Chapter Text
The fluttering realization of the dream I am trapped in emerged clear and unmuddled the more I notice the cold leather skin of the steering wheel my fingers are wrapped on. The jammed windshields, the clutter-brained radio channels — call me an idiot if I were not to notice it any sooner.
The air caresses me cold, intimidatingly insinuating against the surfaces of my skin. As if in an amateur attempt of acupuncture by the way it jabs miniscule thorns smearing my canvas, raw around the compartmentalized illusion. There exists the faint lemon scent from the freshener stomped under my heel, the glossy feel of rubber carpet, the glassy surfaces in front of me conjured an abstract whirlpool of monochromatic veil. I knew it was late until midnight; from the lines of red digits, altogether the backdrop of blurry, stygian landscape clamoring the vehicle dark. And I instantly knew — this is a reverie with my figure strapped behind seat belt; simply from the reminder of how I haven’t even drafted for another license yet. I was more of a passenger resident instead of the one captaining, after all.
Silence accommodates me, besides the miserable screech of obscure transmitters. The sound of drumming ornating the brink of ears. A delicate headache tying around my skull. Rarely in my life have I experienced car driving on my own, and it remains a habit out-of-respect. Due to uncle who always perceives me as warily every time I’m behind the wheel. Mayhaps he noticed how easy it is for me to draw blanks instead of focusing on the road, nevertheless he permitted me a motorcycle anyway. As lenient as he can be in spite the image of a hardboiled detective.
Then my nose scrunches up, from the scent of rain leaking in the clogged window. And my eyes squinted, from the rubby inkling of cigarette stench — from the back seat — which I know nothing who the culprit could be.
From what surface knowledge I have regarding the weather, I will begin explaining the sense of nostalgia creepily seeping my skin, indicating how well I recognize this situation yet my mind remains convinced I have accordingly experienced, and forgotten, and suppressed this memoria out of reason I have yet to uproot. And I am currently in a state of confusion ergo denial about it, about this predicament. That must be why — the reason my stomach churned a sense of ill and hysteria. Yet, I can’t guess the reason behind the stab of thrill I unprecedentedly notice drilling my spinal cord. How should I elaborate this heavy feeling — boring, slithering, feeling it progressively gnawing within me?
How come such plight decidedly occurs to me in a hyperrealistic simulacra when its burial is within layers and layers of mental tomb? Why does it choose to reveal itself? At this very moment? Before my sole determinedly pushed down the brake, I arrived at a new realization: how this car I’m stuck in isn’t going anywhere. Tacitly growling in its own place. A dobermann. And how the tingling sensation circling the joint between my hand and forearm instantly shocked me a new adrenaline the moment my retinas deviated to it.
My wrist cuffs are wet — and I am wearing my Yasogami uniform.
The next I blink my eyes — before me displays match sequences of past memories; a drunken haze of anamnesis acreage. Of arrival and living and departure relating to the intangibly caliginous field of Yasoinaba. Muse’s Time is Running Out scrawled maggot beneath my cerebrum I thought Yosuke was here to haunt me again. Afterwards — under the mist of rain, under the coils of fog tugging sleeve corners grayish blur — exists the floating feeling when I notice my frame stiff. Unmoving. Lungs fastened it retains a refractory balloon. How tight my grasp hoisted the plastic of the umbrella handle altogether the faux handgrip of my school bag in the other. Downpour hailed over my head a pregnant stream and stormlike and the knowledge of my loafers standing over rough, stony pavements battered me a monsoon.
Freezing; signifiers for rain orbiting my nippy figure, fermenting my back and cuffs an eerie moistness. Nevertheless, what is laid before my irises — barely a spat of nihilism — is a socked-in vague.
“Fuck.” I recognize the bitterness stinging my nostrils and it is liquor muddling in the flurry: a shade of adultery. I witness digits scurry over lapel a worn-out transmitter and tobacco granules before ousting it against the dash: an adumbration to wittlelity. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! Shameless, irresponsible, daughter-of-a-bitch decides to run away from mommy and daddy and I’m supposed to be the one scouring her schmuck clean. This is what I get for overtime.”
“And this is what you get — for being a floozy, come-spilling whore who immediately bolts their hips for the briefest mention of bank accounts. For spreading legs to your loan sharks’ unshaved cockheads. You’re so helpless.” I step forward. One, then another two. It is not me. My feet are — on their own. Hominoid-like. As though retaliating my soul to the backseat and I am as helpless as you portray a lamb shepherd one would behead out of fear and trembling for messiah. Then, embroiling within me, is a saturated feel for gratification which seizes the fortification of my valves and an edge of my lips twinkle with electricity. The more I disentangle the quagmire afront, the more my pupils dilate thus unshroud the mist upon. “This is for ever wishing to run away from this town and your damned family business.”
“If next one ever happens — oh. Oh , they’re not gonna like what I’m about to do to their body. Tch. Tell me about it.” The rat’s nest of ardor. Genesis to mania. Awe filled me. Brume drapes revelling the stage in heavy mist — beneath the waltzing spotlight of thunder and vapor — and eventually unravels itself to the grandiosity borne from my personal, knee-deep inquisitiveness: presenting before me is the sight of a man uncouth in my eyes — as marred as he can be he is paradisiacally untamed, perfect and imperfect, consummating my pique with hunger — his silhouette conformed a hellion against golden-white headlights. “Before I strip it and hang it up high. Long after I shove inside its cunt and waaay before it loses warmth and tits scalding cold — should make a better outlet if wallet’s broke enough to damn another hooker. At least someone has to be compensated for playing janitor.”
I know I’m not foolish enough to withdraw my steps and for dragging the behind of my heels it gathers a screeching sound of rubber. How I know the latter is intentional. How I know I desire his attention I continue trailing closer, closer, closer towards him — severing the gaps our distance is now an intangible set of conjectures away. And the faint clink, of a metallic sound, behind the setting of drizzling rain it hollers as shrill in my conscience regardless my irises are still greeted with the frame of his back: my interest towards him yet unmet.
“Who’s there?”
Such highfalutin inkling his monologue and there isn’t an ounce of alarm smearing the tone.
“Good evening.”
I am impressed.
“… Just a brat.” I hear a sigh from the lips, then he peers behind shoulder — “Go away and scram to your mom and dad if you think you can … wait a minute.” — he squinted his gaze towards me. A pair of dull black. It complements his thoroughly disheveled attire, the mess of his uncombed hair. “Hey, you’re that quiet kid who lives with Dojima.”
I can only count how many times I have smiled so genuinely during my stay in this country town and this occurrence belongs in one of it. “Do you remember me?”
“Ah, so it is you, Yu-kun! That’s why you look so familiar. What a coincidence to meet you here.” It is incredible how quick the line of his mouth curls a beam when you can see it — when you glance just low enough — the lank of his digits has grasped itself around the stygian thing, his handgun, cocking its trajectory towards a particular organ behind my ribcage. Nevertheless the enshrouding darkness. “Indeed, coincidence it is. Isn’t it?”
“I would rather say it’s as if we’re fated to meet at this time, in this hour of night.” I believe my tone to be delightful. “Adachi-san.”
“‘Fated’ … Really? But, Yu-kun, we’re forgetting something here.”
I cutely tilt my head. “What is?”
“I didn’t sense you flinching for one bit when I said all those things and here I thought you were playing Dojima’s lackey like the good honor student you are.” His gaze squinted in the slightest and I discerned the beating thumps in my chest. Alive. “You were following me, weren’t you.”
“I don’t understand why you would say that. I thought I can ask you to have dinner together again as per the occasion, if you’re not busy.” My tone, warm enough it basks a superficial facade of sincerity, unescapes the cynicism I am confronted with. Rain and snow aren’t a good match for one another, nevertheless fog exists to obscure everything. “But you are a part of the force, of course you would be occupied with things a highschooler like me couldn’t possibly be able to understand. Pardon my curiosity.”
“Playing the fool, eh.” A corner of his lips twisted an illicit sneer. “Acting coy wouldn’t get you anywhere, kid. Your parents haven't taught you that? Or is that why they left you stranded here? Well, you deserve it, anyway.”
We stare at each other — for god knows how long it felt an eternity before the vibration in the base of my esophagus felt hurtful to contain until it attracts a vortex of mirth and delirium. Spiraling me in it.
“Fine — you busted me, detective!” I raise both of my hands; it reeks the stench of childishness. Laughter escaped my lips and it is intriguing to see his expression remained in its transfixation of a cynical skepticism. “I did. But I wasn’t wrong in saying it is fate that has gathered us to meet at this certain moment.” My retinas — still boring against his canvas it is a drawn dissatisfaction altogether unfulfilled appetence — eventually shifts itself, lower, facing to the ground our shoes are mere strung apart short inches. Towards the frame of the limp sack, of an ugly pale and brown hair, its delicate aperture shudders blood and sputum every now and then it ornates other blacks, yellows, and scarlets as beautiful. A ludicrous, exquisite turkey. “… Because that’s an interesting scene you’ve made over there.”
“Oh, now behaving as blunt here, ain’t ‘cha.” Placing a free hand against a side of his slacks, I quietly watch him as his frame lean over me in a manner of eyeing up and down I was a tamed critter. I was always good at playing mouse. He chuckles — “I like that. Only that’s also going to be proof saying you understand the whole weight of this situation. You’re a very smart egg,” — and points his gun closer, it tugs against the hard bone behind my chest it is a heavy force to resist from. The delicacy of living. Rapture pumps my blood aroused. Tingling. “And this is also what you get for being young, and an idiot. You should’ve run when I gave you the chance, Yu-kun. You’re not supposed to be here in the first place.”
My mind spun.
“Ya listening to me? I know you’re not as mentally stunted you didn’t expect this outcome to never happen.” His laugh continues to emerge as clear it lures the gaps in my windpipe to ache. My irises squint as comfortingly as though I was coming home to a loving family. “You must’ve got a few screws loose if you keep smiling like that when I’m about to pin this bullet inside your heart you won’t know what it’s like to feel pain nor remember anything. A happy, easy death — just for you.”
“Of course.” The sight of digits just behind the trigger — ready to pull it as easy as it is to pluck feathers from fleeting magpies — was stunning. My lips cannot widen any further unless it’ll swivel apart. “Then, shoot me, Adachi-san.”
This is not me.
“It’s always difficult — nearly impossible for me to feel nor process any emotions. I’ve lived until now unable to decipher which is genuine and merely a fleeting, superficial feeling — or even ones that are merely fake which are made to fool or seduce me into temptations.” Regardless of the abyss about to drown us two I can still discern my reflection beneath the glint in his dark pools. “I keep forgetting things — especially important ones — because of it.” I want to think I am crying, yet I am not. “But this thrill I’m feeling right now makes me think this is the happiest day of my life.”
This is not me.
“So, shoot me.” I sweetly plead. “Shoot me, wouldn’t you?”
This is not me.
“… Freak.” His lips convulse and the next I remember is the sound of a gunshot. “What and how you feel is none of my business.”
Both surfaces of my palms felt scalding hot the second it slammed against the metal veneer of the entrance. Tingling its surrounding nerves a spasm of malady. My gaze boiling, blurry. The clinks of chain and metal I shabbily shove inside my pocket flailed and dropped over the ceramic it instantly became a forgotten memory when his sneaker clumsily kicked it under the cabinet, rendering us entrapped within the lonely lodging. I thought the coincidence was lovely.
“Yu — hey, Yu.” My skull hovered over his skin, the canvas feeling as tempered as my digits latched onto the fabric of his graphic shirt; so warm, so alluring. The miniscule shudder he twitched when my lips landed over the breadth in between his neck and shoulder was endearing, endearing enough my mind pre-determinedly memorized the redolence of his cologne and its intangible languor as I began kissing the outline of his skin. There exists the subtle texture of dust from innate freckles, my free digits lavishing the feel of the contour of his spine. “Easy there, oh, god. You’re drunk.” One of my fang latches itself onto the spotless territory. “That many old fashioned would’ve made you die of liver failure and yet we’re now here in — ah, you’re killing me! Slow down!”
The way his previous cheekiness from having too many liquors and dancing and flirting steers me compelled when he is now bolted under my grasp, stuck in the middle of my disposition; how expertly he unknowingly enacts as the perfect quarry it fasten heart rates — instead of me, he should be warning himself.
Over the tanned skin my teeth softly gnashed a red streak, the thin coating of saliva sensed cold after the excruciatingly long, pent-up commute inside the cab. The air within the apartment — my apartment — was infinitely sultry in comparison to the winter alienation. Reeking with loneliness and existential grief. Of an invisible, unsatiated void. “Yu, you’re — not in the —” I caught him wince, under his breath, when my tongue meekly licked the scarlet impression. I pressed another peck over the mark, soothing the lingering pain. “— right mind!”
My motions were halted when his fingers, so desperately finding its way to press against my ribcage, coerced me for a word of defence. “Just because I’m drunk it doesn’t mean I don’t know what I want.” I lifted my irises and it was greeted with the glint of shame, lust, and expectations swirling within dark bronze pools. The air around me compresses tight. The statements escaping my lips were half-slurry it is undeliberate. “I want to do it — I want to do you, Yosuke. If that’s not clear enough after what happened. I need you.”
“You’re helpless.” Yosuke’s gaze lingered over me; it felt ticklish. “When you so eagerly drag me to that back alley and make out with me the second the after-party was dismissed — I knew you hadn't had enough by the way you looked at me.” The flush in his visage apparent to the common eye and I recognize it as kind.
“I beg there’s no problem, then.” A corner of my lips curled a grin. “You had as many drinks as I did, you are the drunk one instead of me. There’s a reason why I have stronger tolerance than you and you should be the one checking your face in the mirror.” The lines of my digits, trailing over the outline of Yosuke’s back and spine, unconsciously press our bodies together in the process it lures his breathing a loud hitch. My gaze squinted from the meek change. As though he will size smaller and smaller within my grasp if I were not careful. “Or is it exactly because I’m a guy and not because I feel tipsy? I didn’t know you kept hanging on with that sentiment when you obviously replied my tongue back, you were practically all over me.” I can ever guess the reason for my desire to coddle him around my fingers.
“I-I’ve gone over that phase already! I’m not as closeted as you think I am after all these years, alright?!” It felt cunning. When Yosuke thumps his fist against my chest it soothes a muted thud. How his lips aggravate to a certain tremble accordingly the way his irises demurely deviates from me, of hesitation. “How do I …” Nevertheless, what came from his mouth next sounded as foreign to me. “… You never looked at me like that before. You looked like you're about to cry if I don’t help out.”
“And I didn’t recall you banging your head against something on our way back.” I sneered. “You misremembered.”
“You think I’m lying?” He scoffed. “Judging by the way you’re courting me right now, I bet you’ll sob your way through your sleep and whine about it next morning if I don’t comply.”
“I wasn’t sad at all, if the keyword for ‘lusting’ didn’t come across your mind at that time.” It was how Yosuke stared at me with evident disbelief when our gaze interlocked one another for a few moments; I had to swallow down a spit. This is what years of familiarity and missing contacts does to a relationship. “Fine. Yes, I admit it’ll be lonely without you here. And I can’t think of anyone but you to do it with.”
“So you were sad because of that? Because you don’t want to be alone that’s why you crave sex? Damn, I didn’t know you’re a terrible romantic.” Of course it is because I’m lonely. Prolonged solitariness is a disease. “Just call any girl from the filming crew and they’ll literally be all over you. Especially that Risette chick. She’s the one latching around your arms the most if not for people asking signatures every few minutes.”
“I can’t.” I shook my head, “I can’t do it with her.”
“Yeah? And there’s still others who attended the party like we did, not just her.” I saw how his lips slightly churn I thought it was a sulk. It’s definitely a sulk, from the way his eyebrows scrunched accordingly. “Or guys. If you just so happen to be consistent in your decision to switch markets, and I’m here acting as your gateway to it. But, hey, I’m not one to judge.”
“Hah. You must be thinking that I sleep around so much just because I’m bored and lonely,” Laughter lightly escaped my lungs as I rested my head over Yosuke’s shoulder, arms decidedly circling around his thin waist. Incredible how anchored I always feel around him. A sense of integrated security. “You’re right. It’s always, always because I want to feel something.” The hesitancy slithering within Yosuke’s wrists, addled whether to answer or reject me, rang as loud in my conscience. “But I’m only doing this because I realize I like you, Yosuke. I can’t do it with anyone else — at least, not anymore.”
Before Yosuke was able to say something I was quick enough to slam our lips against one another. Another grin resurfacing from me, as his hips instinctively buckled when my tongue promptly inserted itself inside the warm cave; I never knew he can squirm so much from having the insides of his mouth being coddled from my tongue and my knee, slightly kneeling in between his thighs, starting to grind up the feel of a building tent behind jeans. Intriguing. My skull tadly tilted itself when I notice Yosuke’s breath becoming ragged, hot, when my hand creeped inside his shirt to feel the temperature, and my other grasped on the hilt of his belt it dangled a clink, and the more seconds unravelled with me decimating the ecstasy from the intramural of Yosuke’s lips alone he stifled a moan. The door behind him delicately thumped each time I unconsciously pressed him against it. Nevertheless a gap to breath was needed, and there existed the faint line of drool bridging our lips together when we tore apart.
The sight of Yosuke’s entranced visage, the gleam in the dazed pair of bronze irises when we stare each other in awe — it was enough to enforce the swelling constraint I have harbored ever since the days I realize the intangible affection for him was enough to asphyxiate me to death. I must have looked miserable right now otherwise Yosuke wouldn’t have given me such a saddened, pitied look. “Partner …”
I trailed for another mark when the brink of my mouth kissed a corner of his eyelids. “Less talking. Please.” My words, in an attempt to honey it as much, expectantly does the deed when the tenseness in Yosuke’s shoulders tryingly loosen up, how his lips sucked air when my digits found itself to unfast the leather belt and unzipped his fly. I whispered, though it sounded more like a beg, “I can only bear so much after all that thinking it’s making my head hurt, partner.” And the part of my leg that has been diligently kneading, feeling the base of his crotch, felt painful with impatience before the lines of my fingers manage to search its way around the rim of his undergarment. “Please, just let me love you for tonight.”
The certain keyword must have done magic when Yosuke gasped inside my ear, or mayhaps it’s from how I yanked the only remaining fabric down his thighs, scrawling it against the skin and his jeans. When it is the end of the year the air is always, infallibly cold to the touch. My lank of fingers hovered to touch the tip of his member, familiarizing myself with its average-sized texture, and the clear liquid meekly creeping from its slit, shy. The smile garnering on my expression was as satisfied when I saw the pinkish head of his cock, its pale base twitching, trembling as accordingly from each slow, light pump my hand gave him — and I needed to corner him as much when Yosuke instinctively hovered his frame against me, to helplessly lean, when my wrist continues to tease him small jerks and my lips ornating the skin of his neck scarlet markings. The knowledge of him reciprocating me was as enamoring as the way his temperature rose; it drew a boiling red.
“You’re … crazy …” He breathed; and the hickeys and the bite marks I left were so endearing that I was slow to realize how I was already humping my own crotch against his hips. The suppression from the fabric of my slacks growingly insufferable as minutes pass. How tight oxygen compresses my lungs — from the exhilaration alone, from the display of his blushing face — I wanted to draw blanks and bask in the pleasure from having Yosuke tilling the fields of my conscience alone. “It’s illegal for you to be this good when this is your first time doing it with guys …” I lifted my gaze — seeing the traces of drool leaking from our previous gesture — then placed my lips against it for one, then another one, luring him to whine as I hastened the pace of my fingers around the base and shaft of his cock. Quick, profluent pumps. Feeling it easy when his precome glisten a part of the member and tells him to come soon.
I murmured, amidst the gesture we are reenacting a one-sided worship it is sinful, “And you’re being good to me,” Drowning in the comforting lust I would have lost myself if Yosuke’s fingers weren’t desperate in staggering itself on my shoulders. “Of course I would behave as much, Yosuke.” And I was quick to notice how he shudders after the brief mention of his name, and it was a chain reaction when I mention his name again then his nerves trembled he had to shut his eyelids, again, then again enough until he loudly gasp and splutters of semen ornate my hand after I palmed his quivering, sensitive tip a couple times — and unwilling to let a drop of it pool over the ground. A laugh softly escapes my lips when we break apart and see the liquid white mass over my palm, one in sentiment whilst the other in dismay. I was the former. “See, you’re as helpless as I am.”
“Don’t act like you’re not enjoying it yourself!” He chimed with a frown, one of his wrists trailed and tugged at the roots of my hair. “… You always liked seeing me squirm under your hands and this is the chance that you’ve got. You wanted this.” I hummed in agreement then brought the white pool over my lips, bringing it inside my mouth and felt the salty, slightly sweet trail over my throat without hesitation. None regret overcame my gut even when Yosuke stared at me with a grimace horror enough to scare lambs. From drinking it as if it was an after-supper. “Gross!”
“I’ve had worse,” Patting the hand against my slacks, I shrug my shoulders before I tug Yosuke away. The wooden flooring creaked when I reached inside the cabinet for the condom and lube I had stashed somewhere beneath, “Someone pissed in my mouth before without warning. Other times, someone tried to make me come by having me perform a blowjob on their dildo.” After a failed attempt of retrieval behind unused rags and miscellaneous supplies, I knew I had to grab the one under my nightstand, tucked neatly beside the bed and the makeshift memory of a forgotten home — that is, after I reassured the grimace on Yosuke’s visage from becoming the thing that crumples him alike crushed paper. I stare at him unamused. “What I’m trying to say is: you don’t taste that bad for my first.”
Yosuke shook his head, then withdrew his lower garments from straddling his thighs, likely thinking that we might as well go all the way through. It is the unspoken enthusiasm hanging in the air which renders the atmosphere libertine. “Why is it that the more I know about you and — especially — your sex life, the more I feel like I know nothing about you?” I laughed. “After all that, of course doing it with a guy wouldn’t surprise you. You’re trying to be a sex lord on account of your loneliness.” What a comforting thing to say.
Before I aroused my hand around the doorknob, Yosuke handed me the needed condom and lube I saw he retrieved from his coat that was lounging over the floor we had made out, forgotten. “Prepared, huh?” I saw the streak of red smearing his cheeks. “And I thought you’re still here out of whim.”
He pouted, “Not really, it’s just in case.” I can’t ever understand the reason his face always scrunches up like a pubescent teenager every time my words prick him right enough. I thought of it as endearing as his cheekiness. “Can’t really waste time when you’re horny enough to the point you can’t think of anything else.”
I crinkled the items around my fingertips and noticed the bottle’s half-emptiness, giving it a light shake before my other wrist traced itself around Yosuke’s waist. Indirectly telling him to bend over the tabletop in the dining room and my irises glanced over the way he pulled his shirt off in the process, revealing me the dust of freckles that would’ve gone unnoticeable if not for his tanned skin, reminding me of the time we went to the beach over the course of summer heat. Of seashells and popsicles. “You’re speaking of the past. Expecting to sleep with someone else other than me after the party?” I hear the purse in Yosuke’s lips, a tiny gripe, when the cold lubricant crept over the crevice of his behind and when my digits latched over the delicate skin. Peering the surface with my touch, to search for the right momentum to enter. I sneered, “Too bad I got your timetables covered, and they can’t see you flounder under me like this.”
Yosuke’s thighs buckled when I began inserting a cusp of my middle finger. Feeling myself the warmth of his insides as the rest easily slips inside due to the liquid, and the hitch in his breath was apparent when I started probing around his walls; as irresistible as the way he tinily squirmed from the sensation. “Ugh, I’m not …” He whined, his gaze towards me a half-lid, “Can’t we just do it on your bed? You’re not thinking of breaking the bones in my back with a frying pan, aren’t you …?”
I mildly smiled and pressed a peck on Yosuke’s temple, intentionally ignoring the moan coming from him when I inserted two other fingers without warning. Remaining in a pace enough to lure new jolts. He was already loose enough even with my little to none intervention and I immediately knew the reason for it; an excuse which reeks of pensiveness, the forlorn desire of physical contact. I leaned and whispered inside his ear, “It can wait.” It is always exhilarating to know the certain spots of pleasures in your partner, as I kneaded Yosuke’s hole and scissored it open to prep. He loudly shuddered under my figure, his breathing slurry, “So who’s the guy? The same one who brought you to your gay awakening?”
Whether it is a call boy or a depressed billionaire he accidentally struck on during a lonely night, I couldn’t care less. If I can get Yosuke to continue to behave as meekly like he were such a vestal, innocent thing: I would. “It’s Ka-Katsuragi …” He muttered, the orange of his locks delicately trampled over his sweaty forehead. I shifted back to rip the condom pack with teeth and a free hand. “But we’ve never done it again these days because he has his internships, and I — I have my own things to do, anyway …”
Katsuragi from political science. I’ve heard the news. Nevertheless, that confirmation was sufficient to confirm the assumption I’ve always made about Yosuke’s sexual circumstances. I chuckled, “I didn’t know you were into being dominated. Is that why you’re behaving like a good, little thing when I have you wrapped around my fingers?” Yosuke’s nerves winced from the statement, and I noticed how his spine instantly arched when I curled the digits deep inside. His lips whining and a sigh of my name was heard. “You were jerking and fingering yourself on your own all these months because you’re not as open as you think you are, even after those intercourses you thought that have shifted your perspective.” You haven’t changed for one bit. “How cute.” That means you don’t have the right to call me lonely.
And that’s also a reason why I like you so much.
After my fingers left from endlessly scissoring his behind, it went ahead to unfasten my belt and slacks. Then, when my covered tip was tending the trajectory to penetrate the insides of the ring of muscle, Yosuke was still griping, bashfully mumbling about how I should stop teasing him and of how inadequate I am to judge him from subjective evidence — which I reply by plunging deep inside him. Penetrating the warm, temperate hole as ecstasy slithered in my blood the same I grunted, beginning the thread of thumps I jolted against the bedding of nerves. I witnessed the daze in the pair of bronze pools — now bursting with new stars, the gleam inside it churn a beautiful thrill — and the inexplicably loud moan drawing the air sultry that lust caved deeper inside me each thrust my hips delivered. The sound of water continued to squelch, then Yosuke begged me to slow down nevertheless I obeyed because I don’t want to conclude it as quick. My waist leaned forward and I kissed the base of his neck before doing it again, slowly motioning upwards, “You’re so warm, you feel so good around me,” Yosuke trembled after I lightly gnawed the skin of his neck, his moan remaining as loud this silent room could suffocate us two. Even the thought of dying in each other’s arms is the best thing that could ever happen if I can have the entirety of him for myself. “You’re the best I ever have.”
I kissed the new, red mark on Yosuke’s nape. My wrists remained in its anchor, on his thin waist, as the other peered under his abdomen, sluggishly trailing itself over ribcage and finally halted itself atop the supple mass of his flat chest. Giving it a few squeeze. A line of saliva unknowingly escaped Yosuke’s entranced lips, and I couldn’t contain a chuckle from how he endlessly whispered my name — a train of slurry, undeliberate ‘Yu’ and sometimes ‘partner’ or the false mix of both it is idiotically charming — amidst the exultant wail he cried from his throat. “I don’t need anyone else but you, Yosuke.” The brink of his ears and nape scurried a deep red, a similar shade of the color infallibly emerging on his cheeks. And the sound of our skin slamming against each other rammed intensely over air. A corner of his eye bled clear tears over the table. “You’re so adorable, so lovely being held down like this.”
Yosuke’s near from coming, and I notice it from how the jitters in his hands repeatedly fail from grabbing his own throbbing member. Having sprung forth with precome readily to leak more. Quivering; it swells enough you’re able to draw red from its initial pink. I thought I could make him come untouched and the idea latched onto me alike honey, alike how he continues to circle himself around my life despite the countless attempts to brush him away. “You’re just as lonely as I am and you’ve realized that, don’t you?” That’s why you continue to affiliate yourself with me. “You know you’re attracted to me as much as I am to you.” That’s why you’re willing to stay to the extent of doing this with me.
“Do you know what terrible mess I was trapped in just because of the feelings I have for you?” At last, Yosuke trembled his final cry and the entirety of his figure spasmed a tight glimpse of outburst when his cock oozed the remaining sperm onto the flooring. A deliberately messy, white gloop — from reaching his climax because of the last few thrusts my member coerced inside his tired altogether swelling hole. Now I pump inside him deep, slow enough, basking myself towards the display of him who is slumped, uncouth beneath me. Stars were drifting, in the affection spiraling within my sight. “It’s always, always because of you, Yosuke. You’re the only one who can make me feel like this, because it is your fault.” I pleaded, low enough only for him to hear, “Stay with me, then, if you feel guilty enough.”
Before I latch myself onto him for the last time — from the incoming orgasm, from the foreboding feeling of having to separate myself from him again it is the adversity of winter — my thumb and index pulled his chin, shifting his exhausted visage towards me as clear as I can to perceive, “I need you. I need you here beside me.” I kissed him. On the brink of his mouth and his nose hung tight from the suddenness for once more. The tone of my voice was filled with endearment, such wanting for a reciprocation. “I love you, Yosuke.”
And it broke apart, when I shuddered and inevitably felt myself empty. My breathing was ragged, the both of us sucked on air. Even the slightest quiver lingering our bodies to vibrate, from the act, went noticeable and I stared at Yosuke’s attempt of staggering himself after I succeedingly pulled out my cock. I carefully grabbed his waist then sat him on the table; his hair, his lips, his flaccid member and even the skin marked by my teeth were beautiful in my eyes. So lovely, so gratifying. I knew how fatigued Yosuke was after all those hours of socializing and partying which lasted him impeccable lines of liquor, and his eyelids slowly drifting to sleep yet his throat still with the desire to confront me and my manners. As though we are, and always have been, drunk in each other’s miserableness.
“That was … You …” Before the slumber succeedingly grasped Yosuke’s attention with such an unforeseeable rate, he warned me of the next, “We really need to talk about that mouth of yours, partner.”
In the end, the lassitude swallowing his energy as a whole as though he was devoid of Eros itself — before he slumped himself against my shoulder and sound asleep — was tantamount to a robin coming home to its metal cage a loving household.
“Life is inherently meaningless, isn’t it?” A brink of my ear felt a sharp blister, the momentarily sound of a fast swad it went unnoticed before I managed to blink. It hurts. “That’s what your eyes say to me.”
The downpour drenches us two, beside the crestfallen umbrella and leather handbag and growling car. Under the darkness entails the acumen for an undeniable truth.
“I don’t know, detective. You just missed your target.” A delicate laugh escaped my lungs. “You could’ve done better, but you can try again.”
“Planting one inside of you isn’t going to deliver your message to the whole world, either.” He shrugs his shoulders. “If you’re gonna whine, might as well do it while you’re alive and annoy others with your selfish principles.”
For a moment while I held my breath, a bubble of bemusement sprouted within me. “… And that’s why it’s meaningless. No one is capable of understanding how I feel.”
“And do you think I’ll stand here all night to convince you how ‘life is great’ or ‘life is good’ that you shouldn’t die over some idiotic reasons? What kind of death you want to end up in is yours to decide. Or do you want my permission to shoot yourself in the head?” Now, it is his turn to laugh. “I might be the worst person that you know in this whole wide world but I still have a job and things I want to do, kid. The world doesn’t just revolve around you.”
“But you didn’t shoot me.”
“Well, I also have the right to decide what I want to do.”
“Then why do you leave me alive?”
“Simply because I see no benefit in adding you to my workload,” He clicks his tongue, “And because I’m sick of following what others want me to do.”
“I see.” I squint my gaze and my smile eventually falters to its initial blank slate. “Nevertheless it’s an odd feeling; to be alive and can barely feel anything besides pain or boredom.”
“Of course. We all feel numb and unfeeling to an extent at certain points in our lives. But the annoying thing about you is: you’re oddly critical about it. Because you just can’t live in the moment.” There was the sound of metal and he withdrew it back inside his coat. “That’s why you kept holding on to that bullshit thinking of yours screwing up your head. Now you think of death as escapism.”
My lips hum, from the train of thinking striding paths within the skull it paves enlightenment. I lower my retinas towards the ground aside, “If I don’t report this, will this make me your accomplice?”
“Whether or not you report it I can still drag you with me, even if you decide to run to the farthest end of the world. You wouldn’t want to know how hard it would be to live with a problematic academic record nor a stain on your plain ol’ citizenship.” He inserts both hands inside his pockets. I can see him hollering even if his smile only curls a sneer. “But I know you wouldn’t do that, you’re a smart kid.”
Then a certain classmate’s face popped up in my mind and it did not take long for me to hold my stomach from laughing. I don’t exactly know why I am thinking about him. He is unique. He is interesting. He is my opposite. It is painful to recover myself from the gesture, when the man before my own stares at me with a strain of disgust. I rub away the tear from a corner of my eye and stand upright again.
“Thank you for tonight,” I say as I retrieve my belongings, “I’ll think about what you said and what happened as your way of settlement for not deciding to shoot me.”
“Right. Don’t waste your life over some pointless things.”
“I’ll treasure it, then.” I squint my gaze. “Though it would be difficult, and a weird start.”
“Ah! Just quickly go home, take a bath, and go to sleep.” He sighs and rolls his eyes. “See you next time, Yu-kun.”
“Good night, Adachi-san.”
The canned coffee clinked the moment I placed it over the steel railing on my balcony. I couldn’t get any more enthusiastic over the residential color of the homes after the last two years; the very same white, brown, the bleached colors of capital air filling the landscape a drawing of worker ants residing in their miniature lodgings. It’s snowing, hence the waltz of red and green on every corner my eyes glimpse. My head still hurts when I wake up. I remember now.
It was when I leaned over the metal line did I hear the sliding door from behind; I knew who it was — even by the meek, lazy sound of footsteps, and the tiny yawn escaping dry throat. The insides of my chest felt heavy. “You’re awake.” My lips murmured, then the line of my sight landed towards his display; to the cut lounging around his neck and shoulder blade a tad too big, to his tanned skin which remains the reds from yesternight — yet I was more piqued to his scrunched, though gentle face. I smiled. “Breakfast?”
“After what you did to me? Let’s just get takeouts.” He sighed. I can feel guilt resurging within my blood a desire to asphyxiate. “My body still hurts like a bitch after all that doing, I could take a personal day.” Shortly after, he followed then leaned beside me, his back pressing against the beeline and arms folded back to support. I leaned forward and kissed his lips a small peck. Instantly receiving a subsequent response. “My breath stinks!”
I ignore the wince in his expression because I knew he was merely faking it, like he always does when I attempt the unfunniest farce, so I tug my wrist around one of his own. Pulling his frame, and feeling his temperature connected to me when our surfaces squeeze together a link of inclination. Once more, I pressed the brink of my lips on his cold temple, another one on the corner of his eyelids, and finally the last one on the line of his mouth which had breathed a sigh and whispered my name tuned with helplessness. “You’re lovely.” My irises squinted as a tug of warmth entailed the cusp of my sentiment. Nevertheless, a branch of remorse remains in its labor. “I’ll take the day off with you, then.”
A breath exhaled from his lungs and I watched how he slithered free from my grasp, sneaking down and returning to his initial position alike the fox he is. A soft laugh escapes me. “I don’t get you.” He mumbled, crossing his arm. The haze of sunlight glistens his bright locks it renders the darkness in his eyes another shade of incongruity. “You’re never this open with me to the point I just know you have feelings for me. Did you — I don’t know — come into some sort of revelation? You’re lucky I didn’t push you away.” It’s because I’m sure you won’t reject me and that was the only reason I was able to force myself to say so . ”You’re weird, partner. I can’t always guess what’s going through your mind if you don’t say it directly. I thought you hated me.”
“… Yosuke.”
“What I personally hear from you is just,” he breathed, “To the extent that I know you’ve been going to the psychiatrist Naoto introduced you to, for a reason relating to your past. And because you’re struggling with something. I notice you haven’t been taking your meds.”
I can feel the headache in my skull spiraling another cord. “I’m sorry.” Yosuke hummed from my reply, and the disdain started to bubble and corrode my will a strained rust was painful. “It’s always been difficult to open up with other people.”
“Are you afraid of getting hurt?” I thought the glint in his dark pools was enough to make myself vulnerable. “Maybe that’s why you always lock yourself up.”
“I don’t, I …”
“And I always see you being on your own if not for college, nor work, nor your project.” He said, slow enough I was able to savor. “You’re always alone.”
“You’re starting to speak like Yamashita-Sensei.” I thought that would humor the situation yet none of us even jeered a smile. “If you notice so, then I must be like that.”
A pause struck my breath and my digits latched tight around the steel railing. I thought I was laughing, for once more, yet what came over my lips must have sounded depressing by the way he stared at me as saddening, questioning. Hoping. The corner of my lips attempted a smile yet it won’t come. The whole remembrance battered the insides of my skull a rushing train and its headlights headed towards me. “… I like you, Yosuke.”
“… I know.” Perhaps it is his honesty that will kill me one day; the slant of my eyes presses slightly. I can feel my face warm. “I actually like you, too, Yu. You’ve changed, you’re close to me and it’d be impossible for me to ever hate you.” How his digits, his slender fingers now anchoring me to reality by wrapping it tight around the bracelet of my wrist, was comforting. “I just wanted to know why.”
“There’s something wrong with me,” That was me, wasn’t it? That was me. I did something wrong to him and the ignorance came crashing down on me on this final day. “I have yet to know why but it’s coming back again. I will tell you when I’m certain.”
“No, you’re just not ready to tell me.” The morning air coddled freezing with the snow and I could feel my scalps growing numb. “I’m probably the only one who's stuck around you the most besides Naoto, and I know how you always act when there’s something — clearly — bugging your mind. How you always try to finish the problem behind my back and act as if it was nothing when it’s finally resolved, so I won’t know what happened.”
Trepidation creeping up my windpipe and none words were able to overcome the sorrow. “I’m sorry.”
Yosuke was silent, pursing his lips and our stares linked towards one another it is a new page of memoria — one distinguished with wary, one grieving. It was the moment encapsulating us within tranquility this morning wouldn’t be able to feel the same without him. “Just promise you’ll explain yourself to me, by then.” Now he cradled his fingers around me, around my own grasp that felt as feeble as the cadaver stringing the chords in my mind towards a decrescendo of this storyline. I realize what happened before then was already my hamartia. I trembled. I wanted to escape. “I’m always good at being patient with you, don’t I? I’ll stay with you as long as you tell me what I want to know, and after you’re okay saying it to me, partner.”
“Thank you.” I didn’t notice my lips were shivering before the sentences were conjured from my throat. It is sinful. I thought I could feel my gaze blurry and I am convinced it was the sentiment questioning as the grand inquisitor to my penitence. “You’re always understanding about me, Yosuke.”
He smiled then rubbed my shoulder, tugging my frame towards the trajectory heading inside the living room. “Let’s head inside. You’re cold, you’re practically quivering. I’ll turn up the heater, yeah?”
I curtly nodded, yet before my bare heels were willing to follow along under the roof, it stopped by itself and his gaze landed towards me with eyebrows raised. “Yosuke.” I said, covertly, slowly. “What does this make us?” Our relationship , I wanted to add, yet what came out was a voiceless end. My heart continues to ache — I have to tell him . I have to tell him. His gaze squinted at me in response. “I have hurt you too many times for you to like me in return. You don’t have any defining reasons to stay with me.”
The morning sun streamed through the gaps of window sills and parts of it gleamed against the surfaces of Yosuke’s youthful visage. Similarly a mythos of summer. Hearing my words, a corner of his mouth curled a grin, ”Actually, after all those failed crushes I realize relationships take time to build and I’m not exactly ready for a relationship. An intimate one.” His chest breathed a sigh and his fingers swept the orange locks that had fallen afront his forehead. “But, of course, oddly enough, I can’t see myself rejecting you. Maybe it’s because I was already attracted to you since we first met? Who knows.”
If it were ourselves in the previous year, perhaps we wouldn’t even be able to stare each other in the eyes and question such ridiculous things. “… So you already liked me all the way back then. Since my transfer.”
“‘Liked’ … there are many forms of like, so I can’t really say which kind of like it was besides my odd interest towards you at the time.” He hummed, then a chuckle escapes him. “Or maybe we’re destined for each other, that’s why we keep meeting back and forth even when we’re separated for years!” I tightened the grasp of his fingers against mine, and I can feel the glass on my retinas about to falter a spheres of shattered glass though the insides of my throat followed his small laugh and it is a terrible attempt. And the next sentence Yosuke gave me — as he delicately pull me towards him until the soles of my feet felt the soft carpet, the pools in his eyes twirled of nostalgia, of a humor reminding of us of our adolescence — it was enough to drift me in a reverie I expected nothing more than this facade of a hyperreality. Yet the bright smile Yosuke gave me, trajected solely towards me, and only me, was enough to ruin me. “I like you, Yu.”
The countless sentences I attempt to utter voiced as helpless before me, failing, never sounding, and I was merely able to blink the tears, now infallibly, vulnerably dropping before my downcasted eyelids to the point Yosuke eyed me as devotedly behind the fluttering glimpse of wary. The temperature of his palm remained just as I remembered — when I hold it against him tight, when it traced circles over my back when I leaned beside him — and the landscape upon my sight did not take long to churn a blur, an obscurity, I can barely witness the clear besides the shade of his orange locks and human skin. With his free wrist, Yosuke traced his palm against my cheek and I felt it hot from the rose of red. It was because of the gentle caress from his thumb I was still able to see parts of him in clarity. I whispered, and it sounded more like a prayer to me, “I love you, Yosuke.”
The rise of temperature must have gotten him, by the way I could peek at his expression now dusted a shade of crimson. A subsequent laugh from him was immediate, “Now you’re trying to make me say that I love you too! You’re pressuring me!” Once again, Yosuke tenderly wiped the rubbyness on my visage from increasingly looking miserable. Or at least I thought so, because it would not stop, and from the way he perceived me as something so pristine, unsullied. I pray that he will stay with me forever. I pray that I will love him forever. “But I’m going to save the chance to say it next time we have another candlelit or such.”
And the thought: whether or not will he forgive me for what I have chosen to do in the past, how my own actions drifted me tantamountly a fall from grace, for what sin I committed which finally resurfaced after months of internal conflict it finally invokes the reverie retelling the remembrance my nails finally dug out from the swamps of repression — everything, everything about it will remain frighten me until I rest within coffin unless he may know or forgive me, or never so.
“… But before you consider being with me, before you finally consider saying that you love me, I have something to tell you.” Finally, I take hold of Yosuke’s hands and stare deep into his soul. “It’s regarding the night before we fought and went separate ways three years ago. I have to confess to you about these events — before I can finally accept myself.”