Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I disclaim
Warnings: Nothing sexual. But has mentions of a traumatic event. Sho might be slightly OOC sometimes, but it is kind of the point.
Summary: Sho comes back to Japan. It’s up to Nino to make him return fully, however.
Note: Had to separate this into two parts because the post was too large for LJ. Part 1 can be found here

Get you through this (part 2)

As per Sho’s request, all activities had resumed as normal immediately after his return. Sho seemed to have made the right call – Nino noticed far fewer “slip-ups” by the older idol when he was busy with work, as opposed to back home, where there weren’t as many distractions.

Of course, small incidents still happened. Sho would lose concentration when doing simple tasks at times. He seemed to phase out whenever they were surrounded by too many people, too closely. But there were usually methods they could use to prevent these things. Nino, in particular, congratulated himself for having the forethought to quietly tell the vs Arashi staff to keep Sho away from any games that required safety harnesses. From the way Sho would distrustfully watch how other members got strapped in for Cliff Climb or even Pinball Runner, he figured he must have made the right call.

But the relative calm was bound to end at some point.

A new single was in the making, and a bit over two weeks after Sho’s return, they were to film the promotion video for it. The choreography sections went without a hitch, all filmed in a playfully decorated studio. The issue came in an unexpected way, when they reached the location for the lip-sync scenes the next morning.

“I’m so sorry,” the manager bowed low before them as they stood in a park, next to a playground filled with laughing and energetic children, “There must have been some misunderstanding. They were supposed to make sure the public was kept away from the playground for a reserved period of time today. I will immediately call the right people and find out what happened and why no one is here,” he reassured them, already taking out his phone from his pocket and stepping away to make the right calls.

As Jun quietly muttered in discontent and Aiba cheerfully answered that at least the weather was nice so it was fine to wait a little, Nino didn’t even pay attention. His eyes were fixed on Sho, who was looking around himself, visibly distressed. It was a public place and there were plenty of people milling around. Fortunately, this meant their little group didn’t stand out too much, but the situation obviously made Sho uncomfortable for other reasons.

Then a little girl let out an especially loud shriek as she got chased around the playground in a game of tag, and at the same time another kid tripped, scraping his knees and immediately bursting into tears. While the remaining three Arashi members didn’t even notice the commotion and continued talking among each other on the side, Nino witnessed as Sho flinched so hard he almost jumped from the ground, and his face immediately turned sickly white.

Throwing a glance to make sure their bandmates really weren’t paying them any attention, as he knew Sho wouldn’t want them to worry, Nino stepped closer to the shaken man, intentionally standing directly in the line of sight between Sho and the playing kids. Immediately, Sho winced as he entered his field of vision, their gazes met and Nino felt disheartened when he saw the older idol’s eyes get filled with unneeded shame. He opened his mouth to say something, but the manager chose that moment to be done with the phone calls.

“I am once again very sorry, it seems there is another playground in this park,” the agitated man informed them, “It was completely my mistake. It is not very far away, however, so it’s possible to just walk there or we can go back to the van-”

“We’ll walk,” Nino said immediately, making everyone turn to him with dumbstruck expressions. It was unheard of for Nino to voluntarily choose physical activities instead of the lazy way out. But Nino didn’t even blink. He had long since noticed that Sho seemed wary of riding in their van since coming back, and he had his suspicions about the reasons behind this. In any case, he wasn’t about to let anyone force Sho into that van right after the episode he just had. Especially not if he couldn’t even talk to him alone beforehand, “Great weather for a walk, right, Aiba-shi?” he offered as an indirect explanation to everyone instead, “Let’s go, let’s go,” he urged and used the opportunity to grab Sho by the arm as if to pull him into motion, leaving the others no choice but to follow right behind.

‘We’ll still talk about this, Sho-chan. Don’t hide away from me again now.’

-~*~-

Despite his resolve to talk about the incident no matter what, Nino found it was simply impossible for him to find some time alone with Sho that day. The PV filming made way to other assignments, they got separated, and when Nino came back home, it was still empty, so Nino resignedly sat down to play while he waited. But even once Sho finally returned, he didn’t give his concerned host any opportunity to trap him in a conversation before saying he would take a shower and going straight to the bathroom to do so.

Sighing and worried, Nino tried to concentrate back on the game, but not fifteen minutes later he was already jumping up from the couch in panic and dropping his controller carelessly away as he heard Sho’s distressed voice from the shower.

It was lucky that they didn’t feel the need to lock the door when living together, so Nino was able to enter the bathroom and hurriedly open the door of the stall, only to find Sho curled up in a corner as far away as possible from the still running stream, his face hidden against his knees. Trying not to spook the other any further, Nino reached inside and was startled to find that the water was cold before managing to turn it off. Then he stepped inside, not caring that his bare feet immediately got wet, and crouched down before the other.

“Sho-chan?” he prompted, carefully, “Sho-chan, come on, let’s get you out of here, you’ll get a cold.”

Fortunately, Sho, though unresponsive, allowed himself to be pulled back to his feet. He stayed motionless and simply let Nino to dry him with a towel, which meant that the smaller idol couldn’t help but notice a bruise right bellow Sho’s ribcage, old enough to have turned a sickly yellow color but big enough to make him suck in his breath. Nino suddenly realized he hadn’t seen Sho changing clothes together with them even once since he had come back, and it was obvious to him that Sho had tried to hide this from his bandmates. But he didn’t comment on it. He quietly got out a bathrobe from one of the cabinets – an old present from Jun, but Nino had never been a bathrobe sort of person so it stayed almost unused – and dressed Sho in it, ignoring the fact that it was obviously too small.

Then he silently led the other into the living-room, sitting him down on his couch, and started gently running a towel through Sho’s hair, drying it with care.

“Are you not going to ask what that was about?” Sho asked after a few silent minutes, probably glad that in this position Nino could not see his face.

“Mm?” the younger man faked unconcern, “I think you’ll tell me yourself, once you’re ready,” he finally answered, still moving the towel in a gentle, circular motion. He couldn’t get rid of the image of Sho curled up in that shower from his mind. He had been naïve, he realized, thinking he could just ask Sho to explain himself, to open up to him on his command. That wouldn't be the right course of action at all. He had to be patient.

He was a little startled when he felt Sho’s hand on his own, stopping it, but he willingly let go and slowly sat down himself, his body slightly turned towards his friend. And he waited.

Sho pulled the towel away from his head, letting it drop into his lap, but he didn’t lift his head. He just breathed for a while, seemingly concentrating on it on purpose, composing himself.

“I just tried to adjust the temperature of the water,” Sho finally spoke up, “But you know how sometimes when you just turn the handle two degrees to the right, but it suddenly changes from pleasantly warm to hell frozen over? I was just startled and I-“

He swallowed, suddenly, and licked over his lips and then took a few more breaths, just concentrating on them again.

“When they asked what I knew…” he tried again after a minute, “When they realized it wasn’t anything they could use, they got angry at first. So I got a few punches, and plenty of kicks in the ribs for my effort,” he forced out, his hand rising up to clutch over the spot where Nino now knew a huge, almost healed bruise hid beneath the robe, “But after a while, the anger faded. And for some reason, they got it into their heads that I was keeping something from them. Like it was some sort of spy movie. So they tried to make me talk. You know, in the ice-bucket challenge kind of way,” he chuckled humorlessly, “Only it was more of an ice-buckets challenge. They’d dump one on me, then waited for me to only just start drying, then do another one. I don’t know how many they…”

He broke off, and Nino tried to digest the information he just received. So there had been even more to the kidnapping. Was Sho hiding something more? Would it take another incident like this to draw it out from him, like it did to make him speak up about the starvation and now this?

Nevertheless, once this story-time was over, Sho seemed almost relieved. A few deep breaths more and he recovered enough to flash Nino a smile.

“At least that’s what I think it was about. Have you any idea how hard it is to communicate when both sides speak only heavily accented English?” he joked and then sighed once, “Who knows how I managed not to get a cold or even pneumonia from that, but I’m not going to question a good thing.”

The flippant remark worked to snap Nino out of his stunned daze as well.

“It’s your sloping shoulders,” he teased with a grin, even poking at one of them with a stubby finger, “The water just whooshed away to the sides from them and you were saved. Aren’t you glad you’re our Mr. Nadegata now?”

Sho first gave a snort, but then slipped into actual laughter and Nino just smiled a satisfied smile on the side. But the younger idol also couldn’t help but feel a little bit pained while listening to it.

Shamefully, he had never consciously recognized it before, but Sho had always had a very particular way of laughing. He would laugh loudly and unreserved, completely abandoning himself to it. He laughed with all of his body, all of his soul. He didn’t just laugh for himself, he laughed to show the person that made him laugh just how funny he found their joke and he laughed to make other people join in. Nino had always felt a special kind of joy whenever he made Sho laugh.

But now, all of that was missing. Now, Sho was just laughing because he found the joke funny.

‘For the sake of Sho being able to laugh like he did before…” Nino made a vow to himself and clenched his fists.

“You know, they snatched us from a public park,” Sho suddenly stated, apparently willing to open up about even more once he had started, “Just shows how fearless they have become there. I had met with… someone at the park and was going back when they grabbed me. I didn’t even realize what was happening before I was already in the back of that van, my hands tied… There were other hostages there. Three men, two women and a little girl…” he trailed off, and Nino suddenly came up with a realization.

“The playground today,” he recalled with understanding and Sho just nodded in confirmation.

“Ah, today sucks,” he whined, slumping back in the couch and staring at the ceiling, “Why do things like this have to happen one after another?”

“It’s normal, Sho-chan,” Nino said calmingly, “It will take you some time to get through this. Some days will be better, some days worse, like this one. But all days will be Nino-days, you hear me?”

Sho nodded gratefully, obviously realizing what the smaller man meant by that.

“Good,” Nino stated, as he reached for his poor previously-discarded controller, “You’d better appreciate it. Because can you even imagine how hard it is for me to take you seriously when you tell these things while looking as ridiculous as you do now in that bathrobe?”

-~*~-

That day, as bad as it had been, seemed to signify a sort of a breakthrough. In the days that followed, Nino managed to get out of Sho that there were no more revelations from his time in captivity left, that he had told the last significant details already and the relief of having gotten it all off his chest seemed to return more life to the older idol. Ohno even remarked about it to Nino once, secretly, saying that Sho finally seemed better.

Nino was confident that this time, the worst was truly in the past. But it didn’t mean that he lost his vigilance, or that everything was back to being completely fine.

“Kazu,” Sho called out to him one evening after shuffling around through his things for at least fifteen minutes while Nino, as usual, played, “Do you have a copy of the lyrics to the new song? I seem to have displaced mine somewhere and I wanted to refresh my memory of it before tomorrow."

“Uhm,” Nino let out, his brain slow to both make sense of Sho’s question and come up with an answer as he was too fixed on the game, “The desk, over there, probably, if you, uh, can find it,” he indicated with a small tilt of his head towards a desk on the side of room which all of his papers found their way to sooner or later, only to be forgotten until the end of eternity. And then he was lost to reality once more, submerged as he was into his game.

Ten minutes later, Sho bothered him again.

“Nino,” he said, his voice sounding weirdly tight, “What are these?”

“Not now, Sho-chan,” the gamer dismissed him, “I’m at a boss fight.”

But the other was having none of it.

“Nino, what are these?” he repeated, and no matter how distracted Nino was, he couldn’t have possibly missed the note of barely restrained anger in his friend’s voice. He hit the pause button without any more delay and a second later was already worriedly standing next to a thin-lipped Sho, inspecting the sheets the older man held out in his hands.

“Oh,” he said, frowning, not quite understanding why the other was reacting to this with anger, “These are… Sho-chan, they’re nothing. The psychiatrist that you had to see just thought he should give us some recommendations on how to help best you. But they weren’t useful at all, just a load of obvious stuff.”

“How to help me?” Sho snapped, obviously having none of Nino’s pointedly calm response, “Is that why you were doing all of this this whole time? Because some head-doctor gave you orders to?”

Ah. Well. At least now that Nino understood the problem, he could work with it, right?

“Sho-chan, I did all of this because I wanted you to get better. And if there was anything to be done to help you get better, I wanted to be the one to do it. Because I care for you, alright?” he soothed, gently taking the papers out of Sho’s hands and putting them away from sight before placing his hands on his friend’s shoulders, for once not even pretending they immediately slipped down too mock the other, “You know that, don’t you? You’re my dearest friend. Those weren’t orders, they were recommendations, and none of us even read through all of them, okay?”

For a few more seconds, Sho’s eyes were still blazed up with unreasonable anger, but then it was as if he started waking up from some sort of spell. The anger bled away and his eyes widened, as if he only now realized what he was doing.

“You’re right,” he said, stumbling backwards a little. He suddenly looked shaky on his feet so Nino once more led him to the couch where they both sat down, “I’m sorry, Nino. I have no idea what came over me. I just saw that list and…”

“It’s okay,” Nino reassured him with a smile.

“No. No, it’s not okay. I attacked you for no reason. Even if those had been orders, it would be fine, right? I mean, I logically understand that… that I was kidnapped. And that this is a big deal. And it would be normal to get such directions from professional. If our situations were reversed, I would wish to help you, but I probably wouldn't know where to even start without getting any advice. I know all that and yet… In that moment…”

“If you understand all ofthat, logically,” Nino interrupted, “Then you must also understand that after what you went through, it is normal for you to react unreasonably sometimes. It’s not something you need to apologize for.”

Sho still seemed a little unsure, but in the end gave a small nod. He looked so distressed and insecure in that moment that Nino couldn’t help but draw him into his arms.

Their perpetual sleep-over just got a little more drama to spice things up, apparently. And right now, Sho felt so small in his arms that Nino could really believe for a moment that they were teenagers again, and Sho-senpai might still get annoyed that he was a full head shorter than Nino.

It was fortunate that Sho had his face hidden in the crook of Nino’s neck, otherwise he might have wondered why the younger man was smiling so widely.

“Thank you, Nino,” the muffled words reached the younger’s ears suddenly, “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t forced me to let you help me.”

“Give your thanks to Leader then,” Nino disclosed without worry, “He was the one that dumped you on my head. I thought he had gone insane to think I could ever be fitting for the job. But the idiot insisted it had to be me.”

“Captain can be wise,” Sho chuckled against his chest. Then, after a couple of seconds of silence, “You know, back then, when they were ‘interrogating’ me… there was this instant when I was sure I would die,” he confessed solemnly, “I thought no one would manage to get me out of there. And at that moment… for some reason the only thing I could think was… ‘I’m going to die without ever seeing Nino again.’ That was the only thing on my mind.”

His mouth suddenly feeling incredibly dry, Nino had to swallow with considerable difficulty. Perhaps it wasn’t that great, after all, that Sho was so close to his chest. There was no way he missed how quick Nino’s heartbeat had suddenly become.

“It’s because my name is the easiest to remember,” he still tried to go for his usual attitude, “Only three different letters. Two syllables. Who would ever manage to remember ‘Matsujun’ on the spot in a stressful situation?”

The older man waited a couple of seconds, probably just to let Nino realize he wasn’t fooling anyone.

“Yeah,” he still said finally, “That must be it.”

-~*~-

Sho went back to his own flat to sleep every second day now.

They agreed to make the change back gradual, changing things in small increments, to make sure Nino would notice if it was too early after all and Sho started withdrawing again. But all things considered, perhaps they made an overly tiny first step.

“I’m here,” Nino called out as he entered Sho’s apartment and started kicking off his shoes. It didn’t really feel right for him to say ‘I’m home’, but he could probably just as well. When Sho had been supposed to go back to his own place the first time, Nino offered to come with that once, just in case. He could admit that he was probably much more worried about this than Sho himself. And that was why he had also come together the next time too. And the next.

It had been two weeks like that now. All they were doing was alternating between their apartments together, Nino realized. But he couldn’t bring himself to stop coming here. Every time he considered it, he’d remember how disoriented Sho would be whenever Nino didn’t wake him from a nightmare fast enough. Of course, the dreams rarely returned anymore. And even when they did, they weren’t as intense as they used to be in the beginning. But still…

“I’m in the living-room,” Nino heard Sho answer him and he followed the voice, carrying the bag with two combini-lunches he had bought for their dinner with him. He found the other man, indeed, on the fluffy carpet in the living-room. The older idol sat, cross-legged, with his laptop open in front of him and paper piles of varying heights spread all around him on the floor, probably in some kind of system that Nino couldn’t ever hope to decipher. The gamer stopped at the sight and stared, feeling amused.

“What is all this about?” he asked, curiously.

“Ah, well,” Sho turned to look at him and then glanced around himself, lifting a hand to scratch the back of his head, “I was thinking… that maybe I should finish preparing those Sothland reports after all, you know?” he said, unsure, obviously slightly afraid of his friend’s reaction. Nino, indeed, hadn’t been expecting that at all, so he just blinked, taken aback, hs previous amusement disappearing and dread replacing it.

“They’re close to finalizing the deal by now, so I would have to make some changes from how I had the coverage structured originally,” Sho rambled on, obviously trying to stall and not let Nino tell him that he was crazy for even thinking of going back to what had led all this mess, “But there is all this data I have gathered, you know, it would be a shame to let it go to waste and not inform people about what I’ve discovered. There have been a few other reports on it already by others, of course, by now. But none of them were quite like what I had planned, so I thought… I thought it might be a good idea, you know?”

Nino’s head was buzzing. Silent, but trying to keep his expression neutral, he put the bag onto the floor and approached the other. Of course, his kneejerk reaction was to tell Sho that he was an idiot and that he should stop this immediately. That he was going to make everyone worry about him again. The very mention of the reports awakened fears within Nino that he didn’t want to think about.

But the older man looked so insecure, yet so eager to have Nino’s approval as he looked up at him from the carpet. Making the report had been so important to Sho, Nino remembered.

It was too dangerous.

Only it wasn’t. Sho didn’t plan to go anywhere anymore for further investigations. And he was intelligent enough to not put himself at risk again by making the reports controversial and pissing off the wrong people.

Nino swallowed. And then he smiled.

“So you’re going to become a full-fledged journalist?” he asked, teasingly, ignoring the irrational fears that tried to make him react differently, “Don’t even think of getting all smug around us just because you’ve accomplished your life’s goal,” he warned, and was rewarded by Sho’s eyes lighting up with happiness once the older man realized he would not try and talk him out of it, “Ahhhh, what is this,” Nino whined exaggeratedly and plopped down on the carpet beside his friend, “Next thing we know, captain will actually buy himself a boat.”

One moment Sho was staring at him, and the next he simply burst out laughing. It was the most amazing thing. Nino gaped, almost afraid to believe what he was seeing as the other couldn’t seem to stop. The aspiring-journalist was holding his stomach, his head thrown back and he laughed so loud and so hard that he soon had tears in his eyes and ended up falling backwards onto the fluffy carpet, his head landing right in front of where Nino had sat down.

By the time Sho had finally calmed down, he was sprawled on the floor among his papers with a grin on his face and Nino was smiling down at him fondly and happily. The taller idol twisted his neck so he could look at the gamer’s face and shifted one of his arms a little so he could grasp one of Nino’s hands loosely.

“Leader will look good on his boat,” he said, and Nino nodded seriously, not even truly realizing it when he reached out his other hand to start playing with Sho’s hair.

“He’ll get himself a captain’s hat,” he said, “And wear it. It will suit him.”

“A sailor’s uniform too?”

“No. No uniform. But he will also buy a smoking pipe,” Nino continued painting the picture of this future-Ohno, as Sho pretended to listen to him earnestly and nodded along, “You know, like Popeye had. And he will invite people to look around in his boat, and he’ll give everyone tours, all while proudly holding the pipe to his mouth, looking utterly ridiculous.”

“Leader will think he is so cool,” Sho said, his expression fascinated.

“Yes. The coolest,” Nino agreed somberly, “But everyone will actually whisper about how cute he is behind his back.”

“Poor Leader.”

“It’s a sad fate indeed,” Nino concluded his tale and the two of them slipped into a comfortable silence for a while, Nino continuing to thread his fingers through Sho’s silky hair and Sho running his thumb over Nino’s knuckles back and forth.

“I think,” Nino spoke again after a while, haltingly, not truly wanting to say what he was going to, but knowing he had to, “that you don’t need me to stay with you anymore.”

Sho’s thumb stopped. There was a moment of stillness and then Sho rose back into a sitting position before shuffling even closer to Nino.

“I think you are right,” he said, and then leaned forward to press his forehead against Nino’s. The younger man held his breath. He could see both fear and hope in the other’s eyes, and he knew this was the moment they stopped dancing around, “You don’t need to, anymore. But I would very much like you to stay, anyway.”

‘Idiot,’ Nino thought lovingly, but for once in his life, didn’t say it out loud. Not least of all because he simply couldn’t, what with Sho’s lips soon pressing against his own.

Bonus scene

“Becoming a full-fledged journalist has never been my life’s goal, however, you know,” Sho brought it up again later, when they were lying side by side on the fluffy carpet, empty lunch boxes discarded near-by. Nino had his eyes lazily closed, but he lifted an eyebrow anyway.

“Oh? Then what was?”

“I don’t know,” Sho drew out thoughtfully, “I went through a few in my life, but none of them stuck in the end. At first it was to finish University, make some amazing white-collar career and make my parents proud. Then it was to marry and have three kids before I turned forty. Then… I guess I just stopped trying to come up with one,” he finished, turning his head to face Nino, “What about you? Do you have one?”

Nino actually laughed.

“I’m not a think-ahead sort of person,” he reminded the other, “I don’t pre-order games, I grab whatever catches my attention at the store or online. I put on whatever clothes I find closest to me in the morning. I run out of toilet paper sometimes because I forget to check how much I have left. That sort of thing, you know. So I don’t make New Years’ resolutions, never-mind life goals.”

Sho just chuckled through the whole time Nino was talking, obviously finding it incredibly amusing.

“That’s just like you,” he concluded in the end and Nino smiled in reaction

“That it is,” he agreed, but then hummed thoughtfully, “Although… I guess there was one after all at one time.”

“Mm?” Sho showed he was listening, and Nino took a deep breath before summoning up his best Aiba impression.

“Our dream to get to the top, let’s definitely make it come true,” he cited dutifully, and Sho mmm’ed contently.

“We reached that one. Together,” he stated with the serene kind of happiness in his voice.

“That we did.”

Note2:

The bonus scene is actually something that was supposed to be simply in the last part of the actual story, but I realized it made it all drag out too much, so added it separately instead.

The fic obviously concentrates on Nino's interactions with Sho, so that's why Jun and Aiba seem like they don't do anything to help. They do. It's just not part of the fic. I just wanted to make that clear

I hope you guys enjoyed this. I got captured by the idea and simply needed to purge it all out of my head, so that's why I wrote and posted it so quickly. But I will probably return to this at some point, once I've recovered from this writing-marathon hangover I'm suffering from right now, and try to sort out the mistakes and the style a bit better. Now, however, I just wanted to be done with it