Work Text:
Through rain or shine, with need or guilt, in public or secrecy, Nino must watch Jean. Living for over three decades in a city he’s almost made into a home, with half of that borrowed time alongside Jean—it has made him into a different person. In a life like Nino’s, you make little habits; and all on their own, they become part of you. Maybe he was supposed to be that person all along. Maybe that’s deluded thinking. But definitely—definitely—the city is not as large as everyone thinks, and accidental encounters with the one person you must otherwise see have to mean something. They have to.
Badon is sustained by its public transportation, crisscrossing the city’s streets above and underground like veins, carrying its citizens to where they best serve. It’s preferable to lingering in traffic, and it gives Nino time to sit and simply think.
He hops on a subway that will take him to his favorite camera store. He’s running low on film, and to delay sending the King his photographs is unthinkable, nigh a crime. Perhaps it is not a crime the law has specified punishment for, but Nino would provide that himself.
At this time of day, the crowds are not insignificant. Nino maneuvers his way between people, finding a handhold towards the back of the train. Stop by stop, fellow commuters disembark and are replaced. Through the gaps appearing between those getting out, through the asynchronous movement of limbs differing in lengths, Nino sees a familiar mop of blond hair, faceless, walking with the casual indifference only one person can convey that finely.
Nino moves his head opposite to the crowd’s movement, shifting the gaps he’s able to steal a glimpse in. Jean has seated himself in the next train over. He’s out of his work uniform because it’s his day off—Nino had known it already (had had to), without having to note the absence of ACCA’s colors on Jean—and the muted green he’s opted to wear is so easy to be drawn to amid the subway’s glittering gray. Anyone would be.
He doesn’t approach Jean. Sometimes Nino is sure Jean will realize Nino is awfully talented at finding him; that he spends too much time with him; that his favorite subject to photograph is Jean. So he’ll pull himself away, dismiss Jean’s occasional questions with a laugh or a proffered drink that he will match when he’s alone.
He turns to the window, reflecting them all here where the vista beyond is just darkness. Right now, it’s enough to exist by Jean, distantly, yet at the same time.
When it’s Nino’s stop, Jean is no longer there.
The grocery basket handles are digging into Nino’s wrist, dragged down by the weight of what he’s added into it. He switches to holding it. He’s walking out of the aisle, getting ready to round the corner, and almost runs into someone’s cart.
“I’m sorry,” Nino says, and then, “Jean?”
Jean, as surprised, blinks. “Sorry about almost running you over, Nino.”
“It’s fine,” he says, laughing—at who it is, at how he’s encountered him. “What’s not very fine is that you have an entire shopping cart for a box of strawberries, probably none of which you’ll share with Lotta, and a two-kilogram bag of sugar.” He raises an amused eyebrow. “What are you guys eating?”
“I’m not done shopping,” Jean mumbles. His eyes swivel to Nino’s basket, where they strengthen to a glare. “And who are you to talk, with your three bottles of wine, a bag of coffee, I’m not sure how many chocolate bars, and protein powder?”
“Hey, I live alone. You have a younger sister you have to make sure grows up healthy.”
“Okay, but—”
“Excuse me!” barks an older man, roughly walking past them.
Nino and Jean call out an apology. They exchange abashed grins and move from where they’d blocked the aisle. Jean starts walking; Nino follows.
“‘But’?” Nino prompts.
“But you’re not going to drink all that by yourself, are you? I mean, why would you?”
Now Nino’s laugh is a bit dry. “And what other things were you buying, since apparently you’re the paragon of health?”
“I need…” From his pocket, Jean digs up his grocery list. “Flour, butter, and milk.”
“All things used to bake. You’re right, you’re healthy.”
“Stop,” Jean says, elbowing Nino, but it’s lightly done, and it’s with a smile.
“I’m worried about Lotta eating only carbohydrates. How about I buy you ingredients for actual food?”
“If you come over to help us cook.”
By necessity, Nino has had to embed himself in the Otuses’ lives. By luck, the Otuses let him in; by luck, they want him.
It only wrings Nino’s heart for the worse.
Nino says, so genuinely it would frighten his masters should they hear, “I’d really like that.”
Whatever they’d fought about was inane—Nino can’t remember what it was. The annoyance persists, though; a vagueness that Jean had, for once, said something wrong. They have not spoken since last night. Eventually, they will. Rather, it will be Nino who breaches their silence. But it’s alright, surely, to hope it’s Jean who offers an apology? To believe their friendship is not that fragile, not this false, that it must be Nino who betters it because he has to?
They don’t fight often. Never like this, either, with the silence stretching nearly a full day. It’s uncomfortable. Nino will grant Jean a few more hours to reach out before he takes a deep breath, remembers the Crown is heavier than a single man’s life, and tells Jean he’s sorry.
It’s uncomfortable, and it’s unusual, and Nino wasn’t thinking because he’s standing in front of Bar Tattler, as they always do on Friday evenings. He has no memory of leaving his apartment, much less walking here. Habits are as hard to kill as love.
Might as well drink before I bite the bullet, Nino reasons, stepping in, with no shadow in front of him.
Who else is at their usual corner except Jean, nursing a barely-touched pint? He’d looked up at Nino’s entrance, eyes wide as Nino’s; he’d quickly glanced away.
Carefully, as if there aren’t countless people between them, as if Jean is even watching, Nino rounds the bar to find somewhere else to sit. Whatever inclination he’d had for alcohol is gone, traded for hollowness.
“For you,” comes a voice. A bartender, sliding him a glass of his favorite beer. “From that gentleman over there.” She gestures to Jean, who is pointedly staring at the counter.
Is this an apology?
“Thank you,” he says to the bartender, his smile not for her.
She nods, and the motion is probably what alerts Jean that the drink’s been delivered. He peeks at Nino.
Thanks, Nino mouths, raising his glass.
Jean looks away. Looks back. Sighs, takes his glass with him, and plops himself beside Nino. His eyes are even on Nino’s as he says, “I’m sorry for what I said yesterday.”
There’s something pleasant and warm filling Nino up better than the beer ever could have. “Apology accepted.” He clinks Jean’s glass. “Cheers.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah,” Nino says. “Just like that.” What else could it have been?
Relief smooths Jean’s face, the curve of his back. “You know, I almost texted you this morning, like usual. Then I remembered I was supposed to be mad at you and you at me or something.” He pulls his glass close. “All day, it felt really weird. I think I’m most sorry for not apologizing earlier.”
Love is so, so hard to kill. “It’s fine, Jean.” Nino smiles. “I don’t even remember what we fought about.” He drinks, savoring the beer only half as much as Jean’s mouth falling open, and that half as much as Jean laughing. Nino joins in.
“I don’t like fighting with you,” Jean admits when he has finished his drink. The pink he wears better than the dawn can claim to rises to his ears and cheeks. “It’s… wrong.”
“I don’t like it either,” Nino says, aware that his smile is helpless, hopeless. Jean won’t remember it, fortunately.
Is it?
Jean rests his cheek on his arm, folded on the table. “You should be happy.” He closes his eyes. “I want you to always be happy.”
Oh, Jean, Nino thinks. Except maybe he breathes it out, because Jean’s hair flutters where Nino’s words would have fallen out of him. Jean doesn’t wake, and his breathing is slow. So to the night kept away by the bar’s lights, Nino says, “I already am.”
Later, after everything, there’s Birra—in an echo, softer.
Nino visits his dad at least once a month. He cleans the grave, exchanges withered flowers for just-bloomed, and talks. There’s less to talk about now because there’s nothing he’s hiding anymore. He has the freedom to be, but the highest privilege of all—the use of his entire life’s worth of luck—is to be loved in requital.
He’s leaving the graveyard as Jean and Lotta come in, white roses in hand. They see each other; they offer acknowledging smiles, small, respectful for where they are. Because they know what they are here for.
“Want to come with us?” Jean asks him.
They have opened their hearts so widely to Nino that he has accompanied them to their parents’ graves. On those occasions, they’ve all come together. He hasn’t run into them here before.
He’s never said no to them, either.
Lotta hands Nino half of her roses, and they each have something to offer the graves. Jean keeps one. Nino’s brow furrows in confusion.
“We’re giving it to your dad afterward,” he says, fitting a gloved hand into Nino’s.
An entire life’s worth of luck.
Lotta tells her parents about this and that. “Oh,” she says, “and Nino’s going to move in with us!” She cranes her head over her shoulder. “Why did you have to choose now, though, when I’m barely home because of university…”
“Well,” Nino starts, not sure how to word the life he’d had, the circumstances he’d been burdened with. In the end, he doesn’t need to. Lotta gasps and covers her mouth with her hand, remembering.
“It’s okay,” he says.
It is. He has not lied to the Otuses in some time. He never will again.
Jean doesn’t have anything to say (“Lotta mentioned you moving in,” he says, a slight petulance in his voice), and they tread over to Nino’s dad’s grave, solemn on the other side of the graveyard. Jean kneels, placing the rose amid the daisies Nino had brought.
As he stands, Nino thinks he hears him say something. Whatever it had been, it’s lost to the rustle of leaves caught in a mild breeze. Jean turns around, offers Nino his hand.
Nino takes it.
Lotta’s birthday is a month away, but it’s best to purchase gifts early. Nino was considering jewelry—she’s taken to it recently. It suits her; she’s not a little girl anymore, and she will never don gold on her head, and still it flatters her. He goes inside the jewelry store he’d been recommended.
There Jean is talking to one of the jewelers, and between them is a velvet box with two gold rings.
Nino inhales so sharply it hurts, gaping, motionless.
Jean is long used to Nino’s eyes on him. Here, too, he has to feel them; they have to be what causes Jean to turn his head toward Nino, slow as honey. Though his hands clasp over the rings with swiftness Nino did not ever think him capable of.
“I thought you said you were working overtime,” Nino manages to say without heaving up his heart, beating fast, fast, fast.
“I, um, got out earlier than I thought I would?” Jean says, trying to be surreptitious about closing the box and returning it to the jeweler.
“...I see.”
Jean drums the glass counter once. “Why are you here?”
“To get Lotta a necklace or bracelet for her birthday.” He steps closer. Dares to say, if quietly, with the vestiges of an old hope established to truth, “Why are you here?”
Jean groans, dropping his head. “You know I’m a terrible liar,” he says when he’s picked up his head, and some color to go with it. “And you saw.” He rubs his neck. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”
“Jean,” Nino says. Nothing else he can say.
“Sorry, miss, could I see that box again? Thank you.” He opens it. Pulls out a ring. Asks Nino, “Do you like it?”
Nino grabs the ring and slides it on. He turns it this way and that, admiring how the artificial white light overhead glints off it. It’s beautiful. Imagine it in the sun. In the lights of our apartment. “I like it,” Nino croaks, putting the ring back in the box. He clears his throat. “I like it.”
“Good,” Jean says, nodding. Smiling, too, such a gentle thing that Nino has to look away. “I also liked those the best. Miss, I’ll take these.”
“How did you even get my ring size?” Nino asks the ceiling, holding back a laugh that’s verging on tears.
A pause. “I never did. I just guessed.”
This laugh is all joy, all affection and devotion.
Jean won’t hear anything of Nino covering half the cost. Jean returns his card to his wallet and motions for Nino to take the ring box in its lovely paper bag. Nino observes himself move, feels the ribbon handles in his curling palm, and still doesn’t think it’s real.
“Are you going to get Lotta her gift?” Jean asks.
“I think another time,” is his weak reply.
Jean reaches for Nino’s free hand and kisses his cheek. “Let’s go home, then.”
Home it is, where Jean’s closing the door behind them and sighing, “It really wasn’t supposed to go like that…”
Nino has to sit on the sofa; his legs will fold under him otherwise. “What were you planning?”
“A nice dinner here. We’ve spent so much time at home that I thought it'd mean more to ask you here, instead of some place we’re not as comfortable.”
He glances at the clock. It’s a little late, and cooking will take more time yet. But what’s a handful of hours in the face of a lifetime together?
“I’d bought some ribeye today,” Nino says, standing. “It was for tomorrow, but I think these are extenuating circumstances.”
“And we have wine,” Jean adds.
“When don’t we?”
They share a smile, cohabitation in the kitchen.
“Hey, Jean,” Nino says as he slices the meat, cooked to tenderness, “I’ve accidentally run into you a lot, both before and after”—he does not need to specify what that means—“but this trounces all those other times.”
Jean takes the plate, garnishing it with parsley. “In a good way?”
Nino cuts his own portion. “In a very good way.”
They go sit at the table. Across from each other, they clink their wine glasses together.
“I hope I keep running into you,” Jean says. “It always makes me happy.”
“Oh?”
Jean chews his food. His eyes stray aside as he, doubtless, thinks of what to say. He swallows and holds Nino’s gaze. “Badon is big. You and I are good at finding each other, anyway. I think it means more when we don’t even intend to… we just kind of end up together.” He flicks his wine glass; it chimes. “Which is how it should be.”
Of the countless people in Dowa, there was one heir-to-be and one man to watch him. There were countless possible endings to that tale, too. And the one chosen: the one that the sweetest stories are written about.
Nino breathes in. “It should.”
“So you’ll marry me?”
“Yes, Jean.” Nino closes his eyes. “I’ll marry you.”
Arms slink around him. Jean has walked over, wrapped himself around Nino. He’s resting his chin on top of Nino’s head. “If I’m honest,” he says, a smile warm in his voice, “for the last few years, I’ve thought we were kind of married already.”
“I think you’re right,” Nino says, opening his eyes. He stands. The difference in their heights opens up and is soon resolved: Nino cradles Jean’s back, lifting him; Jean lets his legs be the ones to wrap around him now, his hands flat on Nino’s chest.
“I’m glad it was you, Nino,” Jean says.
Nino chuckles. “I’m the one who doesn’t know what I did to deserve you.”
“You met me,” Jean says, simple as that. “You met me, and from then on, I could only have ever chosen you.” He leans forward, forehead to Nino’s. “Just like you could never have chosen anyone else.”
He could never have. He’s kept Jean in his heart for so long: before he had a name for it; when he did and kept it mum; when he did and spoke it, heard it spoken back.
Like now.
“I love you,” Nino whispers, like it would break him to say it any louder.
“And I love you,” Jean says, the last words to fill the small space between them, closing to a kiss, reverential for the vow it is.