Fish AU ahead.
Aug. 19th, 2010 01:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ciirceeBecause Aya made me icons, I have made her fic. ♥ This is not the fic I was going to write for her. This is...I don't know what this is. I had some funny jokes and then I wrote this and I couldn't work them in. So I think I'll write THAT fic later.
For refrence, this is from the Fish AU that I wrote. Specifically, right after the second bit. There is another bit that's set in the future of this same universe here but I would read that after this if I wanted to be linear about it.
Ohno uses his phone to web-search Ikuta Toma as soon as he and Nino get back in his car. From there he finds directions to his workshop; like most of the village, the address is on the west side of the island, going north away from the dockyards. Ohno lives on the east side of the island, away from Honson proper, near the airport, and he's not sure of the way. He leaves his phone open and backs out of his parking space. "This is going to be good," he tells the fish in his baggie of water in the round plastic fishbowl as he drives.
Nino bobs in the water like he agrees.
The island isn't very big so the drive to Ikuta Toma's workshop isn't very long. It is very pretty, however, following the line of the ocean before curving away into the trees to tuck in against the tree-covered mountains. The winding little road is practically lined with the island's pink-purple orchids, swaying gentle on their long and elegant stems. Ikuta Toma's workshop looks exactly like a small, cozy family house. Ohno already likes him and likes him even more when a motherly woman answers the door.
He holds up the card Nino-the-person gave him, tucking his fish more securely under his arm. "Ninomiya said there was a glassblower here," he explains.
The woman beams. "My son," she explains. Ohno steps into the house and is ushered into slippers and then into the kitchen table and given a glass of tea. "One moment, please," says the woman and she leaves the room. A few moments later he hears her say, "Honey? It's time to wake up. You have a customer." in a sweet, soothing tone.
Ohno looks at Nino. "I like it here," he tells the little fish. Nino swims a fast circle and then a slower one. "Well, of course you like it," says Ohno.
"Good morning," says a new voice.
Ohno looks up. Ikuta Toma is sleep-tousled and young. He's lovely in less-delicate way than Ninomiya is but Ohno doesn't feel any strange urge to kiss him. "Good morning, sorry to wake you," says Ohno.
Toma blinks at him and then turns around and walks out of the room.
"'kaa-chan that's Ohno Satoshi," he hears him say. Quietly, if a little frantically.
"Oh, is he a friend?" asks Toma's mother.
"He's an idol star," says Toma. "He's Arashi."
"Just a part of it," Ohno feels compelled to add.
Both Toma and his mother stick their heads back in the room.
Ohno smiles at them. "And I really just came here to buy a house for Nino."
"Nino?" says Toma.
"Ah, he did say that Nino-kun sent him," Toma's mother says, ticking up a finger.
Holding up his fishbowl, Ohno tells them, "Nino is my fish. But he's named after the person Ninomiya. He gave me your card," he addresses the last to Ikuta Toma specifically. "He said you do glass blowing. I want something nice for Nino." And he wants person-Nino to see it and approve, he realizes. He puts that thought away.
He ends up getting invited back to the workshop proper. It's an addition to the back of the house, low-slung and stark. The floor is covered in smooth stone tiles and the walls are covered in what looks to be sheet metal. There are metal tables scattered around and metal benches and metal pipes and metal boxes and a glowing metal drum. There are metal tools on the wall, and metal buckets at all of the benches.The only thing that makes it a bearable space at all, to Ohno, is the large windows on one wall that look out on the yard and surrounding forest and the boxes and racks and stacks of glass art against the wall with the door in it.
Also: It's stiflingly hot.
Ohno tugs at the collar of his t-shirt and looks down at his fish. "Ah, is it okay for Nino to be here?" he asks.
"Sure, he's in all the—oh. You mean—" Ikuta gives the fishbowl a thoughtful look. "My mom can look after your fish," he decides. "I'll just—" he makes to reach out for the bowl and then stops. "If that's all right with you," he says.
Ohno understands the polite language and the deference but since he's not in Tokyo and since he's actaully not a lot older than Ikuta, he makes a face. "You don't have to be like that. I'm just regular me here." He hands Nino's bowl over.
Ikuta gives a jerky, nervous sort of half-bow and slides out the door. Ohno can hear him through it just fine. "'kaa-chan!"
"Do you need an assistant, honey?" says Ikuta's mother, not close but definitely getting closer as she talks. Ohno can picture her coming down the hall toward the workroom.
"Not today. Or at least not yet. Can you watch his fish? And please make sure nothing happens to it."
"What would happen to it?" his mother wants to know.
"I don't know! But if something did it'd be all over the network news and the tabloids that I killed Ohno Satoshi's fish."
"I think you're overreacting," says Ikuta's mother. "But it's a cute fish so I'll take care of it. Nino, right? Come on, Nino. I'll feed you. You might eat, unlike Nino."
Toma slides back in the door. "Ahh, sorry about that," he says.
Ohno thinks So, Nino doesn't eat? but what he says is: "I like your mother. She's very nice."
Toma has a heartbreaker grin. "I like her," he says, ducking his head a bit. He scrubs at the back of his neck with one hand. "Ah, if you want to come over to the bench we can talk about what you want for your fish."
Following him to one of the metal benches, not the one in the corner of the room but the one by the window, Ohno sits. "Something simple," he says.
Toma scoops a stack of papers out of the way before he grabs a fresh sheet and a pencil. "I'm not much of an artist," he warns as he begins to draw. His lines are fast and rough but they get the point across. "First we need a basic shape—" Shapes bloom on the page; boxes and ovals and circles and things almost like vases. There a tall shapes, short shapes, wide around shapes.
It's hard to choose. "Um. Something like what he has now, I guess. It's classic, right?"
"Sure," Toma agrees. "Ohno-san," he adds a moment later, like he's forgot himself.
"Just Ohno is fine," Ohno tells him, gently. "I really am just Ohno here."
Biting his lip, Toma looks at him. "If that's what you want, okay but I'm a little star-struck here, so give it time. Nobody warned me that—" his phone interrupts with a shrill beep.
"You can answer that," Ohno tells him as his own phone chirps at him. "I have to answer mine."
"Hello?" Toma says, flipping his phone open.
Ohno's call is only his new manager, letting him know that he'll be meeting with him Tuesday afternoon. There are probably important details being imparted to him but Ohno's not really listening. This is because Ikuta Toma is very obviously on the phone with Ninomiya, the person.
"That 'guy'? 'That guy'? Do you know who THAT GUY IS?" Toma is hissing into his phone. "You—" a pause. "You must. You sent him to me. You never send me anybody you don—you aren't thinking of that, are you?"
New Manager-san, whose name Ohno hasn't bothered to remember yet, goes on and on about something. Ohno wonders what 'that' was.
"No. Absolutely not. He's—no he's famous. And he's not that way. The hell would I do that for? No. No. Because he's famous and he could nail half of Japan if he wanted to!"
Turning away so that Toma can't see his face, Ohno smiles. Somehow he's still not used to being thought of as 'famous' or able to nail half of Japan if he wants to. "Yes," he says in response to something his manager says. His manager begins to bluster. It was probably the wrong thing to say.
"You're great, okay? And I say this as somebody you talked into…" Whatever Ikuta is going to say, he glances over and skips it. "Once. And I'm telling you—I can't give you that. Look, I've got to go. I'm working. No, he didn't call. He showed up." There's another, longer pause. Ikuta looks like he wants to roll his eyes. "Screw you, jerkwad," he says and ends his call.
New-Manager is still talking but Ohno interrupts him. "I've got to go. We're working on a house for Nino," he says and hangs up on him. Then he turns his phone off. It's his day off, anyhow. "Something round, because that's classic," he says, reminding.
Toma nods. "Okay. I…" he makes a face of concentration. "You know, I really can't draw. How about if I make some miniatures, kind of like models, and you can see what you like?"
Ohno makes his own face of concentration. "But what will you do with the ones I don't pick?"
"I won't put them in the annealer," Toma says with a shrug. At Ohno's confused look he points to something that sort of resembles a cross between a cabinet with four doors and a refrigerator. "It cools the glass slowly so that it hardens without cracking." He shrugs again. "Not like I couldn't melt it all back down anyhow but I hate the way it kind of explodes in the crucible once it's been annealed." Toma makes yet another face. "Or I could anneal them and sell them down at YamaP's if they're any good."
"YamaP's?" Ohno asks. The name sounds vaguely familiar for some reason.
"Gallery and gift shop; my friend Pi runs it. It's down by Village Hall."
Village Hall was where Ohno and the realtor had gone to sign the final papers on the house by the beach. It had been spring then, cold and early and there had been a place on the way to the office… "Ah, with the green glass!"
Toma grins at him again. "Yeah. Koga stone is native to the island so we use it a lot. Tourists like it." They smile at each other for a moment. And another moment. And yet another. They smile until Toma twitches. "Well. I'm going to go get to work so…"
He isn't an idiot. Ohno knows that this is a cue to leave. But aside from Nino and the old grandparents who lived close to him, Ohno hasn't really met many people on the island. His quiet nature and the fact that apparently people on the island DO know who he is (in retrospect, it was ridiculous that he'd thought they might not have) has made him a little shy and a bit of a recluse. He hadn't wanted to leave the pet shop but his heart had been thumping so hard that he hadn't had a choice. He doesn't want to leave here. "Cool. Can I watch? I can be your assistant!"
Toma's face is really kind of charming, Ohno thinks, even if he doesn't want to kiss him at all.
Glassblowing is hard work, Ohno discovers. It's a lot more than blowing into some tube (a blowpipe, Toma calls it, and he uses a little hose attached to some little machine instead of blowing into it) and rolling it around. But it does make Toma drop the formal talk. Ohno figures it's the possibility of getting burnt by molten glass that made him forget.
He is surprised to see that Toma works the pipes barehanded but utterly entranced at the way he never needs to look as he reaches for tools beside him, his hand finding just the right thing every time he puts it out.
"Do you need any help?" Ohno asks again. So far there isn't much to do but sit and watch in fascination.
"Hand me a punty, will you?" Toma finally makes a request, squinting at the glass.
"Punty?"
"Ah, see that oven thing with the rods sticking out?" Toma jerks his chin in the direction of the oven thing, his eyes never leaving the glass in front of him. "That's a pipe warmer. Grab the smallest punty you can find." Ohno goes over and puts his hand on one tentatively. It's hot, but not burning. Not on the outside end, at any rate. "Nope, the first three are pipes." He doesn't know how Toma can see what he's doing, but he's impressed. He moves his hand. "Smaller." He moves all the way to the end of the line. "Yep. Do not hold the hot end out to me."
Ohno presents it to him carefully, cool end out first.
Toma inserts the hot end into the bottom of the sphere. "Just gonna jack this quick," he mutters, picking up something that looks like a pair of giant tweezers. Or salad tongs. Or the mutant child of a tweezers and a salad tong.
"Does Nino help out?" Ohno chances asking, curious as to what Nino might or might not do in Ikuta Toma's workshop.
Toma rolls the pipe, picking at the bubble of glass with the tool he's called a jack. "Mostly I work on my own. My mom assists if I need it for something bigger but she's mostly around in case I get hurt somehow."
"But sometimes Nino comes by?" Ohno asks. Toma said that Nino came in at times. When he thought he was talking about Ninomiya the person, and not the fish Nino.
"Sometimes. If I can't get anybody else," Toma shakes his head, his hair sticking to his forehead with sweat. He pushes up the edge of his safety glasses with his wrist. "Or if I need extra-steady hands and I don't mind owing him."
Nino has steady hands. Ohno files that away in his mind, choosing to think about the way it made his own hands prickle instead. It is a good feeling. An exciting feeling. He wants to feel it again. "Does Nino do his own glass work?" he asks.
This makes Toma laugh. "No. He'd rather slit his wrists."
"What does he do?" Ohno asks.
Toma looks up at him. "Nino?" The pipe with the glass keeps rolling.
"Yes."
"Pass me a diamond shear?" Toma asks. "Not the Putsch. The small Steinert, if you can find it." As Ohno is reading the names on the handles of scissor-looking things, Toma casually says, "He mostly plays games and counters for his sister at her pet shop. He's been like that forever."
"Forever?" Ohno tries to sound casual himself. That Nino plays games he already knew. That Nino has a sister is new. And this sister owns the pet shop where he works. This is probably why he was playing a game instead of paying attention. He doesn't know why knowing this makes him happy, but it does. It's such a cute thing, like something a little boy might do. He wonders how old Nino is.
"Mm-hm," Toma snips the glass from the blowpipe and drops that into the bucket, rolling the punty along the arm of his bench.
"You've known him a long time, huh?" he asks, watching as Toma takes a cup-shaped thing out of the bucket beside him. It's dripping with water.
Toma doesn't answer him, moving the glass in the cup, rolling it always and shaping it perfectly round. "Did you and Nino go to school together?" Ohno tries again.
For a while, Toma doesn't answer, watching the glass in the mold. "Everybody on the island goes to school together. Shikinejima ferries over their kids, too. It's a small place. Everybody knows everything about each other."
"Oh," says Ohno. "That's nice."
Toma looks at him as dips his tool into the water again. "He was a year above me, but we were friends. Are friends."
In his head, Ohno does the math. Toma's website listed his age and Nino is a year older and that makes him about three years younger than Ohno. Older than Ohno'd thought at first. Somehow that makes his hands tingle more, spreads like a flush over his cheeks. "That's nice," he repeats himself.
Rolling the punty and the glass, Toma just nods. He puts away the wooden tool, taking out a small metal tool and inserts it into where the blowpipe just was and attaches his hose to it, giving it a small jet of air. The edges of the hole peel back like petals on a flower. With quick hands and a small jack, Toma smoothes it into a lipped opening, making it a perfect, clear fishbowl in miniature. "Well?" he asks.
Ohno looks at it. It's close to what he wants but it's not quite what's in his head. "It's…"
"Kinda plain?" Toma asks. "Let me heat some colors up and we'll fix that."
"First you'll have lunch," says Ikuta's mother. She's standing in the door of the workshop looking mildly put out. "I've been calling you for twenty minutes."
Toma glances at his phone. "I turned if off. Sorry, 'kaa-chan. I'll garage this and see Ohno out and…"
"Ohno-san, you stay for lunch too," she overrides her son, already turning to pick up a tray that she's apparently brought with and left out until she was certain she had her son's attention.
"Sorry," Toma mutters as his mother brings over rice and fish and miso soup.
Ohno is delighted by lunch, by Toma, and by Toma's mother. "I'm not."
They spend the afternoon playing with colors. Ohno watches Toma melt little chips of colored glass ("frits", Toma calls them, using them because: "I don't like powders.") and then pull long canes of colored glass, stretchy like taffy, and he lets Ohno cut them off with the diamond shears. Colored canes are twisted, wrapped around glass bubbles to make swirls, they're woven together to make patterns. Drips of molten, colored glass are put on glass bulbs and pulled and stretched to cover. They add tiny glass decorations that Toma calls 'millies' to the inside, gathering glass over it to make it part of it.
Over and over Toma makes the round, full glass globe of a fishbowl to practice the colors on. Ohno is frustrated but Toma isn't. He puts them in the annealer and shrugs. "Pi can always use knick-knacks to sell to tourists," he says. "It's pay for the materials."
"I'm sorry," Ohno apologizes as Toma turns out the lights in the workshop and leads him back to the front of the house. He knows the feeling of what he wants, just not the shape or look of it. "Really."
"Nah, just come back tomorrow and we'll figure it out," Toma says. Then, as though the rest of the house reminded him, as though they haven't had lunch together in his hot, sweaty shop, "I mean, if you can, Ohno-san. If you'd like. I can make a bunch of samples to show you any time you're ready."
"I'll come back tomorrow for sure," Ohno tells him, grateful. "See you later, Toma-kun."
Toma blushes bright red but grins and flashes him the peace sign. "See ya."
The pet shop is closed when Ohno pulls up. All the lights are off and the door is locked. He tries knocking but nobody comes to check. He looks at Nino in his plastic bowl. "Guess he's gone," he says. "We'll update him tomorrow." He drives home, winding through the village past the high school and the junior high and the airport until he arrives on his own beach.
Overhead the moon is half way past half-full, fat and lopsided. The ocean looks dark as ink against the cool-colored sand. Ohno takes Nino down to the shore, just at the edge of the dark, wet sand. He kicks off his shoes and rolls up his cuffs and sticks his legs out so that the waves tickle him with foam. "Do you miss the ocean, Nino?" he asks. The fish seems to be rocking in the bowl in time to the waves, forward and back. "Yeah?" He pokes a finger down into the water and laughs when Nino nibbles at him. "Maybe a little. I miss Tokyo a little. Not much," he adds, adding another finger to the water. "It's nice here. I can hear myself think and I can breathe."
Nino drifts away from his fingers, lipping at the bottom of his bowl. Ohno takes his hand out and picks up some of the wet, clumpy beach sand. He dribbles it into Nino's water, carefully away from the fish and so slowly that it barely clouds the water at all. "Feel more home like?" he asks, tucking a piece of washed-up seaweed in amongst the sand. He adds a broken shell and a few little rocks. "I'm glad you're here, Nino," he says.
He looks out at the ocean, at the light of the stars over head. "Let's go in," he decides at last. He pauses on the porch and looks at the lights of the village in the distance. Inside the house he washes the beach sand from his feet and pads wet-footed around, making dinner. He feeds Nino a pinch of fish-flakes and watches him eat while he eats his own meal. They watch some TV, watch Sho on the news, and after that Ohno carries him to the bedroom and sets him on the night stand. He gets ready for bed by taking off all his clothes and crawling naked between the sheets. "Nino?" he asks. The fish drifts lazily along the bottom of his bowl. "Are you asleep, Nino?" he asks. He clicks off the light and looks at the ceiling. "Are you sleeping?" he asks quietly.
It's feels a little dangerous to think it and so Ohno pulls his sheets over his head and goes to sleep instead of wondering about the elfin-faced villager, with the older sister and the steady hands.
Day two passes at Ikuta Toma's workshop a lot like day one. Ohno has to break him of calling him 'Ohno-san' again and his mother puts a few ice-cubes in Nino's bowl so Nino spends the morning with them, watching them work.
"What do you think?" Ohno asks Nino over and over. Nino is never satisfied.
Toma laughs. "He's got strong opinions, all right. Just like—hello?" he stops to answer his phone. "No," he says. "I'm working!" He hangs up.
Nino, thinks Ohno. Ninomiya. His heart flutters a little. He wants to meet him. "Was that Nino?" he asks.
Toma doesn't answer him. He shows him how to set up for pot-melt glass. It's interesting. Just a bit of frit in an old terra-cotta flower pot with holes in the bottom put into the kiln and heated until it drips onto the glass below, molten glass on to warm glass and it runs in beautiful colors. When Toma picks it up on the pipe it's like stained glass in his hands.
After lunch, Toma's friend Pi shows up with another friend, Jin. Ohno spends the afternoon getting them to stop calling him Ohno-san. It only half works. By the end of the night they're calling him assistant-san. He has dinner out with the three of them, just ramen but it's a few streets over from the pet shop.
The pet shop is still open when Ohno stops by after eating but Nino isn't there. There's a bright-faced kid who beams at him. "Sorry, I don't need anything," he tells him and leaves again. He and Nino go down to the shore again and nearly fall asleep in the sand. Last night repeats itself only Ohno takes a full shower instead of just rinsing the sand off himself.
"Did you have a good day, Nino?" he asks his fish. Nino comes up to the plastic sides of his bowl and hovers there until Ohno puts his hand out and touches where he is. "Me too," he says, and turns the lights out.
Days three and four pass in much the same manner. Nino calls every day and everyday Toma tells him 'no' and hangs up on him. There is less formality and Ohno gets to try his hand at glass blowing. He starts okay but fails by the end. Toma tells him it was a good try and that with practice he'll get better. Sometimes they eat with Toma's parents and sometimes they go out on their own or with Pi and other friends of Toma's. It's nice but Ohno still feels set apart.
Sometimes the pet shop is closed, sometimes it's not. When he goes in, it's always the brightly smiling kid who greets him. He buys fish food to be polite.
He wonders where Nino is.
It happens on the fifth day. Ohno walks into the workshop to find Toma bent over one of the plain practice bowls. He's wearing rubber gloves and there is an unfamiliar chemical scent in the air. "What's that?" Ohno asks.
"Etching stuff," Toma mumbles, squinting at the glass. "Well. Ghetto etching stuff."
"Ghetto etching?"
Toma looks up and smiles cheerfully. "Normally I use a dremel but I can't really draw so it's kind of a bitch. So I thought I'd try a chemical etch. It frosts the glass rather than the design so it's a little ghetto-skank."
Ohno laughs and watches Toma bake the glass for a few seconds and then bring it to his sink in the corner to wash the chemical away. And the glass is frosted and Ohno can see where it looks sort of is skank-art but he stops Toma. "This," he says.
Toma looks at the bowl. "Oh, no way," he says.
"No," Ohno touches the design. "This. Can you make this with the dremel?"
Frowning, Toma looks at the glass. "I used rubber stamps for this. I don't know that I could find them any bigger." He looks helpless. "I can't draw. Honestly. Glass sculptures and knick-knacks are different."
"I can draw," Ohno says.
It's this or it's nothing, he thinks.
It takes them the full day to work it out. The bowl is too big to use the blocks to shape it and Toma uses wet newspaper in the flat of his hand to make the curve. He works fast but they still have to make several trips to reheat. And after that it takes even longer to work out how to do the design because Ohno wants there to be a bit of color, just the hint of it, and they're not sure how to keep it confined. Finally Ohno uses the point a brand new set of shears to trace faint outlines. It's hard because the glass is moving and moving as Toma rolls the punty, keeping it perfectly shaped, but it's worth it as Toma adds the thinnest layer of lightest blue. He picks at it until it isn't a flat, uniform shade. There are ripples and waves in it, darker lines and lighter lines. And then, with the edge of a jack, he erases the guide lines.
"This is going to be great," Toma tells him as finishes. "It's going to be amazing. Pass me that pi divider—that circular pincher-thing."
Ohno looks at the bowl. "What's Nino's favorite color?" he asks.
Toma's eyes go wide. "There is no way I can pick the blue off," he says.
"Ah, I meant Nino," he says and nods at his fish even though he meant Nino the person. "Yellow, I think. For the sun." He makes a circle in the air over the top of the bowl, at the rim.
"Oh," Toma says. "Here, roll that," he leaves Ohno at the bench and goes to his supplies. It takes him only a few minutes to melt the glass and come back with it dripping off the end of his smallest pipe. He wraps it around the lip of the fish bowl as Ohno turns it. A perfect circle in faint, sunshine yellow.
"Now it's perfect," Ohno says, letting Toma take control again.
Toma cuts it off the punty holding it with the divider tool. "Open the annealer," he instructs, pulling a paddle out and shaping the bottom of the bowl with practiced taps until it is flat and smooth. He pulls one of the long tools from the wall and uses it to slide it into the cooling kiln. It all happens in less than a minute.
"It'll take about two days to cool properly enough for me to etch—what?" Toma breaks off.
"You're amazing," Ohno tells him.
Toma's head tips back as he laughs, a real belly laugh. "It's not like giving a concert at Tokyo Dome or anything," he says.
And it's not. Ohno thinks it's more amazing than that. It takes more talent, for one. But he doesn't get to say anything because his phone is ringing and it says 'New Manager-san' when he checks. He answers it. "Yes?"
"You have a flight out tomorrow morning. At nine. Don't forget."
Ohno checks the clock. It's already past ten in the evening. "Am I staying overnight?" he asks. He thinks he is. They have filming in the afternoon and then the next day is shoots and interviews, he thinks.
"Yes," his manager says.
New Manager-san sounds tired already. Ohno wonders sympathetically how long this one will last. "Okay."
Toma is smiling when he ends the call. "Back to work, huh, Ohno-kun?"
Ohno shrugs. "I better go home and pack."
He and Nino sit out by the ocean. "What am I going to do with you, Nino?" he asks, looking at the plastic bowl in the sand. "I don't want to leave you here by yourself. But what's the other option?"
In the bowl, Nino dips in the water. The moonlight makes him look silver and lonesome.
He goes to sleep without knowing what to do.
But he wakes up with a plan. The pet shop, however, is closed when he gets there. It's still too early. He drives to Toma's and is greeted by Toma's mother.
"Ohno-kun, did you want me to wake—?" she starts.
"No, no, I just need to get something out of the workshop. I forgot it last night." He takes the ghetto bowl out and leaves payment for it, and the larger bowl, with Toma's mother. It's probably way too much but he can't be sure. Besides, it's worth it.
He means, truly means, to go right to the airport but there are lights on in the pet shop as he passes and Ohno swings in, parking haphazardly. For once it is not Chinen at the counter. It's Nino. He's not playing a game, he's checking boxes against a clipboard of paper. "Ah," his mouth shapes the word when Ohno raps on the door. He purses his lips and just when Ohno is about to give up, he unlocks the door. "Hey, we're not open," he says.
"I'm sorry!" Ohno apologizes.
Nino laughs at him. "Whatever. Jin told Masami that Toma had a new assistant. That would be you, yes?"
Ohno blinks. "Yes."
"Thought so. You smell like Toma's glory hole."
Ohno blinks again. And then. "Oh." The reheating drum. "That."
He doesn't care how stupid it makes him look to be cow-eyed and stupid and trying to figure out what Nino is saying because Nino is laughing again. He cups his chin in his hand. "So, Toma seems to think you're famous," he says, his eyes still shining.
Nino doesn't know, Ohno realizes. "You don't know?" he asks, just to make sure.
"I could ask around but then everybody would know I was asking. I could listen in to the gossip but that seems a little unfair. If you don't want to give me your name, you don't. If you're really a big deal like he says then it's up to you, isn't it?"
"I'm not," Ohno says.
Nino cocks his head. "Eh?"
"A big deal. I'm just Ohno when I'm here. Plain old regular Ohno Satoshi."
"Ohno Satoshi," Nino repeats. "Ninomiya Kazunari," he introduces himself with a short bow which Ohno returns automatically. "Is that my namesake's new home?" he asks, nodding at Ohno's hand.
Ohno has forgotten that he's carrying Nino's new bowl. "No, it's just for travelling," he says.
"Travelling," Nino snorts. "Who takes a fish travelling?"
Ohno gets to the airport and while he can get Nino on board with just a smile at the flight crew, nothing will make up for the fact that he's missed his plane by two hours.
Somehow it's worth it, he thinks, as he turns his phone back on and the missed messages from his manager begin to show up.
For refrence, this is from the Fish AU that I wrote. Specifically, right after the second bit. There is another bit that's set in the future of this same universe here but I would read that after this if I wanted to be linear about it.
Ohno uses his phone to web-search Ikuta Toma as soon as he and Nino get back in his car. From there he finds directions to his workshop; like most of the village, the address is on the west side of the island, going north away from the dockyards. Ohno lives on the east side of the island, away from Honson proper, near the airport, and he's not sure of the way. He leaves his phone open and backs out of his parking space. "This is going to be good," he tells the fish in his baggie of water in the round plastic fishbowl as he drives.
Nino bobs in the water like he agrees.
The island isn't very big so the drive to Ikuta Toma's workshop isn't very long. It is very pretty, however, following the line of the ocean before curving away into the trees to tuck in against the tree-covered mountains. The winding little road is practically lined with the island's pink-purple orchids, swaying gentle on their long and elegant stems. Ikuta Toma's workshop looks exactly like a small, cozy family house. Ohno already likes him and likes him even more when a motherly woman answers the door.
He holds up the card Nino-the-person gave him, tucking his fish more securely under his arm. "Ninomiya said there was a glassblower here," he explains.
The woman beams. "My son," she explains. Ohno steps into the house and is ushered into slippers and then into the kitchen table and given a glass of tea. "One moment, please," says the woman and she leaves the room. A few moments later he hears her say, "Honey? It's time to wake up. You have a customer." in a sweet, soothing tone.
Ohno looks at Nino. "I like it here," he tells the little fish. Nino swims a fast circle and then a slower one. "Well, of course you like it," says Ohno.
"Good morning," says a new voice.
Ohno looks up. Ikuta Toma is sleep-tousled and young. He's lovely in less-delicate way than Ninomiya is but Ohno doesn't feel any strange urge to kiss him. "Good morning, sorry to wake you," says Ohno.
Toma blinks at him and then turns around and walks out of the room.
"'kaa-chan that's Ohno Satoshi," he hears him say. Quietly, if a little frantically.
"Oh, is he a friend?" asks Toma's mother.
"He's an idol star," says Toma. "He's Arashi."
"Just a part of it," Ohno feels compelled to add.
Both Toma and his mother stick their heads back in the room.
Ohno smiles at them. "And I really just came here to buy a house for Nino."
"Nino?" says Toma.
"Ah, he did say that Nino-kun sent him," Toma's mother says, ticking up a finger.
Holding up his fishbowl, Ohno tells them, "Nino is my fish. But he's named after the person Ninomiya. He gave me your card," he addresses the last to Ikuta Toma specifically. "He said you do glass blowing. I want something nice for Nino." And he wants person-Nino to see it and approve, he realizes. He puts that thought away.
He ends up getting invited back to the workshop proper. It's an addition to the back of the house, low-slung and stark. The floor is covered in smooth stone tiles and the walls are covered in what looks to be sheet metal. There are metal tables scattered around and metal benches and metal pipes and metal boxes and a glowing metal drum. There are metal tools on the wall, and metal buckets at all of the benches.The only thing that makes it a bearable space at all, to Ohno, is the large windows on one wall that look out on the yard and surrounding forest and the boxes and racks and stacks of glass art against the wall with the door in it.
Also: It's stiflingly hot.
Ohno tugs at the collar of his t-shirt and looks down at his fish. "Ah, is it okay for Nino to be here?" he asks.
"Sure, he's in all the—oh. You mean—" Ikuta gives the fishbowl a thoughtful look. "My mom can look after your fish," he decides. "I'll just—" he makes to reach out for the bowl and then stops. "If that's all right with you," he says.
Ohno understands the polite language and the deference but since he's not in Tokyo and since he's actaully not a lot older than Ikuta, he makes a face. "You don't have to be like that. I'm just regular me here." He hands Nino's bowl over.
Ikuta gives a jerky, nervous sort of half-bow and slides out the door. Ohno can hear him through it just fine. "'kaa-chan!"
"Do you need an assistant, honey?" says Ikuta's mother, not close but definitely getting closer as she talks. Ohno can picture her coming down the hall toward the workroom.
"Not today. Or at least not yet. Can you watch his fish? And please make sure nothing happens to it."
"What would happen to it?" his mother wants to know.
"I don't know! But if something did it'd be all over the network news and the tabloids that I killed Ohno Satoshi's fish."
"I think you're overreacting," says Ikuta's mother. "But it's a cute fish so I'll take care of it. Nino, right? Come on, Nino. I'll feed you. You might eat, unlike Nino."
Toma slides back in the door. "Ahh, sorry about that," he says.
Ohno thinks So, Nino doesn't eat? but what he says is: "I like your mother. She's very nice."
Toma has a heartbreaker grin. "I like her," he says, ducking his head a bit. He scrubs at the back of his neck with one hand. "Ah, if you want to come over to the bench we can talk about what you want for your fish."
Following him to one of the metal benches, not the one in the corner of the room but the one by the window, Ohno sits. "Something simple," he says.
Toma scoops a stack of papers out of the way before he grabs a fresh sheet and a pencil. "I'm not much of an artist," he warns as he begins to draw. His lines are fast and rough but they get the point across. "First we need a basic shape—" Shapes bloom on the page; boxes and ovals and circles and things almost like vases. There a tall shapes, short shapes, wide around shapes.
It's hard to choose. "Um. Something like what he has now, I guess. It's classic, right?"
"Sure," Toma agrees. "Ohno-san," he adds a moment later, like he's forgot himself.
"Just Ohno is fine," Ohno tells him, gently. "I really am just Ohno here."
Biting his lip, Toma looks at him. "If that's what you want, okay but I'm a little star-struck here, so give it time. Nobody warned me that—" his phone interrupts with a shrill beep.
"You can answer that," Ohno tells him as his own phone chirps at him. "I have to answer mine."
"Hello?" Toma says, flipping his phone open.
Ohno's call is only his new manager, letting him know that he'll be meeting with him Tuesday afternoon. There are probably important details being imparted to him but Ohno's not really listening. This is because Ikuta Toma is very obviously on the phone with Ninomiya, the person.
"That 'guy'? 'That guy'? Do you know who THAT GUY IS?" Toma is hissing into his phone. "You—" a pause. "You must. You sent him to me. You never send me anybody you don—you aren't thinking of that, are you?"
New Manager-san, whose name Ohno hasn't bothered to remember yet, goes on and on about something. Ohno wonders what 'that' was.
"No. Absolutely not. He's—no he's famous. And he's not that way. The hell would I do that for? No. No. Because he's famous and he could nail half of Japan if he wanted to!"
Turning away so that Toma can't see his face, Ohno smiles. Somehow he's still not used to being thought of as 'famous' or able to nail half of Japan if he wants to. "Yes," he says in response to something his manager says. His manager begins to bluster. It was probably the wrong thing to say.
"You're great, okay? And I say this as somebody you talked into…" Whatever Ikuta is going to say, he glances over and skips it. "Once. And I'm telling you—I can't give you that. Look, I've got to go. I'm working. No, he didn't call. He showed up." There's another, longer pause. Ikuta looks like he wants to roll his eyes. "Screw you, jerkwad," he says and ends his call.
New-Manager is still talking but Ohno interrupts him. "I've got to go. We're working on a house for Nino," he says and hangs up on him. Then he turns his phone off. It's his day off, anyhow. "Something round, because that's classic," he says, reminding.
Toma nods. "Okay. I…" he makes a face of concentration. "You know, I really can't draw. How about if I make some miniatures, kind of like models, and you can see what you like?"
Ohno makes his own face of concentration. "But what will you do with the ones I don't pick?"
"I won't put them in the annealer," Toma says with a shrug. At Ohno's confused look he points to something that sort of resembles a cross between a cabinet with four doors and a refrigerator. "It cools the glass slowly so that it hardens without cracking." He shrugs again. "Not like I couldn't melt it all back down anyhow but I hate the way it kind of explodes in the crucible once it's been annealed." Toma makes yet another face. "Or I could anneal them and sell them down at YamaP's if they're any good."
"YamaP's?" Ohno asks. The name sounds vaguely familiar for some reason.
"Gallery and gift shop; my friend Pi runs it. It's down by Village Hall."
Village Hall was where Ohno and the realtor had gone to sign the final papers on the house by the beach. It had been spring then, cold and early and there had been a place on the way to the office… "Ah, with the green glass!"
Toma grins at him again. "Yeah. Koga stone is native to the island so we use it a lot. Tourists like it." They smile at each other for a moment. And another moment. And yet another. They smile until Toma twitches. "Well. I'm going to go get to work so…"
He isn't an idiot. Ohno knows that this is a cue to leave. But aside from Nino and the old grandparents who lived close to him, Ohno hasn't really met many people on the island. His quiet nature and the fact that apparently people on the island DO know who he is (in retrospect, it was ridiculous that he'd thought they might not have) has made him a little shy and a bit of a recluse. He hadn't wanted to leave the pet shop but his heart had been thumping so hard that he hadn't had a choice. He doesn't want to leave here. "Cool. Can I watch? I can be your assistant!"
Toma's face is really kind of charming, Ohno thinks, even if he doesn't want to kiss him at all.
Glassblowing is hard work, Ohno discovers. It's a lot more than blowing into some tube (a blowpipe, Toma calls it, and he uses a little hose attached to some little machine instead of blowing into it) and rolling it around. But it does make Toma drop the formal talk. Ohno figures it's the possibility of getting burnt by molten glass that made him forget.
He is surprised to see that Toma works the pipes barehanded but utterly entranced at the way he never needs to look as he reaches for tools beside him, his hand finding just the right thing every time he puts it out.
"Do you need any help?" Ohno asks again. So far there isn't much to do but sit and watch in fascination.
"Hand me a punty, will you?" Toma finally makes a request, squinting at the glass.
"Punty?"
"Ah, see that oven thing with the rods sticking out?" Toma jerks his chin in the direction of the oven thing, his eyes never leaving the glass in front of him. "That's a pipe warmer. Grab the smallest punty you can find." Ohno goes over and puts his hand on one tentatively. It's hot, but not burning. Not on the outside end, at any rate. "Nope, the first three are pipes." He doesn't know how Toma can see what he's doing, but he's impressed. He moves his hand. "Smaller." He moves all the way to the end of the line. "Yep. Do not hold the hot end out to me."
Ohno presents it to him carefully, cool end out first.
Toma inserts the hot end into the bottom of the sphere. "Just gonna jack this quick," he mutters, picking up something that looks like a pair of giant tweezers. Or salad tongs. Or the mutant child of a tweezers and a salad tong.
"Does Nino help out?" Ohno chances asking, curious as to what Nino might or might not do in Ikuta Toma's workshop.
Toma rolls the pipe, picking at the bubble of glass with the tool he's called a jack. "Mostly I work on my own. My mom assists if I need it for something bigger but she's mostly around in case I get hurt somehow."
"But sometimes Nino comes by?" Ohno asks. Toma said that Nino came in at times. When he thought he was talking about Ninomiya the person, and not the fish Nino.
"Sometimes. If I can't get anybody else," Toma shakes his head, his hair sticking to his forehead with sweat. He pushes up the edge of his safety glasses with his wrist. "Or if I need extra-steady hands and I don't mind owing him."
Nino has steady hands. Ohno files that away in his mind, choosing to think about the way it made his own hands prickle instead. It is a good feeling. An exciting feeling. He wants to feel it again. "Does Nino do his own glass work?" he asks.
This makes Toma laugh. "No. He'd rather slit his wrists."
"What does he do?" Ohno asks.
Toma looks up at him. "Nino?" The pipe with the glass keeps rolling.
"Yes."
"Pass me a diamond shear?" Toma asks. "Not the Putsch. The small Steinert, if you can find it." As Ohno is reading the names on the handles of scissor-looking things, Toma casually says, "He mostly plays games and counters for his sister at her pet shop. He's been like that forever."
"Forever?" Ohno tries to sound casual himself. That Nino plays games he already knew. That Nino has a sister is new. And this sister owns the pet shop where he works. This is probably why he was playing a game instead of paying attention. He doesn't know why knowing this makes him happy, but it does. It's such a cute thing, like something a little boy might do. He wonders how old Nino is.
"Mm-hm," Toma snips the glass from the blowpipe and drops that into the bucket, rolling the punty along the arm of his bench.
"You've known him a long time, huh?" he asks, watching as Toma takes a cup-shaped thing out of the bucket beside him. It's dripping with water.
Toma doesn't answer him, moving the glass in the cup, rolling it always and shaping it perfectly round. "Did you and Nino go to school together?" Ohno tries again.
For a while, Toma doesn't answer, watching the glass in the mold. "Everybody on the island goes to school together. Shikinejima ferries over their kids, too. It's a small place. Everybody knows everything about each other."
"Oh," says Ohno. "That's nice."
Toma looks at him as dips his tool into the water again. "He was a year above me, but we were friends. Are friends."
In his head, Ohno does the math. Toma's website listed his age and Nino is a year older and that makes him about three years younger than Ohno. Older than Ohno'd thought at first. Somehow that makes his hands tingle more, spreads like a flush over his cheeks. "That's nice," he repeats himself.
Rolling the punty and the glass, Toma just nods. He puts away the wooden tool, taking out a small metal tool and inserts it into where the blowpipe just was and attaches his hose to it, giving it a small jet of air. The edges of the hole peel back like petals on a flower. With quick hands and a small jack, Toma smoothes it into a lipped opening, making it a perfect, clear fishbowl in miniature. "Well?" he asks.
Ohno looks at it. It's close to what he wants but it's not quite what's in his head. "It's…"
"Kinda plain?" Toma asks. "Let me heat some colors up and we'll fix that."
"First you'll have lunch," says Ikuta's mother. She's standing in the door of the workshop looking mildly put out. "I've been calling you for twenty minutes."
Toma glances at his phone. "I turned if off. Sorry, 'kaa-chan. I'll garage this and see Ohno out and…"
"Ohno-san, you stay for lunch too," she overrides her son, already turning to pick up a tray that she's apparently brought with and left out until she was certain she had her son's attention.
"Sorry," Toma mutters as his mother brings over rice and fish and miso soup.
Ohno is delighted by lunch, by Toma, and by Toma's mother. "I'm not."
They spend the afternoon playing with colors. Ohno watches Toma melt little chips of colored glass ("frits", Toma calls them, using them because: "I don't like powders.") and then pull long canes of colored glass, stretchy like taffy, and he lets Ohno cut them off with the diamond shears. Colored canes are twisted, wrapped around glass bubbles to make swirls, they're woven together to make patterns. Drips of molten, colored glass are put on glass bulbs and pulled and stretched to cover. They add tiny glass decorations that Toma calls 'millies' to the inside, gathering glass over it to make it part of it.
Over and over Toma makes the round, full glass globe of a fishbowl to practice the colors on. Ohno is frustrated but Toma isn't. He puts them in the annealer and shrugs. "Pi can always use knick-knacks to sell to tourists," he says. "It's pay for the materials."
"I'm sorry," Ohno apologizes as Toma turns out the lights in the workshop and leads him back to the front of the house. He knows the feeling of what he wants, just not the shape or look of it. "Really."
"Nah, just come back tomorrow and we'll figure it out," Toma says. Then, as though the rest of the house reminded him, as though they haven't had lunch together in his hot, sweaty shop, "I mean, if you can, Ohno-san. If you'd like. I can make a bunch of samples to show you any time you're ready."
"I'll come back tomorrow for sure," Ohno tells him, grateful. "See you later, Toma-kun."
Toma blushes bright red but grins and flashes him the peace sign. "See ya."
The pet shop is closed when Ohno pulls up. All the lights are off and the door is locked. He tries knocking but nobody comes to check. He looks at Nino in his plastic bowl. "Guess he's gone," he says. "We'll update him tomorrow." He drives home, winding through the village past the high school and the junior high and the airport until he arrives on his own beach.
Overhead the moon is half way past half-full, fat and lopsided. The ocean looks dark as ink against the cool-colored sand. Ohno takes Nino down to the shore, just at the edge of the dark, wet sand. He kicks off his shoes and rolls up his cuffs and sticks his legs out so that the waves tickle him with foam. "Do you miss the ocean, Nino?" he asks. The fish seems to be rocking in the bowl in time to the waves, forward and back. "Yeah?" He pokes a finger down into the water and laughs when Nino nibbles at him. "Maybe a little. I miss Tokyo a little. Not much," he adds, adding another finger to the water. "It's nice here. I can hear myself think and I can breathe."
Nino drifts away from his fingers, lipping at the bottom of his bowl. Ohno takes his hand out and picks up some of the wet, clumpy beach sand. He dribbles it into Nino's water, carefully away from the fish and so slowly that it barely clouds the water at all. "Feel more home like?" he asks, tucking a piece of washed-up seaweed in amongst the sand. He adds a broken shell and a few little rocks. "I'm glad you're here, Nino," he says.
He looks out at the ocean, at the light of the stars over head. "Let's go in," he decides at last. He pauses on the porch and looks at the lights of the village in the distance. Inside the house he washes the beach sand from his feet and pads wet-footed around, making dinner. He feeds Nino a pinch of fish-flakes and watches him eat while he eats his own meal. They watch some TV, watch Sho on the news, and after that Ohno carries him to the bedroom and sets him on the night stand. He gets ready for bed by taking off all his clothes and crawling naked between the sheets. "Nino?" he asks. The fish drifts lazily along the bottom of his bowl. "Are you asleep, Nino?" he asks. He clicks off the light and looks at the ceiling. "Are you sleeping?" he asks quietly.
It's feels a little dangerous to think it and so Ohno pulls his sheets over his head and goes to sleep instead of wondering about the elfin-faced villager, with the older sister and the steady hands.
Day two passes at Ikuta Toma's workshop a lot like day one. Ohno has to break him of calling him 'Ohno-san' again and his mother puts a few ice-cubes in Nino's bowl so Nino spends the morning with them, watching them work.
"What do you think?" Ohno asks Nino over and over. Nino is never satisfied.
Toma laughs. "He's got strong opinions, all right. Just like—hello?" he stops to answer his phone. "No," he says. "I'm working!" He hangs up.
Nino, thinks Ohno. Ninomiya. His heart flutters a little. He wants to meet him. "Was that Nino?" he asks.
Toma doesn't answer him. He shows him how to set up for pot-melt glass. It's interesting. Just a bit of frit in an old terra-cotta flower pot with holes in the bottom put into the kiln and heated until it drips onto the glass below, molten glass on to warm glass and it runs in beautiful colors. When Toma picks it up on the pipe it's like stained glass in his hands.
After lunch, Toma's friend Pi shows up with another friend, Jin. Ohno spends the afternoon getting them to stop calling him Ohno-san. It only half works. By the end of the night they're calling him assistant-san. He has dinner out with the three of them, just ramen but it's a few streets over from the pet shop.
The pet shop is still open when Ohno stops by after eating but Nino isn't there. There's a bright-faced kid who beams at him. "Sorry, I don't need anything," he tells him and leaves again. He and Nino go down to the shore again and nearly fall asleep in the sand. Last night repeats itself only Ohno takes a full shower instead of just rinsing the sand off himself.
"Did you have a good day, Nino?" he asks his fish. Nino comes up to the plastic sides of his bowl and hovers there until Ohno puts his hand out and touches where he is. "Me too," he says, and turns the lights out.
Days three and four pass in much the same manner. Nino calls every day and everyday Toma tells him 'no' and hangs up on him. There is less formality and Ohno gets to try his hand at glass blowing. He starts okay but fails by the end. Toma tells him it was a good try and that with practice he'll get better. Sometimes they eat with Toma's parents and sometimes they go out on their own or with Pi and other friends of Toma's. It's nice but Ohno still feels set apart.
Sometimes the pet shop is closed, sometimes it's not. When he goes in, it's always the brightly smiling kid who greets him. He buys fish food to be polite.
He wonders where Nino is.
It happens on the fifth day. Ohno walks into the workshop to find Toma bent over one of the plain practice bowls. He's wearing rubber gloves and there is an unfamiliar chemical scent in the air. "What's that?" Ohno asks.
"Etching stuff," Toma mumbles, squinting at the glass. "Well. Ghetto etching stuff."
"Ghetto etching?"
Toma looks up and smiles cheerfully. "Normally I use a dremel but I can't really draw so it's kind of a bitch. So I thought I'd try a chemical etch. It frosts the glass rather than the design so it's a little ghetto-skank."
Ohno laughs and watches Toma bake the glass for a few seconds and then bring it to his sink in the corner to wash the chemical away. And the glass is frosted and Ohno can see where it looks sort of is skank-art but he stops Toma. "This," he says.
Toma looks at the bowl. "Oh, no way," he says.
"No," Ohno touches the design. "This. Can you make this with the dremel?"
Frowning, Toma looks at the glass. "I used rubber stamps for this. I don't know that I could find them any bigger." He looks helpless. "I can't draw. Honestly. Glass sculptures and knick-knacks are different."
"I can draw," Ohno says.
It's this or it's nothing, he thinks.
It takes them the full day to work it out. The bowl is too big to use the blocks to shape it and Toma uses wet newspaper in the flat of his hand to make the curve. He works fast but they still have to make several trips to reheat. And after that it takes even longer to work out how to do the design because Ohno wants there to be a bit of color, just the hint of it, and they're not sure how to keep it confined. Finally Ohno uses the point a brand new set of shears to trace faint outlines. It's hard because the glass is moving and moving as Toma rolls the punty, keeping it perfectly shaped, but it's worth it as Toma adds the thinnest layer of lightest blue. He picks at it until it isn't a flat, uniform shade. There are ripples and waves in it, darker lines and lighter lines. And then, with the edge of a jack, he erases the guide lines.
"This is going to be great," Toma tells him as finishes. "It's going to be amazing. Pass me that pi divider—that circular pincher-thing."
Ohno looks at the bowl. "What's Nino's favorite color?" he asks.
Toma's eyes go wide. "There is no way I can pick the blue off," he says.
"Ah, I meant Nino," he says and nods at his fish even though he meant Nino the person. "Yellow, I think. For the sun." He makes a circle in the air over the top of the bowl, at the rim.
"Oh," Toma says. "Here, roll that," he leaves Ohno at the bench and goes to his supplies. It takes him only a few minutes to melt the glass and come back with it dripping off the end of his smallest pipe. He wraps it around the lip of the fish bowl as Ohno turns it. A perfect circle in faint, sunshine yellow.
"Now it's perfect," Ohno says, letting Toma take control again.
Toma cuts it off the punty holding it with the divider tool. "Open the annealer," he instructs, pulling a paddle out and shaping the bottom of the bowl with practiced taps until it is flat and smooth. He pulls one of the long tools from the wall and uses it to slide it into the cooling kiln. It all happens in less than a minute.
"It'll take about two days to cool properly enough for me to etch—what?" Toma breaks off.
"You're amazing," Ohno tells him.
Toma's head tips back as he laughs, a real belly laugh. "It's not like giving a concert at Tokyo Dome or anything," he says.
And it's not. Ohno thinks it's more amazing than that. It takes more talent, for one. But he doesn't get to say anything because his phone is ringing and it says 'New Manager-san' when he checks. He answers it. "Yes?"
"You have a flight out tomorrow morning. At nine. Don't forget."
Ohno checks the clock. It's already past ten in the evening. "Am I staying overnight?" he asks. He thinks he is. They have filming in the afternoon and then the next day is shoots and interviews, he thinks.
"Yes," his manager says.
New Manager-san sounds tired already. Ohno wonders sympathetically how long this one will last. "Okay."
Toma is smiling when he ends the call. "Back to work, huh, Ohno-kun?"
Ohno shrugs. "I better go home and pack."
He and Nino sit out by the ocean. "What am I going to do with you, Nino?" he asks, looking at the plastic bowl in the sand. "I don't want to leave you here by yourself. But what's the other option?"
In the bowl, Nino dips in the water. The moonlight makes him look silver and lonesome.
He goes to sleep without knowing what to do.
But he wakes up with a plan. The pet shop, however, is closed when he gets there. It's still too early. He drives to Toma's and is greeted by Toma's mother.
"Ohno-kun, did you want me to wake—?" she starts.
"No, no, I just need to get something out of the workshop. I forgot it last night." He takes the ghetto bowl out and leaves payment for it, and the larger bowl, with Toma's mother. It's probably way too much but he can't be sure. Besides, it's worth it.
He means, truly means, to go right to the airport but there are lights on in the pet shop as he passes and Ohno swings in, parking haphazardly. For once it is not Chinen at the counter. It's Nino. He's not playing a game, he's checking boxes against a clipboard of paper. "Ah," his mouth shapes the word when Ohno raps on the door. He purses his lips and just when Ohno is about to give up, he unlocks the door. "Hey, we're not open," he says.
"I'm sorry!" Ohno apologizes.
Nino laughs at him. "Whatever. Jin told Masami that Toma had a new assistant. That would be you, yes?"
Ohno blinks. "Yes."
"Thought so. You smell like Toma's glory hole."
Ohno blinks again. And then. "Oh." The reheating drum. "That."
He doesn't care how stupid it makes him look to be cow-eyed and stupid and trying to figure out what Nino is saying because Nino is laughing again. He cups his chin in his hand. "So, Toma seems to think you're famous," he says, his eyes still shining.
Nino doesn't know, Ohno realizes. "You don't know?" he asks, just to make sure.
"I could ask around but then everybody would know I was asking. I could listen in to the gossip but that seems a little unfair. If you don't want to give me your name, you don't. If you're really a big deal like he says then it's up to you, isn't it?"
"I'm not," Ohno says.
Nino cocks his head. "Eh?"
"A big deal. I'm just Ohno when I'm here. Plain old regular Ohno Satoshi."
"Ohno Satoshi," Nino repeats. "Ninomiya Kazunari," he introduces himself with a short bow which Ohno returns automatically. "Is that my namesake's new home?" he asks, nodding at Ohno's hand.
Ohno has forgotten that he's carrying Nino's new bowl. "No, it's just for travelling," he says.
"Travelling," Nino snorts. "Who takes a fish travelling?"
Ohno gets to the airport and while he can get Nino on board with just a smile at the flight crew, nothing will make up for the fact that he's missed his plane by two hours.
Somehow it's worth it, he thinks, as he turns his phone back on and the missed messages from his manager begin to show up.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-19 12:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-19 09:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-19 02:36 pm (UTC)Toma as a glass blower is...somehow...insanely hot.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-19 09:49 pm (UTC)(Toma as a glass blower IS insanely hot. In the summer he wears a wifebeater and, you know, sweats a lot. Please don't judge me.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-19 06:05 pm (UTC)I love this AU so insanely much <3
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Date: 2010-08-19 09:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-19 11:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-20 12:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-20 04:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-20 04:24 am (UTC)But I love you. You just don't even know how much I love you, okay? This is a wonderful step in developing just this entire universe.
Although, really, it's kind of sad that I know it's AU because Ohno can drive. Even if it is just on a small island town.
The details of the glassblowing and the time it takes for Ohno and Toma to work on a home for Nino are so amazing. (Also: someone watches a little too much How It's Made, but I love that show with a burning that rivals the sun so that's a-ok by me :D) That they took so much time to get it just right was sweet in its own way, but the part where Ohno just started kind of... Getting into the islander life? Meeting people? They were all still Toma's friends, but it was the first time he hadn't been in his own little bubble since he'd gotten on to the island.
THE FACT THAT MADE HIM REALIZE HE WAS LONELY MADE MY HEART GUSH!
And was that a little hint that there was once a Nino/Toma thing? Just once? If so, laskdjflasdkj. (Can I just say, too, that I LOVE Toma's mom. And the fact that she lets him sleep til the middle of the day and is his assistant? Um. Yes. Love it sooooo much)
I'm not sure any of this made sense, but I hope I managed to convey my COMPLETE AND UTTER UNDYING LOVE AND ADORATION. Because it's there.
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Date: 2010-08-21 01:02 pm (UTC)Ohchan who always speak to nino the fish finally manage to speak to nino the person...long waiting paid indeed
thank u
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Date: 2010-11-15 04:57 pm (UTC)I love how you've managed to so casually sprinkle in a handful of other Johnnys without batting an eyelid (or without making the reader bat one, at least. Pi and Jin and CHINEN ♥ I don't even like HSJ but I like how you just slipped him in, almost imperceptibly so as not to interrupt the flow of the story).
And Ohno's nightly routine = ;___; ♥
...I want to know whatever trick Ohno used to let the airline people carry a whole fishbowl onboard.
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Date: 2011-06-02 03:55 pm (UTC)Nino's new home is a huge, round bowl like a globe--so there are countries and the like on it. Those are clear glass. The oceans are blue and the rim is yellow--but it's very faint color, like a tint or an overlay. Because Toma laid it on in sheets and pieces, the blue is rippled-looking (the whole thing is smooth, though you can feel the etched lines). It's simple and yet nice!
lol But Ohno didn't bring the whole tank filled--though he certainly does now. He used--and for short trip, still uses--the travel-bowl. The little frosted glass with the rubber-stamped countries. It's much smaller and looks a lot like the one in my icon!
Ahh, but that aside I want to thank you for mentioning the casual sprinkle of other JE talent. I really wanted to make it casual and matter of fact--this is just life. There's no 'omg, you are JIN' moments because Jin has always been just this island boy. So. And the same with Chinen. I don't realy care about HSJ (I think I can name, like, five of them?) but Chinen, in his early days, was tied to Ohno (and fishing) and Nino so I wanted to keep that. I'm glad it worked and that it was pretty seamless! THANK YOU FOR THAT.
His nightly routine. Ohno is lonely. He didn't even really realize it because he was still getting used to there being quiet in his life. But I do think that part of it is more than missing Tokyo and Arashi--that perhaps he's been missing somebody to share things with. And maybe Nino can help with the lonliness.
(I have NO CLUE. I think it's just that he's famous AND cute.)
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Date: 2011-06-05 11:22 pm (UTC)I just had an '(ﾟД ﾟ)OHHHHH!' moment. It didn't quite occur to me that was how Nino's home looked like! So that's what that line about Fish-Nino going to America and being mad about LA in the first part meantttt ;___; I am now doubly awed and dumbfounded at how casually you can toss in references and make it all work. It's like those awesome classics you re-read a gazillion times and still discover something new or maybe I'm just dense. BUT STILL. TIGHT AND FLUID, I TELL YOU.
NOW I see what you did there. <333
Works for me! XD