It has rained on my window, dripped on my cheek, oh, I’d do anything, over and over again.

Jun loves Ohno so much it threatens to choke him and tear him apart. Love is gentle, love is true, love scares the fuck out of him, and he isn’t courageous enough to do anything. It’s stress relief, he tells himself, desperately tries to convince himself as his gulp of air is stolen away by Ohno.

It takes absolutely nothing at all to fall in love, it takes absolutely nothing to not act on it. It takes every ounce of willpower to muster the valiance needed to stay and fight for it, to stay in love. Jun doesn’t have it – he loves Arashi, he loves Ohno, and he doesn’t know which he loves more, and he’s not brave enough to take the chance.

Because he loves Arashi; he loves the four people so much, and can’t he just fall in love with them instead of him?

He hopes he isn’t as transparent as he feels, he hopes that he can keep it up, and with time, he can convince himself that for the greater good – for everyone involved – that he loves Arashi more.

He doesn’t have the courage to stay in love, he’s not bold enough to fall entirely out of love. He’ll stay in this suspended limbo, where he’ll bend over backwards if it means that everyone can stay happy.

He will succeed and he will fall in love again, but this time, it’ll be with all of them.

*

Allegro

*
For too long I’ve been a night raven, so many beautiful people in the inner city, I see a silhouette, you disappear immediately, where are you now? Love calls tonight, you call, I’ll find you, I see you in my mind even though I don’t know your name.

When Sho graduates, he’s so relieved that he cries for several minutes in the first bathroom stall he stumbles upon when he gets to work – third floor, next to last door on the right, and he falls to his knees, trembles as he doesn’t even realize the weights that have lifted from his burdened shoulders.

His eyes sting with the tears he’s been holding back for so long, with un-slept hours, with curses that haven’t left his lips for too long, and when he wipes his nose and clears his throat, he’s very sure that this was the hardest part.

Ghostly touches, echoes of fingering sentiments etched into his skin, marks he printed into arms and stomach and neck, he feels them all multiplied as they all come racing back to him – what he has been denying himself for too long.

His feet drag him to the greenroom and he lets the celebrations wash over him, sinks gratefully into everything and everyone that has been holding him up while he tried to hover.

Night falls and he bends to Ohno, dips under layers of clothing, fingers wandering into places he’s visited before, and he feels free and easy and unconquerable, and he takes from Ohno what Ohno gives.

Ohno kisses him and Sho swears that he means it, but he doesn’t realize, doesn’t want to think about why Ohno just smiles, grips his face and kisses him silent. In Sho’s mind they could be beautiful.

Everything he does with Ohno is deliberate and Sho loves him, but when he cries out that night, it’s just as much anguish as it’s relief. Greeting and parting and yet.

He’ll never regret it.

*

L’istesso tempo

*
Stand with me in the sun or walk with me, just for bit, I’ll show you my truth for a moment. I’ll ask you; does it all make sense? My life is a chaos, just look a bit closer.

Ohno tries not to step beside the lines laid out for him; he steps carefully, slowly, two steps behind the others, tries to let them take what’s rightfully theirs, and he tries to keep up.

They don’t see.

Aiba needs assurance, he needs physical proof that he’s not a spare, that there’s only one Aiba that can make it as they are, and Ohno finds his pain bizarrely beautiful, dark and raw as it claws at him. Ohno wrenches it from him with his fingers and lips and kisses and tender touches, leaves Aiba with nothing but sleep and quiet serenity in a jumbled mind.

Ohno takes it with him, cries when he walks to the train, he trembles when he’s too exhausted to punch his mattress anymore. He takes it out on the new steps, practices and he smiles when Aiba comes to work, gentle and happy.

It’s worth it when Sho is rough, it’s worth it when Sho can let go, let his brain go to hell, and they claw at each other, bite and scratch, and it’s worth it when Sho eases into slumber, holding on to bruised and tender skin, and Ohno kisses his shoulder blades, trails kisses down his spine and slips out of tired strength. He holds the desperation right between his fingertips.

It’s almost slipping from his grasp, but he grips it tighter, only lets it escape when he can hurl it towards pristine canvas. It stains a blood red and he almost screams, but not quite. He lets the tears hit his hand, he looks at it and smears it in the red.

It’s worth it.

*

Rallentando

*
It’s what you do, what you do to me, I’d recognize you in blindness, and if anyone asks, it’s when you touch, it’s when you touch me that I know you’ve done it before.

Nino holds on, makes a narrow catch and he doesn’t say anything even when he wants to scold and scream and rage, because it’s not fair, not by a long shot. No one told him that he’d have to piece things together, because who does he lean on when he has none to offer?

His name is whispered like it’s a prayer, and he feels importantly cheated out of the greater things this should have meant.

Is it only in his folly that he sees what he almost destroyed? When he kisses Ohno, it’s without cameras, without an inch of pretending, and Ohno clings and holds so desperately that Nino realizes how blind he’s been – how blind they all have been, and he damns them all for it, because they did this themselves.

How can I save you?

He doesn’t intrude; he doesn’t take anyone from Ohno that isn’t freely given. He kisses and whispers, he has and holds, he holds Ohno together when he falls apart at the seams.

Everything else can wait – it has to, because Ohno has been strong for all of them and finally he seeks solace in someone else when he can’t take it out on himself and canvas and tightly-leashed mind control. He disappears into his head halfway through the night, but Nino holds him tighter, doesn’t let him escape.

I’ve got you.

Trembling, Nino tries to take the pain away that doesn’t belong to Ohno, but Ohno is somehow stronger in his frailness, and he clutches to it as if his life depends on it. Nino can’t hold it on his own, but he’ll help carry it as long as Ohno will let him.

How do I save you?

*

Senza

*
Oh, I don’t know what I want, my life flies through the night like the rain, oh, I don’t know what I want, I’m Odysseus on the sea.

I’ve got him, Nino says and Jun thinks that Nino somehow sounds more youthful than he did 10 years ago when Jun first met him. It’s marvelous how some people change; how some people seem to change and then when you look closer, you realize that they haven’t changed at all. Nino with the feline curl of lips, old eyes and clever wit, tender heart and disguised affection, Nino has changed the least and the most.

When Jun closes his eyes he remembers little of the earliest days. What he sees imprinted on the back of his eyelids is glimpses of naked skin, warm puffs of breath against his wet lips, thumbs drawing circles on the inside of his sweaty palms, feelings that could’ve been and never properly came to be reciprocated.

It should hurt more than it does, but Jun has made peace with it in the face of no other possibilities available to him.

If he’d just been more forthright – would this be it? It feels so final, with how everything is over before it started properly, and what they could have had disappears into the early morning dew – disappears with the moist as the coming morning sun warms it.

He’d said goodbye in his own way, in the way he knows the best, with lips and hands and silent confessions, and he knows that Ohno heard it at the time, his half-shadowed face slack with pretended sleep; he heard his own breath loud in the dim room.

Sun warm on his cheeks, it keeps him sane, Jun thinks as he types furiously on his phone, manuscript in hand, concert plans in his head, Arashi in his heart.

Arashi in his heart.

*

Lento moderato

*
I’ll get you out of here, I believe in you as you believe in me. I know, time seems to stand all quiet, but soon we will walk towards freedom.

Aiba never says goodbye.

One day he wakes up and realizes that he’s strong enough and that he will straighten up, square his shoulders, clench his jaw. Ohno tells him he likes his smiles the best, so Aiba will smile, he will smile wider for Leader, for Nino, for Sho-chan, Matsujun. He will smile for them all when their lips are strained, when their cheeks hurt and their eyes are tired.

He listens to the rain pounding away on the walls of the hotel – he’s so glad that he’s not out there, he’s so grateful that Ohno dragged him into sunshine instead of grey.

In the bed beside his own, Sho is asleep, breath even and steady and Aiba’s heart clenches, not in an entirely bad way. It’s little painful, it’s a little bitter, but mostly, he keeps his fingers crossed that Nino was quick enough to salvage the meager threads that would weave into a whole net of lives entwined.

As hands hold, fingers interlace, Aiba breathes deep, lets out the air on a warm note, smiles into the dark, and he whispers because he knows that the distance between their beds holds nothing over the bridged distance between their hearts.

I love you, Aiba says and Sho’s fingers squeeze, their hands hanging between their beds, strong with what they know and what they will be as the future looms unforgiving and harsh.

Sho never says it back, but that’s fine, because Aiba loves them all enough. He will tell Jun tomorrow; tomorrow when the sun rises again, anew and fresh, he will tell them all when the moistness disappears under their feet and from their lashes.

*

Teneroso

*
Hold me until the rain ceases, you know, the best things in life happens with you and only you.

Nino exhale promises and inhales shaky touches pressed to his ribs, the skin stretched over his hips.

Everything he’s been trying to hold together, he lets it collapse and he sees what he’s been itching to see for years, raw and naked and so beautiful Nino has to close his eyes for long moments. Ohno falls apart above him with strength that should have been reduced now.

Let us hold you, Nino pleads with hoarse cries, pleading hisses, let me hold you.

Ohno fights him every step of the way, and only when Nino cries does Ohno give in, trembling as he lets go of years that have been hard on him. Nino tells him to let it out, to release it, that they all will put him back together when it counts, that he won’t go anywhere, not now when he finally has what he’s wanted for so long.

Ohno brushes tears away from Nino’s cheeks, Nino folds into him, around him, everywhere as close as he can get, no more songs and no more serenades and clothes and layers between them. He’ll do everything, absolutely anything, just to see Ohno smile, he’s the reason why he sings.

There are no more words to say, they’ve exhausted them all in their dance through night and intimacy, and Nino finally has something that is theirs alone.

With tangling tongues, mixing emotions, they’re blending and matching and they’re together. It’s when you have someone to protect that you become strong, and Nino will fight to keep this forever, he’ll fight tooth and nail to stay home. Together, they’ll be strong enough to fight for the five of them, they’ll be strong enough to fill the incomplete, black silhouettes of their futures.

Nino doesn’t say it; he’s convinced that Ohno knows after all, and Ohno closes his eyes, quivers and presses closer.

*

Con fuoco

*
The warmth carries us into the infinity. Everything drifts past us. In moonlight, there’s only the two of us.

In his right hand, Nino’s fingers are short and warm, holding on with strength he never realized Nino had, and in his left hand, Jun holds on to him, and they raise their arms. His skin is sweaty, but he shivers, goose bumps breaking out on his skin to the sound of seventy thousand people chanting their name in a cacophonous unison, and Ohno has never heard anything quite as beautiful.

With his heart in his right hand, his life in his left, he can do it all.

In the backlight, there’s only the five of them as they stand strong in adversity, in pain and in laughter and happiness.

He clasps Nino’s hand tighter, giggles when Nino presses wet lips to the nape of his neck and his eyes flutter closed.

*

Comments

[smapxorenji.livejournal.com]

*sighs at the end after reading*

I think I really should not read your fics before I head for bed.

OH THE ANGST. (but I love it still. I is an angsty-fic-loving person)

ran out of cookies so milkshake instead? ^^

[rikke-leonhart.livejournal.com]

I hope you got some sleep, anyway, darling ♥

I love angst, I can't help it. When I first started writing in Arashi fandom, the rainbows seemed to expel the angst, but lately, it seems like it's creeping back.

MILKSHAKE IS WONDERFUL 8D