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Nishiki presses another smooch to the corner of Kiryu's mouth, stubble already pushing through even when he knows Kiryu shaved that morning. He can get away with it being drunk. Physically and emotionally, his affection's allowed to bubble free as if he's made of champagne and not just sipping whiskey. Most important of all, Nishiki’s allowed to enjoy it.
He can’t do this when they’re alone, the two of them sitting around Kiryu's tiny apartment table with their knees touching. It’s not Nishiki putting on a show in public, far from it. It’s when it’s only them that the weight of every action hangs in the air. Is he laughing too hard, his beating heart threatening to vomit out? Does one thumb stroking knuckles resting on the tatami floor lead to something heavier, or does it end up with Nishiki being shoved off the balcony? Kiryu wouldn’t, Nishiki thinks. Not over that. He'd kick his ass for taping over his Friday night detective thriller, but not for suggesting something beyond what they already have.
But you can never really know a guy.
Because they're men, healthy young men with too much money and no real obligations besides the clan, they’re only supposed to express such things through alcohol or through violence. Nishiki doesn’t even fully hate it; drinking is great and Kiryu smacking him around with fists in some argument or another has gotten him off more than once. But that’s all it can be: a release, a twisted form of camaraderie. The only sort of misunderstanding, interpreting any of it beyond platonic, is his own fault.
Women, they’re allowed to be nice to each other for no reason at all, lest they want to be known as a bitch. Although, Nishiki's sure that leads to its own problems, imagining himself as a girl still ridiculously pining after another girl as ridiculously dense as Kiryu. And if only one of them was a girl, well. Some drops of alcohol slide down the edge of Nishiki's glass as he pauses his drinking to ponder.
They'd be how everyone talks about Kiryu with Yumi. They'd be even better than how people imagine with Yumi, when they’re so glued to the hip already, their hips actually touching even now as Nishiki supports his drunk ass. Everyone’d be making excuses to trap them together in body and soul, gush about how cute they were just standing next to each other, planning their wedding in their own heads. Damn. Nishiki passes off the burning in his chest as a result from downing his drink too fast.
If they hadn't grown up together, he wonders if they'd have any chance to even be in each other's presence. Dumb luck, not the kind that gets you yakuman at the hard table, but the kind that lets Kiryu wake up the next day with only ten stitches instead of getting his brains smeared all over the pavement. Dumb luck that makes you expect too much in return, if you're ungrateful.
He's not like Kiryu, who has no such expectations because he already has everything. Dumb, lucky Kiryu, who doesn't need him.
Of course, these are all useless mental exercises, conjured by a guy set on drinking himself to death at the age of twenty just because he wants the one he can't have. Fuck it, another glass.
He discretely glances at Kiryu, flushed cheeks but somehow still carrying on a conversation with the bartender. Nishiki's smile slips away until it becomes a slight grimace as he sips his alcohol, the taste now turning funny. But when Kiryu turns towards him, out of the corner of his eye, he can't help but grin again.
“I saw you.” Eyes so shiny, it looks like Kiryu's about to cry even with his grin. But why would he? "Can't handle the good stuff?"
“Shut up, asshole.” Nishiki keeps his tone light, ignores how he wants to give a real kiss. He begins to lean back into his seat proper, except Kiryu now leans in again and forces his rough cheek back against Nishiki's lips for more, fingers ensnaring themselves in Nishiki's dog tag necklace like a leash so if he falls over, he won't be alone. A real, fucking, painfully-stupid asshole. An asshole Nishiki can't stop caring about, for reasons he forbids himself from acknowledging.
It’s Kiryu's night, it’s Kiryu’s night every night, and he doesn’t want to ruin it. He doesn’t want to ruin them, for himself. He’ll ride out all his dumb luck that he has. But Nishiki never stops wondering if somewhere along the line, it's already run out.
Kiryu asks Nishiki to talk in his car. It's pouring outside and neon lights stain the shoulders of Nishiki's crinkled white suit as they’re squeezed together under Serena's front elevator awning. Despite the clear annoyance, a click of the tongue, Kiryu's allowed into the passenger seat as he always is. The car remains off, and they both sit against cold dark leather to catch their breath, trapped together.
It’s cramped and small, but right now it can only be here, a safe haven of sorts. No love hotel, no mess of Kiryu's apartment. Just the small space that Nishiki can claim as his alone, and where Kiryu can enjoy being with him. In normal circumstances, at least.
He watches Nishiki paw at his jacket for a pack of cigarettes, despite the amount he's already smoked in the last two hours, and how he freezes, sighs. Nishiki realizes they'd have to crank down the window for the smell to escape and the pounding on the roof is not encouraging. He’s still not looking at Kiryu, their last exchange a dull glare before they booked it to his car in the unrelenting rain. Kiryu misses the way Nishiki used to look at him, stars in his eyes. It hasn't fully disappeared (when Nishiki is tired and looks up at him with a dopey grin from Kiryu's futon before passing out, it’s there, when Nishiki picks him up from a late office night in the city and Kiryu doesn’t want to go home alone, when they're stuck in the hospital lobby for another round of tests and he presses a can of Boss coffee against Nishiki’s hollowed cheek), but it’s rare.
The nineties are only halfway over, yet everything’s a far cry from the luxuries of years past.
"You embarrassed of me?" Nishiki practically spits out, still facing the front windshield as rain patters. No, never, Kiryu thinks. He doesn’t even know what’s there to be embarrassed about.
No. That's wrong. He knows. Despite acting ignorant, he knows Nishiki's not what people want him to be. Nishiki's not what he wants himself to be. Kiryu doesn't want him to be anything, but his lack of words can only go so far. He wishes he was better at speaking, at consoling, when the man who matters most to him clearly needs him to be. It didn’t used to be a problem, because Nishiki had always understood him so well despite it. That’s why they made such a good pair, slotting into each other's weaknesses. When wasn’t it enough?
He wonders if it started with Nishiki's confession, which clawed its way out all those years ago (yet Kiryu remembers as if it's only been five minutes since). Like now, he couldn't look at Kiryu's face, choked by shame. Kiryu hadn't known, and yet, once he heard those words, he then understood. The expression of it may have been foreign to Kiryu, but the feelings themselves weren’t absent. To care for someone, and to be treasured in return, to rely on them no matter what went right or wrong, to swear an oath, "until death do us part"-
Who else could it be, but Nishiki?
Right now, he looks at Nishiki, offering no judgment or even outright sympathy that he knows will be rejected, but angles himself towards him. Moments pass. Then, Nishiki eventually gives way, leans over and starts blubbering into Kiryu's shoulder, Kiryu’s arms automatically embracing him in return. For all of Nishiki's faults, the ones he’s crying about aren’t anything he could actually stop.
He holds him tightly, trying to generate warmth between the two of them. If he squeezed any tighter, Kiryu might accidentally break a rib, but it still doesn't feel enough. It's a different sort of craving, not one of lust (which Kiryu has plenty of, is greatly familiar with). He only wants something better for him. Something Kiryu’s afraid that he can’t give in return, after Nishiki’s given him so much already.
If Nishiki turned just a little bit, Kiryu could press his lips against his forehead. He could force Nishiki up just for one, two kisses, if he wanted to. Kiryu usually does what he wants for himself, others be damned. But for Nishiki, he’ll do anything if Nishiki only asks. Nishiki, who still can't speak through his tears, but clings to the back of Kiryu's unfashionable suit jacket with curled fists. His face won’t leave Kiryu’s shoulder, so his kyoudai settles for lips against his hair instead.
Kiryu never wants to let him go.
It’s dim inside the bedroom. Only one tall floor lamp is turned on, a warm diffused glow, and the glitter of the city outside peeking through the half-drawn curtains.
Kiryu crawls all over him. Their jackets were abandoned earlier in another room, lying on the floor to be picked up in the morning. Kiryu's sleeves are rolled up, somehow too warm in the middle of their winter night. Nishiki absentmindedly strokes his muscled forearms; they surround him now, on his large soft bed (their bed now, really) but they would never hurt him. Nishiki knows this.
He kisses insistently, but tenderly. Nishiki keeps his eyes half-open as they kiss, examining Kiryu. His own hair is stroked, the end strands against his nape squeezed. Kiryu desperately wants to ruffle it further, that much is obvious. But he won’t: Nishiki had let him know who was in charge of his hairstyle quick enough.
Kiryu pulls back with his large, shiny puppy eyes that hadn’t dulled even after so many years away. He's still trying to pull some sort of good out of Nishiki. Idiot.
Despite his lack of speaking, Kiryu is easy to comprehend, always has been.
How can I fix this? What did I do wrong?
What would be arrogance in anyone else only appears pitiful to Nishiki, not that Kiryu deserves it from him.
But Kiryu wouldn't act this way for anyone else, is the thing.
He made Kiryu kill only a few nights ago. They were so close; he came up behind Kiryu and practically embraced from behind, his hands finding Kiryu's to aim his shaking gun properly at the body on the ground and squeeze. Almost a re-enactment of Dojima's circumstances, except Kiryu wasn't playing shining knight for Nishiki's mistakes this time. He made sure it was Kiryu’s fingers that pulled the trigger. His chin rested on Kiryu’s shoulder, his head pressed against the side of Kiryu’s face, the pumping blood the roar of a dragon. He made sure to kiss Kiryu’s cheek afterwards as reward, an iron tang on his lips. A good memory for his kyoudai.
And so (and yet), Kiryu's here again, crawling into his lap for more. Hands now on Nishiki's fitted-suit thighs, waiting for further permission.
Kiryu won’t talk about jail. Kiryu won’t even demean him for putting him in jail for a decade, then swiping him as part of his own family.
It makes Nishiki wonder how far he can push Kiryu, makes him want to laugh into their kiss.
Once upon a time ago, Nishiki practically counted down the days until Kiryu got out of jail in despair. How could he function without his other half? Then it became his own form of death row, until Kiryu would come to kill him. He doesn’t remember when he stopped feeling either way. Something began to smolder inside, slowly, almost imperceptible, but coating the inside of Nishiki with dark soot all the same.
When he picked him up from jail, it only took one moment of Kiryu’s pathetic, hopeful gaze before Nishiki knew the answer. He pounced in the limousine, licking and biting and groping Kiryu against the seats with the black inner partition blocking it all from view, no protests except the moans of a man without pleasure for ten years. No matter what Kazama or Sera said, Kiryu was his. This was an unspoken truth they both understood.
His hand clenches Kiryu's jaw. Kiryu pauses with a small groan, but Nishiki says nothing. After a moment, with Nishiki’s hand still in place, Kiryu continues to kiss him, drawing his lips in deeper. His legs slowly start to give way, his trembling weight pressing against Nishiki as he tries to keep himself upright. Impatient, Nishiki grabs a hip with his other hand and forces him down. The sudden action and heat jolts Kiryu to break away, but not too far apart. It’s impossible with Nishiki still holding him in his grasp, after all. And Kiryu still won’t complain.
His hand is so close to Kiryu’s throat. He imagines a thin strip of leather for a collar, one he can slip his finger under and tug when necessary. Not garish, but it would be a statement, should he force Kiryu to wear it during the day as his uniform. Sometimes he believes Kiryu is beyond shame or embarrassment, but he’s quickly reminded when it’s just the two of them, when Kiryu dutifully services him with a burning face and hesitant voice. It sets Nishiki off in a way not even the thrill of being a patriarch gives him anymore. Well, if Nishiki decides against a collar, he can at least bite and leave enough marks to function as one.
Instead of sliding down and squeezing, his thumb strokes Kiryu's sad excuse for a beard, then moves up to his mouth. Kiryu's lips are already parted, ready to take in anything (as he’s demonstrated over and over again).
It'd be so much easier if Nishiki hated him. If Kiryu hated him. All these fucking years, all the moments of humiliation and anger, and Nishiki still can't throw away his last scraps of affection. He presses his thigh against Kiryu's erection, savors the groan that escapes the other man’s mouth.
He can't say it to Kiryu tonight. He couldn't say it back then either; in his fear, he had settled on using “like,” obscuring the endless depth he held for Kiryu. Still holds, perhaps, if he only dug a little deeper. If the younger Nishiki saw himself now, he wonders how he would feel. The luck has gone. The worst has passed. And yet Kiryu is still here, despite it all.
When he finally returns to Kiryu’s lips, Kiryu briefly stiffens against him. Maybe he’s unsure whether he heard his short whisper correctly. But it doesn’t matter.
It’s Nishiki’s night and he’s going to enjoy what’s his, one messy kiss at a time.