Kis-My-Ft2, Closer Than Friends

Title: Closer Than Friends [Senga/Nikaido]
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 or so
Summary: Nagoya doesn’t seem so far away, until Senga meets Nikaido.
AN: This whole thing kind of sprang up in my head whole during my shower Saturday morning, and for once I actually sat down and typed it out quickly, basically all at once except the last scene and a half or so. AU where none of Kisumai is in Johnny’s.

Closer Than Friends

Senga and his brother had bought their mother a train ticket to Tokyo for her last birthday, and when she finally decides to go on a shopping trip, Senga tags along. Joui is busy studying for exams; Senga has pretty much already figured those to be a foregone conclusion. His mother ruffles his hair and tells him not to be too down about it, that someday he’ll find something he loves too.

In Tokyo, Senga-san manages to get herself jammed into the schedule of a popular hair stylist, and Senga wanders about while she’s busy there, doing a little shopping and just looking around. Tokyo’s so much different than Nagoya, and he wishes he could come out here more often.

He’s milling about in a bookstore, flipping through the anime magazines, when somebody runs into him from behind.

“Oof!” he says, looking over his shoulder. “Sorry.”

“Geez, watch where you’re going,” the other boy grumbles, about his height and age, hair natural black and sleek as opposed to Senga’s perm, fuzzy with humidity.

“I wasn’t even moving!” Senga protests. “You ran into me!”

“Whatever. Hey, can I see that?” the other boy asks, pointing at the magazine. “You’re holding the last one.”

They end up sharing, and chatting about the shows that are on right now, what’s coming up next season, whether the new Kamen Rider will be any good, and what the hell is going on in Naruto these days, goddamn.

“Oh shit,” Senga glances at his watch, “my mom’s waiting for me, she was having her hair done.”

“Should have had yours done too,” he flicks a glance up to Senga’s hair, then grins when Senga scowls. “Oi, gimme your mail.”

Senga never manages to properly say that he’s not from around here, somehow ends up with the other guy’s mail, and finally his name when he has to label the contact.

Nikaido-kun. Nikaido Takashi.

*****

The first mail comes through addressed to Hyaku-ga-kun, and Senga nearly deletes his contact info then and there. But his brother laughs so hard that Senga has to admit, it’s kind of funny, at least.

They end up mailing each other regularly, and sometimes skyping, since it’s easier for Nikaido to talk while playing with his dogs or bird. Senga asks why Nikaido isn’t freaking out over exams like the rest of Japan.

“I dropped out,” Nikaido shrugs. “Wasn’t any good at it. You?”

“I’m gonna graduate. But then…” Senga waves his hand vaguely. “I don’t know what.”

“Mm. Hey, you should come out here again.”

Senga tilts his head. “To do what?”

“I don’t know, to hang out,” Nikaido shrugs. “Stay at my place. Why do you even live in Nagoya anyway, it’s too far!”

“You live in the middle of totally nowhere!” Senga retorts, laughing, but ends up on the train anyway, glad his mother is the indulgent type.

It happens semi-regularly, Senga staying over at Nikaido’s, and once or twice Nikaido comes out to Nagoya. Senga feels close to Nikaido almost immediately, close enough not to bother with the extra futon after the first time. They sleep back to back, Nikaido’s skin warm against Senga’s through his T-shirt, and talk about stupid things in the dark until they both fall asleep.

They still know next to nothing about each other’s lives, and their conversations are full of strange holes and explanations.

“You have a girlfriend?” Nikaido asks when they’re sprawled out on his floor, sticky and lazy from late summer heat. Outside the cicadas are obnoxious, droning endlessly. Senga shakes his head. “Ever had?”

“A couple. Nothing special,” Senga answers. “You have a girlfriend?”

“Nah, girls are weird,” Nikaido says, like a junior high student, and Senga wonders exactly how far into high school Nikaido did make it. He glances at Senga out of the corner of his eye, like he sometimes does, with a look that Senga can’t read.

Trying to sound casual, Senga asks, “Boyfriend?”

Nikaido shakes his head. Something about it, the way he doesn’t snap something smart or protest or say anything at all, seems different than his answer to the girlfriend question. Maybe it’s the heat, but before he can stop himself, Senga rolls over and presses his lips against Nikaido’s. Both their eyes are open, Nikaido’s looking a touch panicky and cheeks turning pink.

Shit shit shit, Senga thinks, pulling away, and he opens his mouth to apologize or say he was just fucking around, but he never gets anything out because Nikaido’s mouth is already back on his, unpracticed and messy enough to take Senga’s breath away.

They don’t sleep back-to-back after that.

*****

“Quit living in Nagoya, already,” Nikaido grumbles, grouchy expression crystal-clear even over the Skype connection. “Move here!”

“And do what?” Senga laughs. “Move in with you? Get an apartment? Nika, neither one of us has a job!”

“I’ll get one then!” Nikaido insists, arms crossed. It’s kind of the best love confession Senga has ever heard, coming from Nikaido.

“Ne, really?” Senga asks shyly. It’s a bit crazy to talk about moving in together, how well do they even know about each other really? But Senga knows what Nikaido’s skin feels like pressed against his and that he wakes up with headaches if it’s going to rain, how he squints at Senga first thing in the morning without his glasses or contacts. Somehow it seems like enough.

“Yeah, really,” Nikaido answers. “I will. Just…quit being so far away.”

Their first apartment is so small there’s pretty much nowhere they can stand and not be able to stretch out far enough to touch the other. Senga has the sneaking suspicion that that’s exactly what Nikaido likes about it. It’s hot in summer and cold in winter, but the two of them can fit in the bath together, and it doesn’t matter that there’s only space for one futon if they also want a low table.

Nikaido, true to his word, works a series of odd jobs and part-time work, even one stint where he’s a temp at an office (that doesn’t last long because he’s constantly late; Senga like the suit way too much). Senga joins a local dance crew, through a complicated chain of events. They street dance or sometimes get picked up to backdance at concerts in the Tokyo area. The pay is essentially nothing, but Senga loves it, it’s plain to see. He even teaches Nikaido some of the dances, and insists that Nikaido could be really good if he just practiced.

“Ehh,” Nikaido waves him off, eternally lazy, and then drags Senga down by the wrist, onto their futon. “I’d rather watch you do it, anyway.”

“Nika,” Senga says, but he’s grinning, and the rest is cut off by Nikaido kissing him, hands skimming Senga’s skin until he can barely think.

Some nights their friends cram themselves into their apartment to drink; Miyata, Nikaido’s otaku friend, and his inexplicably attractive boyfriend, Tamamori, and Yokoo-san, one of the guys from Senga’s crew. He’s a bit older than them, and makes Nikaido nervous with his pointed questions about how well he’s taking care of their little dancer, but they need him for the beer runs, at least at first.

Other nights, Senga and Nikaido prefer to be alone, Nikaido searching out Senga’s sensitive spots with clever hands and mapping the difference in his lean muscles with his tongue. It took weeks after they moved in for Senga to work up the confidence to try flipping them over, but now it’s worth it when Nikaido does let him switch their positions. Senga goes slow with Nikaido underneath him, slow enough that Nikaido makes the most gorgeous noises, skin flushed the whole way down and begging Senga to hurry up, please.

It’s as a consequence of this that their neighbor knocks on their door the next morning, a girl of about university age with a perky ponytail, and points out to them that she can hear every single syllable through their shared wall.

“I am so sorry,” Senga apologizes, face scarlet and not daring to look at Nikaido beside him because Nikaido is going to murder him, just for a start.

“Oh no, that’s not why I’m here,” she shakes her head, ponytail swinging. “I’m working as a sound tech for a BL animation studio, and we’ve just had someone quit right at a deadline. We’re desperate.” She smiles hopefully at Nikaido. “Have you ever thought of being a voice actor?”

Nikaido’s mouth works for a long second, but their rent is due in two weeks and he really has no choice but to agree.

“Okay, but you have to tell us which titles,” Tamamori says when they go out to celebrate, “so that this guy,” he elbows Miyata sharply, “won’t buy them.”

Nikaido finds the entire thing intensely embarrassing, especially when he begins to enjoy a mild popularity, so much so that when his mother asks where he’s been getting the steady income from, he tells her he’s working at a host club.

She looks him up and down dubiously, setting Senga off into gales of laughter. Nikaido snaps that he doesn’t see what’s so funny about it, Tamamori manages it after all.

When Nikaido gets picked up by a larger studio, a contract instead of just free-lancing, they upgrade to an apartment a little closer to his work, one with an actual kitchen and a tiny balcony. The bathtub is big enough to fit three, even.

“Who exactly do you want to take baths with?” Nikaido growls when Senga brings that up, and Senga just laughs and tugs him away to break in their futon’s new location. They had talked about getting a bed, but in the end Nikaido had won by pointing out that with the balcony they could air it out properly.

“Okay,” Senga sighs when Nikaido is all bare skin above him and the futon smells like sunshine underneath, “you were definitely right about this.”

“Course I was,” Nikaido says smugly. “Best part is, we’re the corner apartment.”

“Hm?” Senga stretches out underneath him, toes curling in pleasure. “So what?”

“So no one can hear when I make you do this,” Nikaido explains, then he leans down to scrape teeth over Senga’s pulse point, making him groan Nikaido’s name.

They throw a house-warming party, and the new apartment is even big enough for them to invite two new friends, two senpai from Nikaido’s recording company. They look pretty silly for people who voice porn, in Senga’s opinion; one of them has hilariously big hair, and the other is even shorter than he and Nikaido are.

“Height’s all relative when you’re horizontal,” Kitayama smirks, and Fujigaya rolls his eyes and tells him to confine his grossness to work, thanks so much. The two of them have a weird dynamic, where they seem close but are constantly picking fights with each other at the same time.

“What’s their deal?” Senga hisses to Nikaido. “Do they actually dislike each other? Or…”

“Not really,” Nikaido laughs. “But fans really like them as a pairing, who knows why, so they always have to do the most scenes together.” He elbows Senga. “You know, scenes like oooh, please, don’t stop…”

“I get it, I get it!” Senga shoves at Nikaido, laughing. “And hey, was that an impression of me?”

“No,” Nikaido says quickly, as terrible a liar as ever. Senga punches him hard in the arm, and then they go to save Miyata who seems to have just figured out who Kitayama and Fujigaya are, and is having trouble stringing a sentence together in front of them.

“Don’t mind him,” Tamamori says, enjoying Miyata’s panic. “It’s just that I think he’s heard you two come more than he’s heard me, even.”

“Tama-chan!” Miyata says, cheeks going bright pink, and Fujigaya cracks up at that, laugh a charmingly ugly cackle for a guy who makes a living with his voice.

Life is good, at just that moment, money in their bank accounts and their apartment full of friends, and if this apartment is too big for them to be constantly within touching distance of each other, that just means that Senga will have to keep himself close to Nikaido’s side.

*****

“Hey,” Senga says when they are tucked close together on their tiny balcony, pretending they can see stars past Tokyo’s light pollution, “you ever wonder if we could be doing different things?”

“Eh?” Nikaido asks, half-awake at best, face tucked into the curve of Senga’s shoulder.

“Like…if I had started dancing younger,” Senga explains. “I could have gotten in with an agency, maybe, if I’d had more training. Or if you finished high school, or…”

“No!” Nikaido says, voice surprisingly sharp. “No, I don’t wonder stuff like that.”

“Nika?” Senga asks. Nikaido doesn’t say anything at first, but Senga waits patiently. Sometimes Nikaido needs a minute to gather his thoughts.

“If I’d been studying for exams, or at cram school that day,” Nikaido says, “if I’d gotten up late that morning, or I’d gone to the bookstore in the station, or anything was different at all…”

“What, Nika?” Senga asks again. Nikaido’s arms tighten around him.

“I wouldn’t even have met you,” he finally manages, voice quiet. “You didn’t even live here.”

Senga hugs Nikaido just as tightly back, feeling warm all through. “Don’t be silly. If it took so much random stuff, then we were definitely supposed to meet, right? No matter what, you would have found me.”

“That’s stupid,” Nikaido scoffs, but Senga can feel him smiling against his skin. “Let’s go in, it’s cold.”

“Take a bath with me?” Senga asks, and Nikaido hums a yes, like obviously. “And after, now that nobody can hear, can I…”

“We’ll see,” Nikaido says, making no promises, but he doesn’t say no, and Senga can work with that. Senga is happy just to be close to Nikaido, just to be here.

Snuggled tight together in their futon that smells like sunshine, Senga is sure that the two of them are more than a coincidence, that Nikaido would have found him no matter what.