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He doesn’t smile, he doesn’t waver; it’s like emotion trapped in resin, cast and preserved on a beautiful face that won’t even flicker for an answer to the questions and needs that overflow in every breath of your consumption. He’s just standing there with his hand in the jamb. He knew you’d catch the door just in time after you started to slam it. Without a word he’s inviting himself in.
Your things are in the shopping bag he put in your hand; he acts casual about bringing them over even though he has to take the train to get to your house and you know it. He says he was in town, but some things he does are too auspicious to be treated with anything but squinting doubt and a bit of disorienting madness.
It’s a cold day, typical for winter but colder because he’s out in it, standing on your front step, patient, knowing. This is going to go his way and that’s the way it is. His way is the way it is, so you surrender the door just enough to reveal yourself again, glancing into the bag to mumble thank you for your things.
Apparently, you left three lucky items at his house over the course of the years (two years, if the previous year until last month is to be counted, which it certainly is because it was the most interesting): the first, a pinwheel you stuck in the ground like a placeholder while you both sat in his garden after school one day, nudging closer, daring to touch your shoulder to his before he embarrassed you by saying your name and reminding you that the moment was real. You forgot it in the flurry of movement when you finally left. The second, a skipping rope he used to tie your hands to the bed. That was much later, after shoulders touching became a chuckle of a thing to fret about. You stayed at his house that night; his mother asked you in the morning, at the breakfast table, if you had a cat. Yes, you said, pulling the sleeve further down your arm. The nail marks were actually from her son, but they didn’t have a cat so she wouldn’t know what to expect. The third, you don’t really remember. You don’t dwell on it.
There is a point when mourning turns into remembering, and it is a gross mutation when it occurs. Because mourning is a pitiful, aggressive thing that can be seen and heard, can be understood and measured. Mourning is what friends suppose when you refuse to take risks and test limits and kiss the boy who would’ve let you do much more than that already if you’d just wake up. But remembering is for darkness, for stillness, for the absolute silence of a bath when the tiniest drip of water can roust you back to reality like pulling you back out of hell. Remembering is lonely, coldest in winter.
Remembering that you never really loved him, and he never really loved you, that’s the hardest part. Trying to bite back the sickness that wants to rise upon convincing yourself it’s true, well, that’s what you’ve been trying to bury in training harder and being better, reaching, always reaching. It’s been three weeks since he humiliated you on the court and broke your heart within the same cycle of minutes, but you never had a heart to break, did you?
“This isn’t what normal people do,” he said. He was playful about it, stretching out on you like a cat as he tended to do. And you remember those moments, oh do you remember those moments.
“That’s not a concern of mine. Too much time is wasted on formality. We have too much else to think about.”
“Are you saying this is only physical?”
“It’s silly to say it’s anything else. This won’t last. We’re not even going to the same school anymore.”
He laced his fingers in yours and laughed silently. A weird feeling crept into you then, like you’d said the wrong thing and forever taken the wrong path.
“I like your holding your hand,” he said oddly.
And then he refused to shake it.
He invited himself in by blocking the door, and so you capitulate. He’s sitting in your house by the time you know what’s happening, accepting your hospitality but also preying on it. You sit across from one another, not speaking, in the waning light of early evening that casts shadows across the tatami mat floor.
You sculpt words around the urges in your head and cast aside the ruined pieces that slough off in the process. It’s difficult to say what you mean, and that’s why you stay silent. You want to break past the façade and scream, but of course you don’t. He seems so pristine, so content in being it, in being right.
There is worse than mourning and there is worse than remembering, and it consumes to the pinnacle of cardinal sin. In an insincere attempt at cajoling yourself, you claim you don’t want him. And yet the way he’s looking at you, a few feet away with his legs and arms crossed, suggests that he is not trying to convince himself of anything. He’s smoldering and bold, for all the control he has. You lost your virginity to him, and he to you. You cultivated your talents and preferences on one another. You know that look and he knows this tension.
He does not ask if you will be alone for long. He knows he doesn’t need to, because he knows. You don’t even think about it. You’re not present in a world of consequences.
Without a word he uncrosses his legs, then his arms. The chair creaks very softly as he relaxes into it, spreading his knees apart. This time he doesn’t need to command you; which is an odd consideration, because he has always commanded you. There was never good to come of being his rival, because you should have known from experience that even at the pinnacle of all your nerve you would crumble, only to be showered with a most ironic affection. His weakness is your submission. He loves to see you debased. In thinking you would go far enough to ignite his ire, challenging him and aiming to win, you saw the most terrible peephole into his soul.
The soul is not an ephemeral, beautiful thing, not always. His soul is ugly and twisted, a gnarl of sick desires and incontestable sensibilities. Why you like that, you can’t explain. You like things that frighten you, things that are just out of reach. You can reach out and pick other people off the vine, but with Akashi you actually have to pry him apart and step inside, be wrapped up in his consciousness in order to unlock it. And you never get far. And that’s what he counts on.
You step in front of his chair and remember what it was like when you first did this, when you first sank to your knees in front of him in the locker room after everyone else had left; you were so young, in retrospect, and it was only two years ago. You hated it. You’d done it completely of your own volition but he still managed to make you feel like it was all his idea, and apologized when you choked and pulled away right before he came, losing your nerve. You still leaned in to lick him clean with shameful tears pricking your eyes, feeling somehow like you owed it to him. Because sometimes his cock can just do that (Sex? You think we should have sex? Are you… attracted to me, Shintarou? Since you’ve known me, have I aroused you?), possess you and lead you around because yes, in the end you want to gain power over him in the only way you can.
You’ve grown to love it, and only part of it is about the way he puts his fingers in your hair and the way his stomach rolls with impassioned breath above you. Only part of it is when his composure slips just enough to say your name. Most of it is knowing -- that he’s in your hands, he’s in your mouth, between your teeth and at your mercy. For once, for the only time, at your complete mercy.
You could tear right into his flesh if you wanted to. You could hurt him. You could hurt him physically where you could never hurt him emotionally. Do unto others...
Instead you just bow in front of him, on your hands and knees between his legs, head buried in his lap while he’s mostly silent in the stately traditional sitting room your mother strives to keep spotless. Fabric rustles and he breathes louder, your mouth makes wet sucking sounds and then you start to growl into the movements, remembering the taste and the feeling, devouring it like an animal abandoned by the pack, glutting on the scraps. You’re good at this. You know you’re good at this, at least for him.
He starts to gasp, the noise uneven, and that’s when you pull away. You pull away and you reach over, grab him by the wrist and don’t even look into his eyes. He gasps again, but this time it’s aroused for different reasons, shocked but not protesting, taken by surprise but certainly acquiescing when you tighten your grip and jerk him down, onto the floor. He falls ungracefully (a rare occurrence) and doesn’t seem to care. The chair pushes noisily out of the way, nearly falling as Akashi becomes a bundle of trembling limbs in front of it.
There are still no words. It would be cheap to assume there should be. His fingers grab for your face and wind up the sides, pushing under the arms of your glasses until they fall off to the floor with a clatter that pulls you both back into knowing what is happening. He opens his mouth to take in a breath, sets his eyes on yours, and bares his teeth. You return the expression as you tear into your pants with one hand, and try to arrange his legs, and try to pull his pants off… everything at once, everything.
The swell of your heartbeat climbs up to a most frantic rhythm as you see him brace himself, because he knows it’s going to hurt, because neither of you are prepared to take time that isn’t concerned with the moment. Comfort is not the key.
You could have heard a pin drop between the two of you, alone in the middle of a packed arena. “I want to be your enemy.”
He still sits in your heart and carves grooves into your tenderest depths, where emotions can infect and fester in your more logical intentions. He’s a beautiful red swathe of reality cut in everything you’ve precisely fit to escape it. So he hurt you, so he took from you. So he made certain to claim you before he cut you off like a dog. Do unto others.
Fingers tighten on your shoulders like vise grips and he shouts, then groans, then grits his teeth through a keening whine as you push into him without a moment’s preparation. Rarely he let you even get to this point; you can count on one hand the number of times he allowed you to get as far as penetration, instead of leaving you deprived and delirious and strangely gratified by the experience. Those times were very, very good. But nothing like this, nothing like the full length of your cock buried inside of him in moments, hitching his leg up on your shoulder to adjust the position, mouth hanging open as you thrust harder, acquainting yourself with the raw, suckling heat of him in what is obviously (upon further examination) a highly volatile state. His fingernails dig into you and then he starts to paw at your collar, trying to break into your shirt, trying to mark your skin. You wish you were naked. You close your eyes and know there’s no time. Any moment now, either of you could reconsider.
When he comes less than a minute after you’re inside of him, with hardly another touch to his cock, you’ve discovered something that takes weeks to fully unpack inside of your brain. That this is what he wanted, that this is what he craved. That all of those nights of teasing and torture and unfulfillment (I’m not going to help you. That’s in your hands. Look at the way you’re twitching, Shintarou. Don’t you wish I would touch you? Don’t you wish you could do something right now?), sexual or emotional or otherwise, were just as calculated as anything else. He was a lion tamer cracking the whip and poking your ribs at the same time. A bull-fighter flapping his cape (Say… do you think you can come if I don’t even touch you? Let’s find out).
You’ve broken the bonds and attacked. He’s left open to it, and he’s losing control for the first time that you’ve ever seen.
Is he screaming? Is he sobbing? He won’t let you see his face – he pulls you down with a sudden adrenaline rush of strength and urges you in frenzied, possessed whispers that roll just below the surface of all those worrying noises: “Fuck me. Fuck me.” His lips move right next to your ear. You know his breath and you know his muscles, you know the tightness of his ass and you know his smell, his fucking scent that haunts you for the rest of your life like a snippet of a half-hummed song that no one else can ever help you remember.
You speed up, knowing it hurts him by the way he cries out on every thrust. It used to be his excuse. No. You’re too big, you hurt me. But whenever the time was taken and the time was allowed, there were never any complaints. You entered him from behind and you could hit his prostate in that position. The pain was always just a casualty. Now, though… it doesn’t seem a deterrent at all. He’s grabbing you tighter, pulling you deeper inside. The pain… the pain is the reward itself. “Shintarou. Kill me.”
You forget that part. You try to ignore it and pretend he said something else. He doesn’t ask you to pull out and you pretend it was a metaphor in his usual macabre way when you come inside of him, moaning to signal it, thrusting again, and again, pulling another gurgling moan from his throat before you know you’re finished.
Barely ten minutes passed since he entered your house, all told.
You look anywhere else, clambering back on your knees slowly, pulling out of him, not pausing to watch whether he turns his knees together in shame or allows himself to remain a spectacle, open and leaking come on the floor. Neither would be surprising at this point. Your glasses are near the chair leg; you grab them sharply and fumble through putting them on. His taste is still in your mouth. His scent, still everywhere. He put you on, and now you’re the one who can’t take him off.
Only a few moments keep you in the room. You grab the bag from the opposite chair and stumble over your own feet for a moment, feeling gangly for the first time in months as you make your exit. He can see himself out, you surmise. You’ll clean up later, and hate yourself through every moment of it.
A pinwheel, a skipping rope, and a combination lock. Tomorrow you wake up, feeling empty and soulless and still as angry as you’ve been for weeks, and it turns out to be the day’s lucky item. He had no way of knowing, except that he did.