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“I want to be with you forever, Mister Tokushirou,” Usami says, when he’s twelve years old.
“Now, now, Tokishige, that’s something you should save for when you’re older,” Tsurumi says. He smiles when he says it, but it’s the same smile he gives the other boys, the same benevolent kindness that makes Usami want to tear their eyes out for seeing it.
Usami frowns. “I mean it,” he says. “Why should I wait?”
“Why should you wait?” Tsurumi muses. “Why indeed?”
They sit together on the dojo steps, Tsurumi regarding the horizon contemplatively with his fingers folded beneath his chin. The sun is setting, and Tomoharu’s body lies cooling in the courtyard. Usami looks right over it and follows Tsurumi’s gaze into the bloody sky. “I mean it, Mister Tokushirou,” he says again. “That won’t change.”
“Very well, I believe you.” Tsurumi sets a hand on the back of his head, and Usami’s shoulders hitch upwards in delight. This is how it should have been all along, just the two of them. If he knew this was all it would take, he would’ve done this long ago. “Give me some time to think about it, hm? A proposal like that is a serious matter.”
“I’ll wait,” Usami says instantly. “How long? I’ll wait forever- oh, but not too long, I couldn’t stand it.” He has to grip his hands together to control his excitement. Tsurumi-san would think about it, he said, which means Usami will be on his mind. It would be wonderful if Usami could be the only thing on his mind.
Tsurumi smiles again, and this time there’s a toothy edge to it that sends a thrill down Usami’s spine. There it is, the smile that’s just for him. “You’ll know when it’s time,” he says. “Don’t worry.”
“You aren’t lying, are you? Please don’t.” Usami knows the look on an adult’s face when they lie to a child. That glossy facade of pleasant condescension, so thick that he can smell the stink of it in the air. Tsurumi looks down at him without a sign of deceit, his hand dropping to squeeze Usami’s shoulder. Oh, how could Usami have ever doubted him? He feels tears of contrition pricking at the corners of his eyes for even daring to think it.
“Of course not, Tokishige,” Tsurumi says, grinning like a devil. “When have I ever lied to you?”
***
The wood of Tsurumi’s office is old and stained, but polished to the full extent that the worn out planks can bear. Usami is grateful for it when he kneels by Tsurumi’s desk- First Lieutenant Tsurumi hates a dirty uniform, after all.
Above him, he hears the fine scratching of a pen on paper and the occasional clinking of steel on the inkwell. There’s really no need for Usami to make his reports in person like this, but he insists upon it. It’s their special time together, after all, and Tsurumi never refuses.
Usami is sure it’s because Tsurumi loves him. He’s Tsurumi’s number one, Tsurumi said it himself.
“You’ve been here for a year now, isn’t that right?” Tsurumi doesn’t look up from his writing, but Usami feels his heart clench as if Tsurumi reached right into his ribs and caught it between his fingers.
“Yes, sir,” he says. He’s already breathless, sweat building under his collar. Tsurumi smells so good, he always does. This close to him, Usami can practically taste it.
“Congratulations on your recent promotion,” Tsurumi says generously. “I hope you’ll continue to serve with such dedication.”
Usami shifts his weight, anxious now in a way that makes him itch beneath his skin. “Am I useful to you, sir?” he asks. “I’ve been helpful, sir, haven’t I?”
Tsurumi chuckles. The sound of it goes straight to Usami’s dick, and he bites his lip hard enough to sting. “As long as you follow me, Superior Private,” Tsurumi says, “I’ll always have a use for you.”
“You don’t have to be so formal when we’re alone, sir.” Usami scoots forward on his knees, hopeful. “Aren’t we old friends?”
Tsurumi finally sets down his pen at that and turns in his chair to regard Usami. The afternoon sun is low in the sky, and the angle of it casts an impenetrable shadow across his face. “Of course we are, Tokishige.”
Usami shudders at the sound of his name, at the way Tsurumi’s mouth forms the shape of it. His name is on Tsurumi’s tongue, he thinks dizzily. Coming out between his teeth, between his lips, and oh- he’s already so hard he can see stars.
“Ahh.” Usami shivers again, the skin across his lower back erupting into goosebumps. “As I thought, you’re the best, sir. I wish you would call me that all the time.”
“Now, now,” Tsurumi says indulgently. “It should only be when we’re alone, don’t you think? Wouldn’t want anyone else getting ideas.”
“No, of course not,” Usami immediately agrees. “You can’t, that wouldn’t be right.” He wouldn’t be able to stand it if Tsurumi called someone else’s name. It’s sickening to even think about.
Tsurumi looks across the room at the clock and purses his lips. “Aren’t you due for patrol soon? Better get going.”
Usami begins to rise, his shoulders dropping mournfully. Then, suddenly, Tsurumi seems to think of something, and he lifts a hand. Usami freezes in place, his calves burning from the strain of the position.
“Hold on a moment, Tokishige.”
Usami drops back down to his knees so quickly that he feels the impact ricochet up through his knees, jarring his back teeth together. “Sir?”
Tsurumi traces a finger slowly along his mustache, his eyes dark and thoughtful. “You’ve earned a reward, don’t you think? The first year is always special, after all.”
“A reward?” Usami repeats, feeling faint. He remembers the last time Tsurumi rewarded him- when he made First Private, Tsurumi put a hand on his back and stroked down the length of his spine in one long, smooth movement.
He jerked off to that memory for months.
“Hm, yes, I think one might be in order.” Tsurumi gestures for Usami to come closer, spreading his knees invitingly. Usami moves faster than even he thinks he’s capable of, halting just short of burying his face into Tsurumi’s lap. “What will it be?”
“Your hands,” Usami answers instantly. “Let me touch them, sir.” They were the first thing he noticed, even as a child. Tsurumi has the most beautiful fingers, dripping grace with every slight gesture. They look best around the hilt of a saber, Usami has long since discovered. Or wrapped around the grip of his Borchadt C-93.
Tsurumi’s mouth curls upwards. He’s pleased, Usami can tell. Usami watches as Tsurumi examines his own right hand, running his thumb along the edges of his fingernails. “You’re a fascinating little creature, aren’t you?”
Usami makes a noise of agreement, his mouth already open and panting. Oh, he can already imagine the way those fingers would feel around his throat, squeezing and squeezing until it folds inwards on itself. He can still remember the noises Tomoharu made as he breathed his last. Will Usami sound like that too? Or maybe he’ll choke on them instead, suck Tsurumi’s fingers down to the knuckles and feel them scratching at him from the inside-
Tsurumi lays a hand on Usami’s cheek, and Usami nearly comes at the warmth of it. He makes an agonized sound instead and turns his face into Tsurumi’s palm. The skin there is calloused, but smooth, tasting faintly of salt. Usami presses his tongue to the heart of it and moans when Tsurumi’s fingers stroke along his jaw.
“Are you hard, Tokishige?” Tsurumi’s fingertip slides into Usami’s ear, and Usami nearly comes on the spot. “You are, I can smell it on you.” His boot nudges at Usami’s knees, the toe dragging up the inside of his leg and stopping just short of his crotch. “Go on, let me see.”
Usami’s already fumbling at his trousers, shoving them down past his hips. His cock pops free, already slick at the head and hard enough to hurt, and Tsurumi presses his boot harder against the crease of his thigh. Usami wonders if it’ll leave a bruise.
Won’t that be wonderful, he thinks, if it does?
“Sir,” he begins.
Tsurumi tuts and thumbs at Usami’s lower lip, pushing inwards until his thumbnail clicks against his teeth. “Quietly,” he says. “I’ll give you three minutes, hm? Wouldn’t want you to be late.”
Usami nods fervently, his mouth held open in Tsurumi’s grip. He’s drooling like a dog, but Tsurumi doesn’t seem to mind. He’s so kind, Tsurumi-san, always thinking of what’s best for him. He palms himself and tries not to moan too loudly when Tsurumi’s thumb slides in further and presses against his tongue. He won’t need three minutes, at this rate. Might not even need one.
Tsurumi plays with him idly as Usami works himself, stroking along the inside of his mouth in a pantomime of fucking. It’s both filthy and beautiful, like spilled guts on the snow. His breath comes in hitching, wet gasps, a low whine building erratically at the back of his throat. He’s close, so close, he wishes Tsurumi would either kiss him or kill him.
“Don’t spill,” Tsurumi murmurs, digging his thumbnail into the corner of Usami’s mouth. Usami chokes out a noise of assent and cups his hand around the head of his dick as he comes. He doesn’t spill a drop, and the approving hum Tsurumi gives is almost enough to make him hard again.
“Three minutes on the dot.” Tsurumi wipes his wet thumb on Usami’s cheek, leaving a damp streak that cools quickly in the air. “Excellent work, Superior Private Usami.”
“Thank you, sir.” Usami shakes out his handkerchief and wipes his fingers clean. A sudden thought occurs to him, and he catches at Tsurumi’s wrist before Tsurumi can pull his hand away. “Do you reward anyone else like this, sir?”
Tsurumi blinks at him once, slow and unfathomable. Like a cat, Usami thinks, or a snake. “It’s good to reward good behavior, isn’t it?” Tsurumi says mildly.
“But, can you- just give these rewards to me, okay? Please, sir.” Usami clings onto Tsurumi’s sleeve and Tsurumi allows it with a smile.
“Keep up the good work, Superior Private,” he says. “The rest will follow.”
***
Usami despises Koito at first sight.
The way he clings to First Lieutenant Tsurumi is unseemly, presumptuous. As if Usami wasn’t here first, as if he isn’t Tsurumi-san’s closest friend. As if they didn’t understand each other in ways this fresh-faced harlot never could.
He tells himself this while Tsurumi escorts Koito around the barracks for introductions, smiling blandly as his fingernails carve half moons into the meat of his palms. He imagines a dozen ways to incapacitate Koito with the pen in Tsurumi’s pocket by the time they make it around to him, and he’s proud of himself for not acting on a single one of them even when Koito stands close enough to Tsurumi that their shoulders brush.
“He’s irritating, don’t you think?” he mutters to the Nikaidous. The younger one, he thinks, though it’s impossible to tell for sure. They both turn to him, impassive, and he glances at Tsurumi and Koito’s retreating backs before shuffling closer. “Two days out of the academy and he’s already a superior officer? Bet he doesn’t know his dick from his ass, and the way he’s looking at First Lieutenant Tsurumi? So damned shameless-”
One of the brothers leans over and whispers in the other’s ear, the both of them casting a pitying look towards Usami afterwards.
“What?” he demands, suddenly feeling on the defensive. “What’s that look?”
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you, Superior Private Usami,” the other brother tells him, then skips back to dodge the kick Usami aims at his ankles.
His mood is still sour later that evening. He lies on his cot in shirtsleeves and trousers, arms folded across his stomach as he stares at the ceiling. Across the room, Ogata sits stiffly, bouncing a hard rubber ball against the floor wall. It makes a repetitive, hollow sound with each bounce before snapping back into Ogata’s hand. Tap, tap, slap. Tap, tap, slap.
Usami has never liked Ogata. Something about him reminds Usami of the white pear blossoms that would litter the streets in the springtime - plain at first sight, but stinking of ammonia underneath. There’s something festering behind those lightless eyes, something even more rotten and black than the trampled mud at the bottom of the trenches. Usami is usually averse to associating himself with something so inevitable as decay, but now, he wants to tear the ball from Ogata’s hand and cram it down his throat.
“What the hell are you doing over there?” he demands, lifting his head.
“Training my reflexes.” Ogata doesn’t falter once in his rhythm. Tap, tap, slap. “Something you might want to consider.”
Usami snorts and lets his head drop back. “Bastard.”
Tap, tap. Slap. Then, silence. “That’s right,” Ogata says, his tone as flat and unaffected as before. Few seconds later, the bouncing begins again.
Usami watches the ceiling for a while longer. “What do you make of that kid?” he asks. “The new lieutenant? You’ve met him before.”
“That was years ago.” Ogata thinks for a moment. “Though he hasn’t changed much.”
“What’s that mean?”
Ogata doesn’t answer for a long while, long enough that Usami is tempted to look up again. Then, “He’s a brat,” Ogata says. “Just a rich, stupid brat.” There’s something in the way he says it that sounds like he’s speaking around a mouthful of iron. Usami decides he really doesn’t care.
“He’s got a type,” Ogata goes on, as carelessly as if commenting on the weather. “The First Lieutenant. He liked you more when you were that age, didn’t he?”
Usami sits straight up at that, outraged. “You- you fisheyed mother-”
The door swings open then. One Nikaidou’s head slides into view before the other follows on top. “Superior Private Usami,” says the top Nikaidou. “First Lieutenant Tsurumi is asking for you.”
Usami’s head snaps around, Ogata completely forgotten. “Me? What for? Did he say?” He scrambles off the bed, grabbing his uniform jacket and buttoning as he goes. “Never mind, I’ll find out myself.”
“Not that way,” one of the Nikaidous calls after him. “The officer quarters.”
Usami skids to a halt at the end of the hallway and pivots on his heel. “Why didn’t you say so?” he demands. His heart is already pounding, his palms damp with anticipation. He’s only been in Tsurumi’s quarters once, when he ran into the private on laundry duty and mugged him for Tsurumi’s clean sheets.
Even then, he only saw Tsurumi’s rooms from the doorway. The sheets didn’t even smell like Tsurumi, the way Usami imagined everything inside his quarters would. He pummeled the private for it afterwards, for washing out Tsurumi’s scent so thoroughly.
As eager as he is now, he feels a thrill of nerves when he finds himself standing outside Tsurumi’s door. He supposes this is what a bride must feel like on her wedding night.
“Come in,” he hears, when he finally knocks. The door is unlocked and swings open smoothly.
The room is dimly lit, swathed in darkness where the light from the single oil lamp doesn’t reach. It’s not as elaborately furnished as Usami expected. There’s a modest bed in the corner, a plain wardrobe against the far wall, and a neatly arranged writing desk. The only point of extravagance is the armchair.
It’s a red velvet wingback affair fitted with bronze legs tipped with decorative claws. It looks like something out of the oil portraits Usami has seen in the hallways of the Naval Academy, some fantasy of a chair that no ordinary citizen would even imagine possessing.
Tsurumi sits in it like a monarch on his throne, his jacket draped over the high back and his shirt sleeves rolled up crisply past his forearms. The flickering light fractures itself against his headplate, pooling in the glass of wine he holds in his right hand.
“Have a seat,” Tsurumi says, waving the glass. It’s odd to see him drinking; Tsurumi himself has admitted to Usami that he doesn’t care for the taste or the effect. Is he a violent drunk, perhaps? Usami fidgets with the bottom of his jacket, his chest tight with excitement, and goes to sit at Tsurumi’s feet. There’s no other chair in the room, but he would sit there anyway. The space between Tsurumi’s boots belongs to him and him alone.
“Having a drink, sir?”
“This?” Tsurumi glances at his own hand, as if surprised to see it holding the wine glass. “Oh no, dear boy, this is for you.” He leans down and offers it to Usami.
Usami doesn’t like the smell of red wine. It’s thick and heady and reminds him of watching Tsurumi laughing with other superior officers, but he takes the glass anyway and gazes down into its dark contents. “What’s this for?”
“Drink up,” Tsurumi prompts. He leans his elbow against the armrest of his chair and props his chin in his hand, his fingertips rubbing absently against his mustache. “It’s a good vintage, I hear. I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it.”
Usami doesn’t know shit about wine. He nods knowingly anyway, then downs the glass in three long, loud gulps. The taste of it floods his mouth in a raw, sour rush, making his tongue curl and his temples throb. For something that looks so much like blood, it tastes far worse.
There’s a reluctant warmth in his belly when Usami finally swallows, his mouth reflexively filling with saliva. He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth and leans over to set the empty glass down on the floor.
“What did you think of the Second Lieutenant?” Tsurumi suddenly asks. Usami nearly snaps the stem of the wine glass between his fingers.
“What do you mean, sir?” he asks. He tells himself to pull himself together. Tsurumi-san worked so hard to recruit Koito, after all, which means he’s important. Though he’ll never be as important as Usami, he’s sure of it-
Tsurumi’s boot catches him beneath his chin, stopping just short of making any real impact. “Come now, you can be honest,” Tsurumi says. “Darling boy, isn’t he?”
Usami stiffens, his brows twisting together. “Do you think so, sir?” His tongue feels looser now, the wine sluggishly working its way through his veins. “Don’t say that, or I- I’ll-”
“Hm?” Tsurumi smiles down at him patiently. Usami bows his head, the tip of Tsurumi’s boot digging into the soft skin under his jaw.
“I’ll want to kill him,” he says. Saying the words aloud is a relief, the building pressure inside his head and chest suddenly giving way, and he clutches at Tsurumi’s pant legs, pressing his forehead to Tsurumi’s lap. “I’ll kill him, Tsurumi-san. The way he looks at you, I hate it, I hate that he’s special, I hate that you’ll be angry if I do. Don’t be angry, please-”
“Superior Private Usami,” Tsurumi begins, and Usami shakes his head fervently, shoving his face harder against Tsurumi’s knees.
“That’s not right, sir, you promised.”
Tsurumi’s hand is warm on the back of his neck, his thumb rubbing soothingly along the top of Usami’s collar. “So I did,” he agreed. “You did well, Tokishige.”
Usami clutches at Tsurumi’s legs, starched fabric gathering thickly in his hands. His heart is pounding, his face flushing hot. “I did?”
“You did. You were so patient, hm? Don’t think I didn’t notice you holding back.” Tsurumi pets him as one would a dog, scratching lightly at the shorn hair behind Usami’s ear. The sensation travels through his scalp and down his spine. “Shall I tell you how proud I am, Tokishige-kun?”
Maybe he’s died and gone to heaven, Usami thinks dizzily. He tries to lift his head, but Tsurumi’s hand holds it down firmly. “Or shall I show you instead?” Tsurumi continues, as if speaking to himself. “Yes, I do think that may be more appropriate. Some things can only be expressed with actions, after all.”
Usami can’t agree more. His first love letter, after all, was written in the footprint he left in the throat of a dead boy. He finds himself swallowing around a lump in his own throat at the idea of Tsurumi engraving his own love in Usami’s body. How will he do it, he wonders, perhaps with a knife? The tip of his fountain pen? His bare hands?
“Ah,” he gasps, heat gathering irrepressibly low in his belly, his dick twitching in his smallclothes. “Tsurumi-san…”
“What are you waiting for, Tokishige?” Tsurumi asks. The pressure from Usami’s head disappears, and he looks up to see Tsurumi watching him in perplexion. “Something like this should be done on a bed, no? We aren’t animals, after all.”
“Yeah,” Usami breathes. “Yes, sir, that’s right.” If they were animals, he thinks, he would want to be a rabbit to fill Tsurumi’s belly.
Tsurumi insists on undressing him, his fingers moving over the buttons of his jacket and shirt with a practiced ease. The way he instructs Usami to lift his arms or turn, the way he bends to help Usami lift his legs out of his trousers one at a time, speaks of some level of experience that catches Usami off guard.
He isn’t so naive as to think Tsurumi-san didn’t have a past before he came to Usami’s village, though it never mattered to him. His own life, as far as he’s concerned, began the day that Tsurumi took his hand and introduced himself. Did Tsurumi have someone to undress like this once? Usami feels a stir of jealousy, but it’s a quieter snarl than usual. Tsurumi is undressing him now, after all, and no one else. He’ll make sure of it.
He lies back on the bed and watches, eyes wide, as Tsurumi strips himself, careless about the way he flaunts his body in a way that makes Usami’s dick ache. By the time he joins Usami on the bed and straddles him, he’s wearing nothing but his headplate and his scars.
“Watch closely,” Tsurumi says, as he slicks his fingers up and reaches behind himself. “You’ll be doing this from now on.”
Usami wants to say that he already knows how. As a cadet, he frequented the brothels as often as he could afford on his meager stipend, until the prostitutes there knew him by name and had imparted every ounce of their considerable knowledge onto him. His own fingers never felt quite right inside him, but he knows where to press and stroke and stretch until even the body of another man can be as soft and pliant as a woman’s.
One day, he thinks, he’ll feel Tsurumi’s insides for himself. For now, well...who is he to deny himself a show like this? He bites his lip and watches, fascinated, as Tsurumi’s thighs tense and relax, the muscles in his forearm working as he presses more fingers into himself. Usami inches his fingers up over Tsurumi’s knees, then, when he isn’t stopped, moves his hands up higher to his hips. Tsurumi hums in pleasure, a soft harmless sound that does nothing to abate the thing growing and burning and clawing inside Usami’s chest.
“Hold still now, Tokishige-kun.” Tsurumi grinds down, Usami’s cock slipping between his cheeks and catching briefly at his rim. Usami gargles at the sensation, and Tsurumi blinks coquettishly down at him.
“Oops, let’s try that again,” he tuts, then reaches back to line himself up again.
Usami watches, unable to breathe. He’s wanted this for years, for what feels like his entire life. He remembers being thirteen, wringing himself dry with his forehead pressed to the wooden planks of an old dojo fence. Age fourteen, sucking red ovals into the soft skin beneath his wrists and wondering whether Mister Tokushirou would let him mark him. Eighteen years old, two weeks into training, biting his pillow to muffle his moans as he ruts furiously into his cot and imagines Tsurumi’s hand pulling him down by the back of his head.
He’s imagined this a thousand times for each year that’s passed, and still nothing has prepared him for the devastating clench of Tsurumi’s body finally sinking down above him. He moans, ecstatic, his hips straining upwards into that excruciating heat. It feels like dying, he thinks feverishly. It feels like being born again.
“Over already, Tokishige-kun?” Tsurumi begins, then pauses, a muscle jumping in his jaw. Usami tightens his grip on Tsurumi’s waist and thrusts up again, pulling down simultaneously, and Tsurumi’s teeth flash white against his bottom lip.
“Tsurumi-san,” Usami gasps. There are tears in his eyes, hot and stinging and blurring the lines of Tsurumi leaning over him. “ Tsurumi-san, you’re so tight.”
“Why, thank you,” Tsurumi says. He almost sounds like his regular self, if not for the spots of color high in his cheeks. “You’re...you’re quite good at this, aren’t you, Tokishige?”
“Hm? What?” Usami finds it difficult to focus on what Tsurumi is saying. He wishes he had five more hands to touch Tsurumi properly. It isn’t right that he can’t feel every inch of Tsurumi’s skin at the same time. Perhaps if they shared the same flesh, the same blood, the same body…
“Excuse me, sir,” Usami says, and he rolls the two of them over. Tsurumi goes willingly enough, watching Usami curiously. There, this is much better. He can fuck Tsurumi-san properly like this, can nudge his thighs apart and drive into him in that particular angle that makes men howl like beasts.
Tsurumi-san doesn’t howl. He moans instead, quietly and prettily, the sounds punching out of him with every thrust. Usami spreads his fingers across Tsurumi’s sternum, then drags his hand down to rest over Tsurumi’s navel. He’s inside, he thinks. He’s inside Tsurumi-san. It’s as if Tsurumi-san’s eaten him up, as if Usami’s essence is bleeding into him.
Tsurumi’s cock is half hard, but it fills readily enough in Usami’s hand. He likes the way it feels there, likes the way Tsurumi sighs and pushes into his palm when he squeezes.
“You’ve been thinking about this,” Tsurumi says, as if they’re holding a conversation across his desk instead of Usami fucking him into his mattress. He tilts his head and peers up at Usami through his eyelashes, calculating even now. Usami loves him like this. “I can feel it every time you look at me. Dirty boy.”
“Not a boy anymore, Tsurumi-san,” Usami says plaintively. His next thrust is hard enough to jostle Tsurumi a couple of inches up the bed, and Tsurumi chuckles breathlessly.
“Fair enough,” he says. “Is it everything you imagined?”
A trickle of sweat works its way down the side of Tsurumi’s face, and Usami watches it until it disappears into shadow. “Almost,” he says. He reaches up slowly, carefully, and when Tsurumi only smiles up at him, he curves a hand around the side of Tsurumi’s head and fingers the thin leather straps of his headplate. In his fantasies, there was nothing between them but enough space for a heartbeat, not even enough for the edge of a blade.
Tsurumi reaches up and covers Usami’s hand with his own, his fingertips sliding up the back of Usami’s fingers slowly and precisely. “It’s rather dreadful,” he murmurs. “Are you sure?”
Usami swallows, and Tsurumi’s mouth twitches when Usami grows even harder inside him. “Promise?” Usami breathes. He doesn’t want anything less than what Tsurumi-san is, dreadful or not.
“You really are an incredible creature,” Tsurumi tells him fondly, then undoes the buckles. The enamel plate comes off with a faint squelching sound, the inside of it sticky where it curves around the front of Tsurumi’s head.
The skin beneath is puckered and red, shiny scar tissue twisting in on itself like a web of roots across Tsurumi’s forehead. At the very center is a small, glistening gash the color of raw meat. It oozes slowly even as Usami watches, breathless, a clear drop of fluid beading up and quivering at the lip of the wound. It’s easily the most erotic thing he has ever seen, the purity of it like a knife to the heart.
“Beautiful,” Usami says, awestruck. “Beautiful, Tsurumi-san, it’s beautiful.” He kisses the trail of liquid as it drips down over the crest of Tsurumi’s brow and into his eye socket. It’s as warm as blood and tastes faintly of salt, like the ocean breeze. He closes his mouth over the mess of gnarled flesh and presses the tip of his tongue to the whisper thin stretch of half healed skin at the heart of the wound. More fluid wells up at the pressure, coating his tongue, and Tsurumi makes an odd, halting noise beneath him that’s nothing like the controlled sounds of pleasure he’s let loose until now.
“Tsurumi-san, Tsurumi-san, Tokushirou-san-” Usami digs his nails into Tsurumi’s thighs and begins moving again, his thrusts rough and unsteady. He licks around the ragged circle of the wound before dipping into the center again. The saltiness of it fills his mouth, and Tsurumi groans again, his hands scratching up Usami’s sides to grip at his arms.
Usami lifts his head and licks his lips, chasing the last of Tsurumi’s taste. The wound is leaking freely now, thick streams of fluid rolling down Tsurumi’s cheeks. Tsurumi’s eyes are hazy, his tongue red against the sharp whiteness of his teeth. When Usami kisses him, he sets those teeth against Usami’s bottom lip and holds it there in his mouth.
It isn’t fair, Usami thinks, that he can’t taste all of Tsurumi-san all at once. He works a hand down between them and feels the slickness where Tsurumi’s cock presses against their bellies. “Can you come, sir?” he asks, dragging his thumb up the underside of Tsurumi’s cock. “Please, I want to see it.”
“Greedy little thing,” Tsurumi murmurs, but he smiles his devil’s smile as he says it. “Why don’t you make me?”
Usami’s never been one to back down from a challenge. He wraps his arms around Tsurumi’s waist and takes him deep, measuring his thrusts so that each one comes just as Tsurumi takes a breath. Tsurumi writhes beneath him, the picture of perfect ecstasy. The sounds he makes are rougher now, jagged and true. It’s an honor to hear them, an honor to see Tsurumi-san like this.
Usami found a live oyster once, the shell cracked where it fell from its crate on the way to the kitchens, and pushed his fingers curiously into the gap to feel the soft, squirming flesh beneath. The honesty Tsurumi-san is showing him now feels like that same moment.
When Tsurumi comes, it’s quiet and without warning. His thighs tense around Usami’s ribs, the wound on his head managing one last, powerful dribble, and Tsurumi bares his teeth as he shudders and finally spills over his stomach.
“Ah,” Usami breathes, marveling. He drags his fingers through the sticky splatters of Tsurumi’s come and presses them to his tongue. It’s bitter and warm, and he licks his fingers clean until even the spaces between them taste of nothing but himself.
“Tsurumi-san, I love you.” Usami buries his face into the side of Tsurumi’s throat. The bed creaks beneath them, and he hopes the whole wing can hear it, can hear the sound of them becoming one. “I love you, I love you-”
Tsurumi’s hand slides up the back of his head, and for a moment, they’re standing together in the courtyard again all those years ago. “I know,” Tsurumi says warmly, and Usami comes with a gasp.
Incredible, Usami thinks afterwards, when they lie shoulder to shoulder in the narrow bed. The room feels hot and stifled now, the sheets heavy with the smell of sweat and sex. He thinks about his seed filling Tsurumi-san, how it’ll drip out of him when he stands, how Tsurumi will have to wash it out of himself, and considers dying on the spot to preserve this level of happiness.
“Sir,” Usami says. His throat is sore and he never wants it to stop hurting. “Promise me something?”
“Hm?” Tsurumi hums without opening his eyes. His weight is relaxed against Usami’s side, some invisible tension in his body briefly dispelled.
“Don’t die before me, sir. Please.”
“What’s this talk of death all of a sudden?” Tsurumi asks, amused. “Surely the sex was satisfactory?”
“No!” Usami says instantly. “No, it was perfect, it was everything I couldn’t...I...I couldn’t bear living without you, Tsurumi-san, that’s all.” He knows it as surely as he knows any other truth in life. A world without Tsurumi-san is no world at all.
Tsurumi is quiet for a long moment. Usami wonders if he’ll refuse in that kind way of his, the way he’s so gently deflected Usami’s requests before. That’s alright, he decides. He’ll just ask again and again, until-
“Of course, Tokishige,” Tsurumi says. He turns on his side and sets a hand on Usami’s chest, stroking upwards until it stops at the base of his throat. “I’ll kill you myself, if it comes to it.”
Warmth blooms at the center of Usami’s chest, so hot that he wonders if he’s bleeding out. “Will you, sir?” he asks, blinking back tears. “You’ve made me so happy. You always have.”
“It’s a promise.” Tsurumi smiles down at him, then takes Usami’s hand in his. “We’re friends, after all. The greatest of friends.”