Repost! Pluuuuuuuuuus a pimp. And an apology.

[ciircee]

Okay, apology first.

I've been a total 'tard lately. I'm sorry. Expect to see me around a bit more. Maybe not posting more fic or even posting more but being around YOU lot more. And I've been told I don't need to apologize but I want to. I love you guys.

Next up: Pimp!

beinghuman_rp. I joined it. I'm playing. It's...apparently obvious who I am. But it's a lot of fun! We've got an incubus, a fay, a merman, a zashiki-warashi, a witch, some werewolves, a cursed human, AND a fallen star! We have girls! We have Koreans (well, one)! You could be anything and anybody. I would like more Koreans in the game because I think our one is sort of lonely (needs moar SuJu plz!). So if you're at all interested--please feel free to jump in. Everybody is really nice.


And now the repost! From shoneenclub's October contest. I'm shocked at how this one did.

Title: Slow Virus
Summary: A virus, or a viruslike agent, etiologically associated with a disease having a long incubation period of months to years with a gradual onset frequently terminating in severe illness and/or death love.
Prompt Used: Future Arashi
Rating: PG-13
Note: You know who you are, Erin, and you know how much I love you.


Slow Virus

Nino wakes up to Sho. They've been Arashi for twenty-six years and friends for twenty-eight or more so this is nothing new or unexpected. In fact, he is fully aware that he spent the last night in Sho's bed, tucked up against him because sleepovers are still fun. Still, he wakes up to a Sho who is stroking his face. Slow, gentle sweeps of Sho's fingers at the corner of his eye. "Weirdo," he yawns.

In answer, Sho's fingers trail to his temple, down his cheek and across to the corner of his mouth. "Good morning," he says.

"Quit touching my wrinkly bits," Nino tells him, voice all mumbly in a breath that wants to turn itself into another yawn.

Sho's fingers turn into Sho's knuckles making a sighing trail back to his eye. "You look cute with crow's feet," says Sho, as though this forgives him touching them.

Nino balls up a fist and punches him on the shoulder, "Tonight, I am sleeping with Leader," he says.

"Tonight," Sho reminds him, "is the last night of our tour. So unless you want to sleep with Leader and his wife, you won't be." Sho is still touching the wrinkles at the corner of his eye.

Batting his hand away, Nino stretches. "Mi-chan likes me," he says off handedly. "She'll let me in if I ask cutely."

Sho touches his belly and Nino convulses around the unexpected tickle, snorting with laughter. "You're forty-two; you shouldn't be able to do things 'cutely' anymore." He pauses and then grins. "It's so cute that you can get away with it."

Wiping laugh-tears from his eyes, Nino punched Sho on the shoulder again. "Ass. Just for that, when they ask me to please join in their sex-having, I'll do it and tell you all the details."

He's amused when Sho looks not at all traumatized. "They've done it with me in the room before. I already know all the details, thank you."

Rolling over, Nino pushes up to his hands and knees and stretches again, back bowing like a cat's. Because they probably ALL know all the details, thank you very much. "Leader," he declares, "is such an exhibitionist." He turns his head and smiles at Sho, who looks forty-three and change without the benefits of stage makeup and airbrushing. "How come you never got married?" he asks suddenly.

Sho looks a little sad for a moment and then it slides away. "Just never did," he says with a shrug that whispers against the white hotel sheets. "You're still single, too," he adds, as though Nino somehow is unaware of his own status.

What Nino is actually unaware of is why he asked. It's true that during their tours they talk more deeply about things, about deeper things than they would normally but somehow the topic of relationships never really comes up. They found out Ohno and Misono were getting married three days after they eloped to Okinawa and then only because Misono had sent her sister a postcard saying where they were going and what they were doing, and Kumi had shown it to Nakai who had mentioned it to Joushima who had then said something to Matsu-nii who had a golfing date with Aiba and had asked him to pass along his congratulations.

And Nino shrugs, too. "Just never did," he echoes. Never did, even though he's always sort of wanted to be married, to join with somebody for his lifetime. He just…never has. Never found somebody to be the one he can spend his forever with. There is Arashi, Ohno and Aiba and Jun and Sho, and nobody else has come as close as they are. In the years that have been, Ohno and Aiba and Jun have found their somebodies and now it's just him and Sho and waiting…

Feeling curiously unsettled he gets up. "I'm going to go shower," he says and patters away in the direction of Sho's bathroom. It's a hotel so he can't really use up all the hot water but he can get extravagant with his use of Sho's shampoo and soap and dampen every towel he can find. He smiles slyly over his shoulder and is unsurprised when Sho lunges after him, howling his name. He still manages to get there first and lock him out.


They might be in their twenty-sixth year as a band, but concerts are still outrageously fun. And because they no longer have two hundred thousand fans cramming into a building, they can do things a little bit more intimately.

Nino crouches on the edge of the stage during the MC and waves to the crowd. He mimes holding up a cell phone and points to the few who don't have them out.

"Everybody ready?" Sho calls to the crowd. "And….NOW!"

He stands and turns and throws his arm around Sho's waist as they watch the big, center screen light up, graph bars flashing and rising as the audience picks their via phone votes. WISH comes up as the clear winner. Nino looks at Aiba. "Do you even remember this one?" he asks skeptically. Aiba chases him and Nino knows better than to hide behind Sho for protection. He runs.

"I'm not sure I remember the choreo," Sho muses from somewhere behind him. Into his microphone so the whole audience is laughing as the music starts. Nino cuts behind Jun, pushing him into Aiba's path, and streaks up to Sho and pops a kiss on his cheek just in time to start the first lines. By the middle of the song he realizes he doesn't particularly remember the choreography so he does what he does best—he busts out a few old moves, dancing at Sho like an idiot.

It makes him really stupidly happy when Sho grins at him and dances along, both of them flailing and failing. So Nino gives up, going for it altogether. He drops his microphone and puts his arms around Sho's shoulders. He puts a little swivel in his hips and a little grind in the thrust. Sho chucks his microphone over his shoulder. His hands are hot through the sweat-and-water-soaked t-shirt that Nino is wearing and his answering grind is not totally in sync but his laughter is light and cool against Nino's neck. "Nino," he can hear Sho saying and he kisses him on the cheek again as Jun brings Sho his mic and pushes them apart, singing 'gross, gross, gross,' instead of the chorus.

Blowing Jun a kiss, Nino goes to hang himself off of a laughing Ohno. He's still smiling at Sho as he sings.

He doesn't think a thing of it until the end of the show, when they're just kind of talking before doing their last encore song. "Twenty-six years," Jun is saying, dragging a hand through his damp hair and flicking sweat at Nino. "Lot of things changed, right? But it hasn't changed, has it?"

Nino is about to ask 'what' when he sees that the screen is lit up with a video, split into several sections. Each one shows Nino dancing with Sho. Wow, he muses we're awful. "Can't be changed," Nino says, squinting up at the images of himself and Sho and their truly, truly terrible dancing. "It's the proof of our love."

"Good thing you and Sho-chan never got married to each other, ne?" Aiba observes, legs braced and one hand on his hip as he watches the screen. "You'd have had mutant babies for sure."

"Kinniku Home Run was a baseball," Ohno chimes in, charmingly half-on-topic.

"This one would certainly be a tentacle monster," Jun agrees, patting Ohno's shoulder. "Please don't let it play with Home Run-kun."

"Oi, oi!" Sho protests. His arms loop around Nino's middle, his chest solid at Nino's back. "That's our love you're talking about!"

Nino leans back in Sho's arms and tips his head back and laughs up and up and up at the picture they make, that they've always made. He holds Sho's hand through the last song; when the stage lowers them into the floor he is still holding it.

Jun laughs at him. "Still in love?" he asks, teasing as they head for the venue showers.

"Very," Nino deadpans. He presses himself to Sho's back. "Let's shower together," he purrs.

"Let's not," Sho says, pressing back with an elbow against Nino's ribs.

"Have I ever given up?" asks Nino curiously.

It's rhetorical but Sho answers him anyhow. "No. But I haven't got laid in forever so if you do something to make me hard in the shower, you're going to have to deal with it."

Nino laughs and puts his face between Sho's shoulder blades. "I'll cheer you on," he snickers.

"Gross!" Jun laughs.

"Shower with me, Jun-chan!" Aiba says, jumping at Jun.

"GROSS," Jun repeats, dodging him.

Nino would pay attention to their antics but he's caught on the lopsided way Ohno is smiling at Sho. Like there is something that is funny and not-funny both in something that has just gone on. Nino gets up on his toes to peek around at Sho's face and yes, that same out of true smile is on his lips, too. "Hey," he says softly.

Sho elbows him again, gently. "Back up so I can take my clothes off," he instructs and Nino lets go and steps back. Years and years upon years and years of this has him stripping down automatically. He follows Sho into his cubicle. "Hey!" Sho says, staring at him.

"Did you forget?" Nino asks pleasantly as he reaches past him to turn on the water. He lets the initial icy burst hit Sho just to hear him shriek. "Still like a girl after all these years," he grins.

This starts a bit of a slap fight-water war-wrestling match. Nino can hear his laughter and Sho's laughter echoing off the tiled walls, catching in the cotton shower curtain. He ignores Sho's 'Nino'ing until he realizes two things. One, that Sho is not laughing anymore and two, that Sho is hard. Whoops, he thinks. "Nino," Sho says in a careful, cautious, 'I-warned-you' sort of voice.

Nino licks his lips and tastes water and sweat and shampoo from the handful he threw at Sho a little bit earlier. "Go, Sho, go?" he offers. "Rub that one out?"

Sho closes his eyes. "Nino," he repeats in his long-suffering voice.

Grinning, Nino puts himself at Sho's back, picking up the soap on his way. "I'll scrub you while you get busy," he offers. He forgets to grab the washcloth and so he rubs his hands over Sho's back. The bubbles are pretty against Sho's skin. He has the inane thought that Sho is more muscular than he used to be years ago, when this kind of thing was more common. "I'm not going to be here all night, you know," he says when he realizes that Sho is not moving. He touches a kiss to one soapy, sloping shoulder. "And I'm not reaching around."

"Satoshi," says Sho.

It's not loud but somehow Ohno must hear him or be listening for him because a hand comes through the curtain and Nino finds himself pulled out of the warm cocoon of the shower stall to face Ohno. "Oh-chan," Nino grumps in protest.

He's more than a little shocked by the way Ohno cups his face in both hands. "No, Nino," he says, in his soft-firm Leader voice. His eyes are gentle, dark with some secret that Nino doesn't know. "Come with me now."

Always before he's been willing to play with Ohno, to do something silly, to shower with him and make noises that will make the others laugh. This, he thinks as he follows Ohno to the last shower in the row, the one that's empty but still running, this is not going to be that. He looks at Ohno as Ohno puts him under the water and rubs shampoo into his hair for him. "What?" he asks.

Ohno puts a hand over his face and pushes him back into the spray. "Some things aren't for play anymore," he says. "We're older now."

Nino knows that it's been years since any of them have been in a circle jerk or anything remotely close but this is still them, still him and Sho. "I don't get it," he says at last.

Still smiling at him, Ohno leans into the water and kisses his forehead. "It's okay," he soothes. "You don't have to." His eyes are almost sad, but the sort of almost where it's been so long that it's not even really felt anymore, just a shadow of feeling. Nino doesn't understand even more so he shuts up and watches Ohno but Ohno never gives away anything that he wants to keep. Nino is turned out of the shower clean and calm and confused, confused, confused.


Naturally, then, he follows Sho home. Because this is something to do with something to do with Sho. He parks right next to Sho in his building's underground lot. "I'm coming up," he says when he hops out of his car. It's not as big as the Pajero and he misses it at times. Especially when he thinks about how it could run over Sho's new sleek little European thingy like nothing.

Sho doesn't look at him as he locks his car but does when they reach the elevator. "I thought you were sleeping with Satoshi tonight," he says. He's laughing under his breath and Nino doesn't get it all over again.

"I thought you were upset," he says as the lift stops. He's the first out, leading the way to Sho's door and he uses his own key to open it. "Oh-chan had the 'things are upset but I will be sweet to you' face at me."

A hand on his shoulder stops him from going through the door. Sho dusts his head with a kiss. "You didn't do anything so you can go home. It's okay." He smiles and pats him on the head and Nino has a flashback to Mimura and Yamada. "So if you think you have to do something to make up, you don't have to."

'It's okay' and 'you don't have to'…isn't that what Ohno said, too? Nino frowns. "Well, I want to come in," he decides.

With a smile and another pat, Sho ushers him inside. "I'm pretty much just going to go to sleep, though," he says. "Maybe check my stock portfolio and my online bill-pays but mostly sleep."

That sounds like a dismissal, like he expects Nino to leave and Nino blinks as he toes off his shoes. "I'm tired, too, you know," he says. "We'll both sleep." Aha, there it is, he thinks as he watches Sho's face. Something is upset with Sho. Nino can't think what he's done that he hasn't done before but, as Ohno pointed out, they're older now.

"All right," Sho shrugs and Nino has a flashback to the morning, to Sho all tousled in the shared hotel room bed and touching his face.

"I'll let you touch my wrinkly bits in the morning," Nino tells him. Sho laughs loudly and Nino has always loved making Sho laugh. He's not as good at it as Ohno is, so it's even better when he really does manage it. It makes him feel lit up inside, like Kokuritsu full of penlights, an endless summer night concert. "They're cute!" he says and sidles up to Sho and starts to dance, humming some random song that is possibly not even theirs.

"What are you doing?" asks Sho, still laughing and now dancing with him in a whirl of crazy arms and no real music.

Nino smiles and loops his arms around Sho's neck. "Loving you," he answers. Sho smiles back at him so truly warm that Nino leans in and kisses him right on the mouth. When he draws back a second later he realizes, again, two things. The first? That Sho is no longer dancing. The second—Sho is still smiling but no longer with everything he has and is.

Mouth kissing Jun and Aiba is never okay unless they're fighting over food and Nino actually wants to win it. It's always okay to mouth kiss Ohno because, well, it's always okay to kiss Ohno. Mi-chan doesn't mind it anyhow (not that Nino thinks anybody would have an issue with him kissing Jun or Aiba aside from Jun and Aiba) and half the time Ohno is just as likely to kiss him first. Try as he might, Nino cannot recall mouth kissing Sho but surely, surely it's all right, he thinks. It's not like Sho is married. Or even dating. And Sho loves him.

"It's late, Nino," Sho says quietly disentangling them. "Let's go find some pajamas."

"Okay." He can't help but think that the day started out so normally. Sho and him hanging out together and then the concert and then things just got strange and stranger and strangest. Nino watches Sho as they change for bed, watches him as they both climb under the sheets. He rolls on top of him as he reaches for the lamp by the bed.

When Sho tries to roll him off, he clings. "Nino," Sho says. It's his shower-time-call-for-Satoshi voice.

But Ohno isn't here and Nino wouldn't care if he was. He leans down and presses his mouth to Sho's in another kiss, light and affectionate like the first. Sho turns his head and Nino follows, pressing a second kiss to his lips. "Sho," he says when Sho tries to get away again. Sho's eyes are getting worse and worse with each small kiss. "It's just because I love you," he says. What the hell is going on? Not just with Sho, with himself, too. Why is this so important, this small gesture, this look on Sho's face? "Don't you know I love you?" he asks. He means to sound flippant but he just sounds questioning.

Sho's hands stop trying to push Nino back. Instead they go to Nino's shoulders and rest. "I know you do," he says. His eyes are blank somewhere deep inside, under all the warmth and the kindness and the nearly thirty years of friendship. "I know, Nino. I love you, too."

The confusion is still there but Nino let's Sho roll until he's off, at his side. He stops Sho when Sho reaches over for the lamp again. "Not until you kiss me." He studies the way Sho's eyes close briefly and then open again. "If you love me, prove it and kiss me."

"Quit being a brat, Nino," Sho tells him and cuffs him gently on the side of the head.

It hits Nino like a sack full of doorknobs and he flops over onto his back.

He forgets to stop Sho from turning out the lights.

"You love me," he says into the night around them.

"Yes, now go to sleep."

"No, I mean—" Nino rolls up to his elbow and finds Sho's face in the dark. He touches him gently.

"Ow," says Sho. "That's my eye."

"You're the one who turned off the lights," Nino reminds him, petting at his face somewhere above what he now knows was Sho's eye. "But I meant…you love me."

He knows that Sho understands him. It's been so long and he's known Sho so well—not as well as he'd thought but certainly well enough to know this much—he knows that Sho is trying to figure out what to say. After a moment, Sho sighs. "Yes. Now go to sleep."

Nino has always known that Sho is not quite normal. He just never realized he was this weird. "Sleep? Go to sleep? Sho, turn the light on. We're going to have a moment."

Sho groans, one of those heartfelt groans that says he kind of wants to just die already, but the light comes back on. "In twenty-eight years this has not been an issue, Nino. Can we just drop it? I have filming tomorrow for the morning news. I can't run on two hours of sleep a night anymore."

In answer, Nino smacks Sho's temple with the heel of his hand. "Twenty-eight years?" he demands. "What the fuck, Sho?" Seriously? "How could you let this—do you realize that I'm now officially dumber than Aiba? What if this gets out?"

"Even Aiba knows that you're dumber than Aiba," Sho tells him. "Can we just—honestly, Nino, can't we just sleep? It's dumb, okay? I know it. It's a non-issue. Let's sleep, all right?"

"Oh my god, you're so insane," Nino says. He is both horrorstruck and wonder-filled. This is his best friend. "Twenty-eight years?"

Sho covers his face and scrubs. "Is this where you start to question everything? Because you shouldn't. Everything was real. Is real. There's just a bit…more. It's not a lie to not tell you, you know. And you—NINO!"

Nino keeps his hand firmly down Sho's pants even when Sho tries to drag it out. It's not like he's touching anything aside from Sho's hip, anyhow. Sho's just…well, he's Sho. And apparently in love with Nino. Nino grins. "Hey," he says, hushed and solemn when Sho quits struggling and looks at him.

Body softening, Sho keeps their eyes locked and Nino sees them soften as well. "Hey," he returns quietly.

"You know," Nino says, still low, like this is maybe a secret except it's not. It's not. "You know, I'm still single too."

Sho keeps looking at him and he smiles, slowly but with everything he has and is and Nino smiles back. "So you are," Sho agrees.

Nino moves his hand and cups Sho's balls.

Sho shrieks like a frightened girl.

"I'll let you touch my wrinkly bits in the morning," Nino promises, laughing as he lets go and turns out the lamp again.

Sho hugs him close. "I hate you," he says feelingly.

"I love you," Nino tells him.

And Sho must really, really love him a lot because he doesn't even say 'it took you long enough'. "About time," he says instead and Nino closes his eyes.

Because it is.




AND! A scene I couldn't work in!



Slow Virus: Deleted Scene

"My divorce," Nino says contemplatively, "would take me by complete surprise."

Ohno tilts his head back and rests it on Nino's knee. "Even though you saw it coming a mile away? After three years of endless fights that ended with you putting your arms around her and promising things will change even when you know they won't?"

"Yes, even then," Nino agrees gravely. "I'll tell her 'don't do this' and she'll say 'we shouldn't have' and then she will leave me and I will be stunned."

"Like she just hit you upside the head with a really big sea bass," Ohno nods in understanding.

"Exactly," Nino sighs. "I'll come to you and spend two solid weeks at your house, in your bed."

"Having sex with you there would be awkward," Ohno frowns up at him.

Nino shrugs. "Well, I could always leave if I didn't sleep through it."

"You wouldn't sleep through it," Ohno tells him.

"How come 'join in, Nino!" isn't an option?" Misono wants to know, leaning out of the genkan where she's scuffing on shoes and getting ready to go to work at some late night filming.

"Because I love you too much," Nino tells her solemnly. "Oh-chan would have to kill me. That's why I always sleep on his side of the bed."

"But he'd give you a slap on the ass as he got out to give us privacy," Ohno tells her comfortingly. "You know how much Nino loves your butt."

"I do," Nino agrees. "Plus, Satoshi would be hogging your breasts."

Misono gives him a thumbs up. "Please do something to my husband as well!" she requests.

"I'd pinch his nipple," Nino says agreeably. "I don't want you to feel left out," he adds, looking down at Ohno.

"Okay. But after that you'd leave. So I can bang my wife."

"You can take care of any awkwardness in the bathroom," Misono laughs. And waves. "Have a good night, guys."

Nino blows her a kiss. "I'll leave after two weeks, but still not be recovered. I just want you two to be able to bone without feeling guilty about making me lose sleep."

Aiba, half drunk and on the floor, lists into a sitting position. "You could come and stay with me," he offers. "Becky could be in the middle." His eyes glow.

Nino strokes his chin. "You know she'd kill you for even suggesting that, right?"

"But you're lonely!" Aiba protests. "Vulnerable. You need to know that you're loved and wanted!" He pauses and flops back. "She'd divorce me for sure if I tried."

"This band can't handle two divorces at once," Nino tells him consolingly. "But she and I would teach your baby to call me 'daddy' and I would only stay the one night because I don't want Becky to kick you to the curb."

"Thanks, Nino," Aiba tells him in all seriousness.

"Welcome," Nino allows.

Jun stretches out on the couch and puts his head on his hand, practically in Nino's lap. "I would not let you stay with me."

"Mao-chan would let him in," says Aiba. "And if she didn't, Shun would."

"You would let me in," Nino tells Jun, turning to nuzzle his face against Jun's hair. "You would be waiting for me and when I turned up, tired and miserable, you would scoop me up and into your apartment."

In answer, Jun snorts. "Whatever."

"Kazunari, you'd say, Kazunari let's play Mario so that I won't be all girly at you and talk about your feelings!"

Ohno reaches back and pats Jun. "You'd kick his ass at Mario, at least."

Jun slaps Nino on the thigh. "You'd cry in my bed and you know it."

"I would," Nino allows. "We would cuddle and—Mao would not be there. She'd be overseas or something. Filming something. And she'd have your kids with her—and we would cuddle and I would cry just a little and you'd kiss me sweetly on the temple and I'd call you a girl and you'd punch my arm like a sissy and it'd be very cathartic."

"Are you even dating anybody?" Sho asks.

"Not really," Nino looks at him. "Not seriously."

"Then why the hell are you getting divorced?"

"Because he's a pretty crap husband," Ohno steps in. "Sorry, Nino, but she left you for a reason."

Nino pouts at him and then turns it on Sho. "See if I come to your place for sympathy," he says.

"He's not married so he wouldn't be any good at it anyhow," says Aiba. "You're better off coming back to my place again."