Chapter Text
Last weekend, Aiba wagered that Nino couldn't get out of a standard hogtie in the time it would take to jerk him off, and Nino accepted because even with Aiba's sublimely nimble fingers to distract him, he's a pro at that shit. As a result of losing the bet, Aiba is treating him to lunch at their favorite ramen place — not much of a penalty considering Aiba usually pays for him anyway — and they're halfway through their meal when Aiba says out of the blue, "Hey, would it bother you if I told my boss about us?" When Nino looks up from his bowl, Aiba hastens to add, "I know it's none of his business, but I want to make sure he's okay with..." He pauses to think, like he has to choose the next words carefully, and says, "Me... playing with a customer."
Nino's been expecting this for weeks now. "Yeah, that's fine. I don't mind if J knows."
Aiba says, "Great!", and then the words sink in and his eyebrows shoot up. "Wait — J?"
Nino was pretty sure Aiba would figure it out eventually, but he's glad he didn't. This is funnier. "Oh, that," he says, waving his hand theatrically. "We're old pals, J and I. What, you think I shop there exclusively because of the prices? He definitely over-charges."
"He's never mentioned you before!"
"Does he talk about any of his other friends?"
Aiba considers this. "Well, I guess not..." Then he perks up like a dog sniffing out a treat. "How did you two meet? Are you just friends?" He says it with a lopsided smile and waggling eyebrows that make his meaning absolutely clear.
"We're just friends now."
"I knew it!"
"You literally just found out we know each other."
"True," Aiba concedes, "but you don't know I haven't been thinking about it." He taps the side of his head with a grin. "I knew it before I knew I knew it." Before Nino can roll his eyes, Aiba reaches across the table to grasp his hands. "Nino. You have to tell me about it. Spare no detail."
Nino clicks his tongue as he pulls away. "I'll spare all the details I want." It's not only his story to tell, after all, and it's not an entirely pleasant one at that — but he can at least give Aiba a summary. "We started dating towards the end of high school, but obviously it didn't last. Really, it was a long time ago." A long time ago is a bit of an understatement: to Nino, it feels like a whole lifetime ago, before he settled into his current routine of hooking up with an overly excitable sex shop employee, before Jun took over the store and became somewhat of a celebrity in the local scene.
Aiba is totally enraptured now. He reaches blindly for his drink, nearly missing the straw with his mouth, and takes a big gulp before asking, "What happened?"
Nino shrugs. "It was mostly experimentation. Eventually we started seeing other people."
Although it's not a lie, it's not the complete truth. There were definitely some serious feelings involved, the way anyone's first long-term relationship feels serious, but Nino recognizes now that those feelings were amplified by the struggle of being two wide-eyed, horny kids trying to navigate the brave new world of adulthood. As the years passed and their tastes grew more refined, those feelings shifted into the background, and Nino and Jun became less and less compatible until they inevitably reached a point where they knew they couldn't go any further together. They're still close friends, aided by the fact that being in so many of the same circles made it difficult to avoid each other even when they were in that awkward post-breakup period, but there's never been an urge to delve back into what they once had. To say that they're not at all involved in each other's sex lives isn't quite accurate, since so much of the scene is about public display, but display is the full extent of it. They'll share rides to parties or events, and sometimes they'll see each other play there, but they don't join in, and they certainly don't leave together at the end of the night.
Despite the glossed-over story, Aiba looks fascinated. "That's amazing!"
"Well, you learn something new every day."
Later, as they're walking to the train, Aiba asks, "Have you guys ever thought about hooking up again? It'd be super hot."
Nino's face scrunches up all on its own. "It'd be super weird. At this point he's more like my brother, or my irritating know-it-all best friend." Aiba laughs like he knows precisely what Nino is talking about. "Besides, I don't think it would work out. I'm pretty sure I'm not sophisticated enough for him."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, you know, he's all about the spectacle of it. He wants to put on a show, boss people around, pull out his whips and stuff. He's like, a serious dom. I bet he actually makes people call him 'sir.'"
"He does," Aiba says gravely. "One time he had me go to a convention with him to help work the booth, and he got invited to do this scene onstage... It was intense." He emphasizes the word as if it's only barely adequate to capture the memory.
"Exactly. I'm not into any of that fancy stuff. What you and I do, that's more my style."
Aiba makes a considering noise, nodding to himself as they enter the station. They swipe their cards and head for their line, and as they're waiting for the train, Aiba has a particular kind of smile on his face like he's been picturing Nino and Jun together the whole way. "Still," he says. "It'd be hot."
Nino smirks. "I'll let you know if anything changes."
They leave it there and pick up an earlier conversation about comic books — a much better topic for the crowded afternoon train — and when they get to Aiba's place, Aiba ties him up and fucks him over the bathroom counter until he can't see straight. They spend the rest of the evening on the couch, eating snacks and watching animal clips on YouTube. It's a good day.
x
But Nino can't stop thinking about what Aiba said: It'd be hot.
On a purely aesthetic level, Nino can't help but agree. After all, there's a reason he and Jun started dating in the first place. Even as a gangly teenager, Jun was a catch, and every year it's like he gets exponentially more gorgeous — which is something Nino would never say to his face, or to anyone else's face for that matter. He has a reputation to uphold. Plus, it's not like he doesn't appreciate what Jun does. He knows Jun is skilled and has earned his own reputation in their circles for being thorough, attentive, mean in all the right ways.
Nino's had some pretty mean partners over the years, and when he calls someone "mean," it's a compliment of the highest order. There was the guy who left him tied up in a dark closet for the better part of an evening, the guy who cuffed him to a chair and pretended to interrogate him for an hour before making him come so many times he could barely walk out the door afterwards, the guy who strapped him down so tight he couldn't budge an inch and then pulled out a collection of sounding rods... all good memories. But over the past few years, and entirely by chance, he's been finding himself with guys who are gentler — sweeter. Like Aiba-chan.
Nino loves playing with Aiba, is helplessly endeared by how silly and cheerful Aiba can be even when he's got Nino trussed up and begging to come. He has no regrets about their relationship whatsoever. At the same time, he feels like he has to hold back when they're together. He likes to fight, hard, and he worries that Aiba, as sweet as he is, doesn't have it in him to fight back the way Nino wants him to. In the months since they started hooking up, Nino has only recently dared to wiggle his way out of the simple ties Aiba's been putting him into, something he loves to do but learned to put on hold after too many other guys were frustrated to the point of never calling back.
He hasn't actually approached Aiba about it, which, he will admit, is his own fault, but something tells him Aiba is another gentle dude in the long line of gentle dudes Nino's been with. He's not just another, because there are plenty of other things that keep Nino coming back to him, but still. That's how Nino's sex life has been going, and every now and then, he misses it going the other way.
That's where Jun could fit in.
Before, when they used to play around and experiment, they started by copying what they saw in movies and easily accessible porn, taking turns on each other to figure out what they liked and what they didn't. When they started testing the waters with bondage, it worked out nicely that Jun liked to be the one tying and Nino liked to be the one getting tied. Nino has done much more hardcore things since then, but he'll never forget that thrill of discovery: the first time Jun tied his wrists to the headboard with flimsy scarves they bought at the hundred-yen store, the first time Jun gagged him with duct tape and a wadded-up washcloth, the first time Jun held him down and Nino whispered up to him, Pretend I don't want it. No matter what came afterwards, Nino will always be grateful to Jun for opening that door and sending him down a path he hasn't once looked back from.
Pain, however, was a different story. They started with spanking and Jun took to it immediately, so Nino humored him for a while before finally deciding that he simply wasn't cut out for it. That might have been the first sign that their relationship wasn't going to last; Nino always suspected Jun was a little resentful that something he wanted so badly to explore further was something Nino had zero interest in, and when they parted ways, that was one of the first things Jun jumped into. Nino knows this because he went out to buy a pair of cuffs a few months later, in the very shop Jun would one day take over and make his own, and he saw Jun purchasing a wooden paddle as he chatted up the pretty young thing with long hair and a Kansai accent who was working the counter.
It had been long enough by that point that the sting had faded away. Nino was happy for him.
And since then, Jun's repertoire of physical punishment has grown by leaps and bounds. Nino has seen him make subs bleed, and afterwards they kissed his spotless Doc Martens and blubbered their gratitude into his shoelaces. Nino can't be that for Jun. They've both known this for a long time. He doesn't want to be tortured with pain, or follow a set of rules, or call someone by a pretentious title.
But the part of Jun that makes him so good at those things — that meanness, that clever cruelty, the quick wit it takes to size someone up and know exactly how to tear them down, and the thoughtful touch to make them love every second of it — maybe that's what Nino's been looking for.
x
The idea swirls around his brain relentlessly. On Thursday night, on the way home from his mind-numbing office job, he finally caves and shoots Jun a message. Any plans this weekend? He tells himself it couldn't hurt to see what Jun's up to.
As it turns out, Jun is going to a play party at a club out in Saitama, so they agree to meet at his place and head there together. On Saturday Nino takes the train to Jun's and presses the buzzer incessantly until Jun lets him in with a pointed "Uuuuggghhhh" through the intercom.
At the door, Jun is wearing a bathrobe and has wet hair plastered over his forehead. "Give me ten minutes," he says, so Nino slips out of his shoes and settles in for a half-hour wait.
He swipes a beer from the fridge and plops down onto the living room couch, looking around idly. He's been here countless times before, but it still amazes him how easy it is for Jun to show off his kinky proclivities. His apartment hasn't been remodeled into a dungeon or anything — though it does have a spare bedroom that he creepily calls "the play room" — but signs of what he does are everywhere. He has posters on the walls for events he helped organize, notes left out on the table for some discussion panel he's participating in next month. Then there's the chair in the corner, the one he custom-ordered and paid an exorbitant price for so that it would fit his exacting standards; it looks ostensibly like a normal chair, functional if a bit stumpy, but its real purpose is to have subs bent over it and strapped in, putting their poor asses on display for whatever terror Jun feels like raining down on them. Functional or not, having it out here in the living room is pretty kinky in and of itself, Nino thinks.
Nino's not embarrassed about the things he's into, but he doesn't think he could ever show it off like that. For one thing, his sister comes over all the time to catch up, and that would be uncomfortable for both of them. He's pretty sure she must at least suspect something after that one super awkward time he forgot to lock his bedroom door when they were both still living at their mom's place, and she and their mom both know he's gay, but he's more than happy to keep it at that. He wonders if Jun ever has his family over, and what he does with all this stuff when that happens.
Then again, Jun has a lot to be proud of. He's made quite a name for himself in the local scene by organizing meet-ups, participating in events, inviting experts to the shop to give lessons on things like ropework and safe pain play. It's as if the scene is everything to him, and sitting here soaking it all in makes Nino feel proud of him. He's happy to have this thoughtful, hard-working person in his life, and he's happy on Jun's behalf that so many other people see the same qualities in him that Nino always has.
That's another thing he would never say to any living person. God forbid it come back around to Jun so he could lord it over Nino's head for the rest of their lives.
It's one beer and twenty-seven minutes later — damn, he should've put money on it — when Jun emerges from the bedroom all dolled up. He looks like he's ready to jump into a scene right this second: sinfully tight leather pants, a collared shirt that could stand to have a few more buttons done up towards the top, hair coiffed to perfection. Jun tends to favor clothes that Nino would categorize as "grandpa chic" when he's just hanging around, but he sure knows how to dress for a night out. Looking at him reminds Nino why he's really here, but if his cheeks turn a little pink, Jun is too busy silently judging his outfit to notice. He looks Nino up and down, assessing his jeans and plaid shirt as if he didn't already see him at the door, but then he glances at his watch and apparently decides to let it pass.
In the car, Jun plugs in his phone and gets the GPS going, and Nino knows better than to talk while he's navigating the city streets looking for the right on-ramp. Once they're on their way, Jun is the one to speak up first.
"So, one of my employees tells me he's got a new boyfriend."
Nino nods, waiting for the rest of the story. Then he realizes Jun is talking about him. "I'm sorry, boyfriend?"
"I said the same thing! But Aiba-san definitely used the word 'dating.' Why, you don't agree?"
Nino frowns, but he's just thinking. "I guess I hadn't thought of it that way, but... I don't know, we mess around, we go out to eat, we lie around and watch movies."
"Pretty sure that's dating," Jun says, eyes on the road and a smug smile on his face.
Nino reaches across the center console to smack his thigh. "Don't look so pleased! You had no part in this."
"I'm just happy for you! It's been forever since you actually dated someone. I mean, not that it's necessary for a fulfilling life or anything, but I feel like it's good for you. You specifically."
"What's that supposed to mean, Jun-pon?"
"It means you have a great time sleeping around but you get all antsy when you go too long without someone to go home and cuddle."
"I do not cuddle," Nino cries, aghast. Jun is, of course, speaking from experience — he and Nino did their fair share of cuddling back in the day — but still. Nino's got that reputation to uphold.
Jun scoffs. "I'll be sure to ask Aiba-san what he thinks about that." A few beats pass, and then: "Are you guys exclusive?"
The question catches Nino off guard. Suddenly he feels weirdly guilty; he's here trying to see if it would be reasonable to have sex with Jun, and meanwhile Aiba is out there thinking they're dating. Nino will have to talk to him about it later. For now, he settles on "Not exactly."
"Cool," Jun says, nodding, completely non-judging. He drops it after that, perhaps sensing that Nino still has some shit to sort out, or maybe not wanting to know all that much about the combined love life of his best friend and one of his employees. Either way, Nino is grateful.
x
They make it to the club and head straight for the bar. There's a decent crowd, and they spend a few minutes sipping their drinks and scanning the sea of faces for anyone they recognize. Jun is in the middle of pointing out a guy he reduced to tears a few weeks back when a woman in a skintight latex dress approaches them. "Matsujun!"
Jun turns, already lighting up at the sound of her voice. "Ah, Hiyashi-san!"
He introduces them to each other, as formal as ever. It's odd to hear "Ninomiya" come out of his mouth when Nino is so used to Jun calling him Kazu.
"Just Nino," he corrects, bowing his head low enough to be polite. "Nice to meet you."
Jun gives him an elbow to the ribs, then says, "Hiyashi-san is one of the other speakers on the panel I'm doing next month."
She turns right back to Jun, ignoring Nino entirely. "Oh, I've been meaning to talk to you about that. I think I found someone we can bring in for all the technical details about the endorphins."
"That's great! Call me next week, we'll hash it out."
"You just made his day," Nino chimes in. "J loves hashing out technical details."
Hiyashi-san regards him with one coolly raised eyebrow, then says to Jun, "You should keep your boy in check."
Nino says "I am not his boy" at the exact same time that Jun says "He is not my boy."
Hiyashi-san smirks. "Okay, Matsujun. Anyway, I'll make sure to give you a call. Nice to meet you, Nino."
As she walks away, Jun turns back to Nino with the barest hint of a grimace on his face. "Sorry about that."
Nino shrugs it off. "Not a big deal." He gives Jun's butt a playful smack and says, "Now go out there and find yourself a real boy before someone else makes the same mistake."
Jun rolls his eyes, but he's smiling as he grabs his drink and heads out onto the floor.
Nino finds an empty spot at the bar and stays there for a while, observing the crowd, letting the occasional stranger offer him a drink. He didn't come out here with the intention of jumping into a scene or taking anyone home, but it's nice to chat, and he ends up in a conversation about hip hop, of all things, with a cute guy who introduces himself as Sho. They find a comfortable place to sit away from the bar and keep talking, nearly shouting to be heard over the noise. Their conversation shifts from music to politics and inevitably to kink. Sho describes himself as a "switch by day, service top by night," and one of his favorite things to do with clients is invent tie-up games with barely-fair time limits and creative punishments.
"For instance," he says, "last week I was with this guy who wanted to be bound and teased while he begged me to fuck him. So I tied him face-down with his hands behind his head and led the rope to the headboard behind him, and then I told him that if he could get free in ten minutes, I'd fuck him."
"And did he?"
"Not even close. When the timer went off, I untied the rope from the headboard, put a hook in his ass, and used the rope to tie the other end of the hook to his hands. I told him, 'The only way you're getting fucked tonight is if you do it yourself.'"
Nino breaks out into a grin. Going home with someone is starting to look like a good idea after all.
As they continue talking, Nino spots Jun across the floor where he's commanding his own crowd of admirers. There's half a dozen people gathered around him, all watching intently as he regales them with whatever tale he's spinning, but he's standing awfully close to one guy in particular — short, dressed about as casually as Nino is, with mousy brown hair that falls over his forehead.
Good for Jun.
Nino and Sho stick together for the rest of the night, drifting through several topics of conversation, occasionally pausing to watch one of the scenes going on in various corners of the club. One of them is an impressive flogging demonstration by none other than Hiyashi-san herself, who keeps up a running commentary about the importance of striking the same place over and over as she lays into the sub in front of her, his moans clearly audible over the ambient noise of the club.
For someone who's so diabolical with his tie-up games, Sho is surprisingly squeamish about the flogging. "I don't think I could do that," he says, laughing as they watch Hiyashi-san bring the flogger down onto her sub's back for what seems like the millionth time.
"Yeah," Nino agrees, "pain's not really my thing either."
They share a glance, and Sho's smile is so damn cute that Nino has to hide his own grin behind his hand.
It's a few hours before Jun meets up with him again, still with that same short guy from before. Jun tells him, "I'm heading out soon. You need a ride?"
Nino looks over to Sho, who says, "I can take you home." The offer for more goes unsaid but is clear as day.
As Jun introduces himself to Sho, Nino gets a better look at the guy he's with. He looks sleepy, or maybe he's one of those people who switches into sub space at the drop of a hat and simply being in Jun's presence has him there already.
Nino thinks it as a joke, but then he notices Jun's hand wrapped around the back of the guy's neck in a way that would look bizarrely controlling almost anywhere else. Here in this club, though — and, Nino assumes, in Jun's "play room" later tonight — that kind of casual dominance fits right in. Maybe this guy really is already chin-deep in sub space.
Sho and Nino keep chatting after Jun leaves, but when Sho suggests they head out, that weird guilty feeling comes creeping back. Nino imagines Sho in his bed, where Aiba was two nights ago, and can't bring himself to make it happen.
"Actually, uh... I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking about it before, but I'm kind of seeing this guy, and we haven't had the whole 'other people' talk yet..."
"I understand," Sho says, and the tone of his voice tells Nino that he's sincere. "No worries."
"Let me get your email though," Nino suggests, already pulling out his phone. Sho seems like an excellent candidate for some future hook-ups.
They trade contact information, and Sho walks him outside to keep him company while he waits for a cab. He sends Nino off with a dorky wink and tells him, "I hope things work out with the guy you're seeing," so Nino doesn't feel too bad about it. Sho's sweet. He'll find someone else to go home with if he wants to.
In the cab, he notices a message from Jun on his phone: Send me his info. If I don't hear from you by morning I'm calling the cops.
Nino is smiling as he taps out his reply. Don't worry, taking a cab. Thanks for your concern though.
His phone buzzes again only a few moments later. That sucks. Sorry it didn't work out.
Aren't you driving??? And send me your boy's info too. If I don't hear from you by morning I'm calling the cops.
He gets a laughing emoji in response, followed by an email address, a phone number, and the words I'm Ohno Satoshi, please favor me~~~
Nino snorts. They're not even home yet and Jun's already got the guy doing tasks for him.
He puts his phone away, relaxes against the seat, and settles in for the drive. It's a long ride home, and although Nino left Sho back at the club, his mind inevitably wanders back to the story Sho told him — to an image of himself, tied down and begging Sho to fuck him — but with those thoughts, just as inevitably, come thoughts of Aiba. The guilt nags at him until he pulls his phone back out to ask, Are we exclusive?
He doesn't hear anything for the rest of the ride, but when he gets out of the shower back at home, a new message is waiting for him. Up to you. :)
Ah, the dreaded smiley face. It could mean Aiba is sincere, or it could be a cover-up for his tragic heartbreak. Then again, Nino doesn't think Aiba is the kind of person who would be dishonest about something that truly bothered him — and, Nino reminds himself, Aiba clearly enjoys the idea of Nino and Jun together. But that's something they've already talked about, and bringing some stranger home from a club before they've had a chance to discuss it would be a different matter altogether.
He thinks about it as he brushes his teeth and decides to keep it simple for now. He writes Been rethinking our conversation about me and J and swears to himself that he'll explain everything else later, when he can say it face to face.
Almost immediately, Aiba sends back, Do it!!!!!!! And then, a moment later: You have my blessing. ;) And then: Seriously though.
Nino laughs and almost chokes on a mouthful of toothpaste. He finishes up in the bathroom, gets into bed, and types one last message before turning his phone to silent for the night.
I'll keep you updated.
x
Going to the club with Jun wasn't exactly eye-opening, since they've gone out together plenty of times in the past and Nino didn't see anything he hasn't seen before. But once he started looking at Jun through the lens of "hey, what if this person and I have sex for the first time in ten-plus years?", he noticed things he might not have paid quite as much attention to otherwise — like the way Jun effortlessly connects with people, the way he's always looking out for Nino, and especially the way he led that Ohno guy around like it was nothing at all. When Jun first walked out of the bedroom that evening, Nino thought the fit of his pants was going to be the night's winning image, but that title was claimed by Jun's hand on the back of that guy's neck.
And then there's Aiba. Nino finds himself declining all of Aiba's invitations to hang out over the next few days, because he knows Aiba will ask about the party — he'll ask about Nino and Jun — and Nino isn't sure yet how he's going to answer, not to mention how he's going to bring up the fact that he almost left with someone else. But when he receives a string of teary-eyed emoji in response to his polite excuse about not being able to meet up because of work — his third such excuse in as many days — he finally decides that he can't put it off any longer.
On Thursday night, he ends up getting off the train a few stops early so he can swing by the shop, and he's relieved to see there's only one customer this late on a weeknight, way back in the DVD section. Aiba's at the register as usual, flipping through some hentai magazine that has a many-tentacled beast on the cover. His face lights up when he hears the bell over the door and sees Nino.
Nino explains everything: the reason he went out with Jun, the fun night he had with Sho, his nervous guilt at the thought of going home with someone before they'd had a chance to talk about it. Aiba is so touched by his honesty that he leans over the counter to pull Nino into a hug.
"Aiba-chan, ow — my ribs —"
Aiba lets him go with a flurry of apologies, and then plants a noisy smooch right on Nino's mouth. The lone customer peeks up over the magazine racks, but Nino shoots him a scowl and he hurriedly ducks back down.
All in all, Nino's glad he took care of it. He's still not sure how comfortable he is with the word "dating" — that's the one thing he didn't mention, at least until he can sort through his feelings — but coming up with excuses to avoid hanging out for three days straight felt too much like the way he's sabotaged some of his other long-term relationships. He's been down that path before, and he doesn't want to travel it with Aiba.
He wants to stick around for this one.